What no baby?
This article from Australia caught my eye today. It focusses on the move away from committed relationships to single lifestyles and it homes in on the difficulties faced by women who find themselves unintentially childfree - after finding it difficult to find men who will agree to have children. A researcher has done a study and written a book called 'What no Baby?' looking at this issue. Here is an excerpt from the article.
'In What, No Baby?, Dr Cannold estimates that 25 per cent of women of child-bearing age in contemporary society will remain childless - and about 10 per cent are "childless by circumstance" rather than choice.
"There were two main groups of women - those who really wanted to have kids and some who were ambivalent, but all of them, given the right circumstances, would have had children," she says.
"They needed a partner who wanted children, a good person to father their children.
"Others split up at the wrong time or met a partner who didn't want to share the work with them - 'OK, you have a kid, but you do the work' mentality."
Dr Cannold says that at the time of conducting her research some of the women involved were "just devastated" about not having children.
"But I came across some of them some years later and those who hadn't had kids had come through it...they had moved on, dealt with the grief.
"They were those who moved towards motherhood but didn't end up having kids because they never found the right person or the right partnership, or they split at, say, 35 and by the time they found another partner, it was too late.
"These women didn't want to be called childless by choice - because it doesn't characterise what happened to them."
American research shows that of single men, one third are disengaged from commitment and long-term partnerships and parenting. The rest are more traditional males, happy to have children, but nothing much is going to change for them. '
'In What, No Baby?, Dr Cannold estimates that 25 per cent of women of child-bearing age in contemporary society will remain childless - and about 10 per cent are "childless by circumstance" rather than choice.
"There were two main groups of women - those who really wanted to have kids and some who were ambivalent, but all of them, given the right circumstances, would have had children," she says.
"They needed a partner who wanted children, a good person to father their children.
"Others split up at the wrong time or met a partner who didn't want to share the work with them - 'OK, you have a kid, but you do the work' mentality."
Dr Cannold says that at the time of conducting her research some of the women involved were "just devastated" about not having children.
"But I came across some of them some years later and those who hadn't had kids had come through it...they had moved on, dealt with the grief.
"They were those who moved towards motherhood but didn't end up having kids because they never found the right person or the right partnership, or they split at, say, 35 and by the time they found another partner, it was too late.
"These women didn't want to be called childless by choice - because it doesn't characterise what happened to them."
American research shows that of single men, one third are disengaged from commitment and long-term partnerships and parenting. The rest are more traditional males, happy to have children, but nothing much is going to change for them. '
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