Men are more prepared for fatherhood than we think(scientificamerican.com) |
Men are more prepared for fatherhood than we think(scientificamerican.com) |
That said, the "actionable" part of this is to not worry about it being something you aren't made to do. And that sounds very legit and something people should take to heart.
I'll also say that you are never fully prepared for it. Such that you shouldn't wait until you have everything ready in life for having kids. I suspect you can be so unprepared that you should give some pause. I just don't think you will ever be prepared.
Especially since you have no idea what your particular children will be like! Just talk to any family with many kids. Odds are very high that they will remark on how different their kids were. In ways that they likely did not expect. Certainly ways that they cannot explain.
> 47% of adults under 50 without kids say they're unlikely to have them — up 10 percentage points from 2018.
> Of those who said they're unlikely to have children, 57% said "they just don't want to."
> Among the other reasons: 44% said they wanted to focus on different things. 38% pointed to the state of the world, other than the environment. And 36% said they couldn't afford to raise a child.
> 13% cited infertility or other medical reasons.
> 64% of young women say they just don't want children, compared to 50% of men.
That is, there is a sizeable number of people that think they don't want kids, until they have one. Does this mean that these folks are liars? I'm not aiming in that direction. I'd expect this is more an area where you can change your mind.
My question is if there is no actual contradiction between the polls of how many childless people don't want children, versus how many people with children consider it a defining facet of their lives?
I'd be interested to know how people would have polled on those questions throughout the decades? Fertility rates would tell us how many people are acting on having kids. But it would not let us know how many people that are happy with kids today were saying they did not want kids in the past. Would it?