Let’s say you always expected that you’d have kids. Then you find yourself unattached romantically and childless in your 40s or 50s, and now it seems like it’s just not going to happen. You have no interest in having a child by yourself, although that’s an option, and so your friends and family are empathetic to your sadness. And you are … a man.
We often hear about women in that predicament. Melanie Notkin named the rising number of older women who imagined they’d be mothers but never found a partner to have them with in her book, Otherhood: Modern Women Finding a New Kind of Happiness. More recently, journalist Glynnis MacNicol penned a memoir of her own path to middle-aged childlessness, No One Tells You This. And while she didn’t end up with the life she wanted — husband, kids — she writes about the freedom that her husband- and child-free life affords her, and women — myself included — celebrate her freedom.
But what if you are a man who wanted kids and, at midlife, don’t have them? Since recent studies indicate more men are interested in having children than women, are they given the same empathy and support? Do we celebrate their freedom?
Not necessarily.
No narratives for men
Robin Hadley, founder of wantedtobeadad.com, says for some men “not becoming a parent had a greater negative effect. That’s because there are no narratives around childlessness for men.”
The only narratives we have for older, unmarried and childfree men are negative — playboy, player, perpetual bachelor.
While some may envy a childless man’s freedom, others may see it as selfishness.
“There can be an air of irresponsibility afforded to men because they’re not a father, like they couldn’t hack the pace or never wanted to grow up,” writes GQ columnist Justin Myers.
Now Hadley, in his late 50s, has a new study out, “The impact of male involuntary childlessness,” in which he notes that recent public conversations — or panic — about the drop in the fertility rate typically exclude men. His new study counters the “stereotype that fatherhood is not important to men.”
Men are ‘missing out’
Of course it matters. As he notes:
The men spoke of ‘missing out’ on the father-child relationship. The majority of infertility literature highlights a transition from grief to acceptance. However, all the participants expressed a complex constant negotiation of the loss of experience, identity, role, and intimate and wider relationships. Moreover, the continuity of disruption affects present and future agency: economic, existential, genetic, identity, legacy of familial stories and material, relational, role and sociocultural. The men used the word ‘missing’ rather than bereavement, grief or loss. This reflects the absence of social scripts available for the men to draw on. Moreover, it reflects a wider sense of the ‘invisibility’ of childless men from research and from datasets.
Facing the biological clock
Men have as much of a biological clock as women do (although that’s been debunked, beautifully, by Moira Weigel). But we’re not talking here about how questionable it is for older men to birth babies (and it’s totally questionable as older men often don’t birth healthy babies).
In the past few years, I’ve casually dated two men in their mid-50s who thought they’d be fathers by now. One was still angry at his former wife for changing her mind about wanting to have children; the other was on a search for a woman 20 or so years his junior to have kids with. I had some empathy for them, but I have to admit — not as much as I perhaps should have. My concerns about all the problems their potential children could have, and whether it’s fair to a child to have such an old dad, overtook my empathy.
Of course, some women might judge them for wanting to date younger women, not realizing what’s driving that — babies, not having a hot young thing on their arm.
“So when it comes to the childless men, don’t look up to us as players, pity us as victims, congratulate us on a bullet dodged or see us as untrustworthy snakes who shirk responsibility — we’re just living our lives differently,” Myers writes.
We could all benefit by being more understanding about that.
Want to have a parenting marriage? Then read The New I Do: Reshaping Marriage for Skeptics, Realists and Rebels (Seal Press). You can support your local indie bookstore or order it on Amazon.
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