it's crazy doing enough emotional work that i can clearly feel the part of me that *wants to be a father*, that *wants to love children and teach them things* i don't feel like i hear other men my age talking about this. maybe to not scare off women?
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Replying to @QiaochuYuan
Guys do talk about wanting to be fathers. Then everyone shames them for it. I don’t think it’s mostly metaphorical either; I think a lot of both men and women literally desire to have kids.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @QiaochuYuan
i've been thinking about this recently- I think there is a broad cultural backlash to "selfish" reasons for having kids (because you want to mold them in a particular way, have them care for you when you're older, etc)...
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such that any "why" you can fall back on for wanting to have kids is a priori assumed to be pathological. not sure if i've seen a gender discrepancy on this front but i would believe it...
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that said i think the "selfish reasons for having kids" meme, besides being bad for society for obvious reasons, is also damaging to prospective parents who cannot pick an approach to parenting because any specific approach can have pathological outcomes
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Replying to @The_Lagrangian @QiaochuYuan
I think most of the shaming comes from it being perceived as creepy to want a kid before you have a partner. Like, are you just using him/her as a breeding partner? Plus the cultural meme that parenthood is unsexy.
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This is true for both men and women actually: if a single woman is looking for a partner to have kids with she’s “baby-crazy”, she’ll come dragging things like “”expectations”” and “”responsibilities””, that’s no fun...
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But we already have a stereotype of women as boring “ball and chain” types. It’s unappealing but expected. A *man* who wants a stable loving family? Must be either unmanly or a closet conservative. (To be clear I don’t approve of these stereotypes.)
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I feel like there’s also intrasexual pressure between women to be career-focused above all, as if that is the correct way to embrace the fruits of past feminist activism. It may be defensive as well, if one feels an employer may be less inclined to hire an eager parent-to-be.
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