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| the pic was taken from here |
The Single Men
who Dream of Fatherhood
Finding a partner to
have a family with isn’t only hard for women.
Names were changed to
protect the privacy of the people interviewed for this story.
The trend of women in
their late thirties/early forties going the single-parent route to realize
their dreams of motherhood isn’t shocking anymore. Stories of women resorting
to a sperm donor after one failed relationship too many, or after years of
disappointment and heartbreak in the dating world have become more common in
the past decade.
In the beginning,
these women were pioneers. They set out to prove not only their independence
but to chart a path forward to others who might find themselves in the same situation
in the future. Now, the path has been walked enough times that the roadmap is
pretty well-established, even if the rest stops and scenic views vary from
traveler to traveler.
Now, more women are
choosing to freeze their eggs in their late twenties / early thirties just in
case they end up having to embark on the trip of single-motherhood later on. Now,
that choice is more than an unusual solution to a painful predicament: it has
become a safety net to plan for.
These women’s stories,
however happy they mind be in the end, aren’t free of pain and heartbreak. Going
the single-parent route, in most cases, wasn’t plan A. in most cases, plan A
was a traditional family, but there’s only so many years a woman can dedicate
to trying for traditional before she’s forced to make a now-or-never decision.
These stories,
however, have another effect: they conflate femininity with the desire for
parenthood. They emphasize how hard it is for women to find a suitable mate to
have kids with, making it seem like the desire for children and a family, and
the excruciating pain that comes from not having it by a certain timeline is
exclusively female.
Men are framed as
responsibility-avoiding bachelors to whom having a child would be the worst
nightmare. Men have to be worn out into marriage and nagged into parenthood. But
the stereotype of the hesitant father doesn’t always match reality.
The reality is that
the landscape of parenthood is changing. The basic steps of meeting someone,
getting married and having kids seem so basic to that many people anymore. From
wanting a large family to forgoing children due to climate change concerns,
desires around parenthood now seem to come in a spectrum and are more varied
than ever.
It has become
increasingly more acceptable to both men and women to flat out state they don’t
want to have children – ever – but that doesn’t mean one’s plans for parenthood
have become any easier to align with another person’s. Whether you’re a man or
a woman, finding a partner who shares your exact desires on this matter seems
more complicated now than ever before.
And single women who
dream of motherhood aren’t the only ones who feel adrift.
The single
men who dream of fatherhood
At the same pace as
there are men avoiding marriage and children, there are those who wish they had
a family already (or soon), but who are having trouble making that dream come
true.
I have been very
interested in the male mindset on this issue. I have spent hours on the phone
and exchanged hundreds of text messages with my closest male friends, listening
to their desires and attempting to understand their frustrations.
These men have
revealed to me, above all, how deep their desire for a family is. They’d like
to find a woman to love, a wife to be their life partner, and yes, to give them
children of their own.
“A girl at my high
school had a baby, and the first time I held it, I knew I wanted to be a
father. I was 18, my friend John tells me. John is 45, he’s been married and
divorced twice, but so far, no kids. “People say, ‘it’s easy for you, just get
a younger girl’, but it doesn’t really work that way.”
John’s first wife
pushed back having kids to work on her graduate degree. After that, their
marriage fell apart before they could find the right time for babies. John’s
second marriage also ended without children.
John is far from an
undesirable partner. He’s charming, extremely fit, and very smart. He has a
good job and financially stable, still, dating hasn’t been going this way these
past few years.
He tells me it’s been
harder and harder to find women to date. Just like for many women in their late
30’s and early 40’s, older men are also faced with slimmer pickings in the
dating pool. Because John would like to have biological children, he tries to
date women younger than 40 and has ended things with women who flat out stated
they didn’t want kids. Just like for many singles, online dating is a big part
of John’s search for love, but he tells me the number of women still in their
fertile years who will increase their preferred age range to include men over 40
is discouragingly low.
Steve (34) and Paul
(28) also dream of fatherhood, and while they both wish they were there
already, their age makes them slightly more optimistic than John. Coincidently,
both Steve and Paul have a broken engagement in their past and have had to
start over in their pursuit of a life partner just when they thought they had
found the one. They both claim the breakup was for the best but the setback
sometimes discourages them a little.
Paul tells me he was
15 when he realized he would like to become a father someday. He always thought
it would happen before he turned 30, but he’s still confident he has plenty of
time to make it happen.
Steve says having
children is something he always knew he wanted. He is more vocal about how much
he wishes he were already there with a life partner. He’s painfully aware that
it takes a good amount of time to get to know someone, establish a
relationship, and get to the point where having children becomes a real
possibility.
Steve does the math, “if
I have a kid at 35, I’ll be 45 when he is 10 years old,” and “I wouldn’t like
to have a kid at 40 and be in my 60’s when my child is in their 20’s. if that’s
what ends up happening, I’ll be okay with it, but I would prefer things were
different.”
“I’d like to have a
child while I still have the energy to keep up, and I’d like to have more time
with my children overall,” he concludes.
He finds it’s been
hard to meet women who are serious about pursuing a relationship. Hookups, in
another hand, he doesn’t have a hard time finding.
What these three men have
in common, regardless of age, is a deep desire for a family, to the extent that
they wish it had already happened for them. Meanwhile, they try not to lose
hears as the years go by. So far, none of them is seriously considering single
parenthood as an option.
My sample is limited,
but the rise in male single parenthood is very real, and an indication that the
yearning for a family is far from exclusively female. Whether in Chicago or in
the UK, just as more women are turning towards sperm banks, more men are
choosing to become single parents. Some turn to surrogacy, others to adoption.
The social reality
raises important questions: if so many men and women want a family, what’s
standing in the way of them having that family together, the “traditional” way?
Some of these single parents are homosexuals, but that still doesn’t explain
why they’re not forming a family with a partner of the same sex instead of by
themselves. It turns out, difficulties in relating are not exclusive to one sexual
orientation or another.
Could the confused,
sometimes discouraging state of modern relationships be to blame? Could our
inability to relate and align common goals be a factor? Are we so distracted
wondering if there’s something better out there that we are missing the very
real people right in front of us? Do we mistakenly believe we have more time to
find someone and figure things out than we actually do? Has it become that much
easier to go it alone than to pursue a long-term partnership?
To some extent, all of
the above.
Regardless of the
reasons, I feel it’s important to highlight the realities of men who would like
to be parents but are having a hard time fulfilling that dream since it often
seems that women’s run to freeze their eggs or to find a mate while “there’s
still time” is the only heartbreak that matters in the current state of modern
relationships.
Men may have it easier in terms of the
biological clock, but that doesn’t mean they don’t struggle – and are forced to
come up with solutions that are “outside the box”.
Updates: it’s been
over 2 years since I officially interviewed the men for this story. The original
conversations quoted above happened around mid-2018. In the meantime, Paul got
married. Steve now has a girlfriend of about six months, whom he’s very happy
with, and John is still single.
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