Fatherhood is a risk men aren’t willing to take

Recent reports that half of women in England and Wales are now childless by their 30th birthday reveal a worrying new attitude amongst Gen Z. Parenthood, to the younger generation, is the enemy of unfettered frivolity. Young women, we are told, would rather live for the moment than plan for the future. 'Being present' has become the mantra of the 'mindful' generation who see autonomy as the ultimate expression of a life well lived.

But how complicit are men in this myopic 'me-only' utopia we have created for ourselves? Are women actively rejecting the sort of men who would like to settle down or have the sort of men who once yearned to settle themselves become cynical about taking the plunge?

While both sexes feel trepidation about losing cherished freedoms, men are experiencing a much darker existential anxiety that isn’t simply about a loss of liberty. Although I-deserve-to-have-it-all infantilism has infected both sexes, women's pragmatism in the face of diminishing odds tends to wake them out of their complacency although this hasn’t necessarily stopped many older women from delaying childbirth beyond the point of no return.

Historically men have never known when to leave the party and, as a result, tend to go along with their partner's desire to move to the next level. Although men are rarely the ones making the final decision about when to have children, there's a growing sense of bewilderment around the sisterhood's increasingly strident 'you-go-girl' attitude. If women are proud to declare 'we got this' where does that leave the other half of the population? I'm not suggesting that these men yearn for a return to the bad old days when women 'knew their place' – only that they seem increasingly concerned about the pathologies around male incompetency, where women's needs are presumed to take preference over their own, not least in matters of child rearing.

The modern autonomous woman is perfectly capable, in practical terms at least, of raising a child on her own. Single motherhood is no longer stigmatised, meaning women are much more open to the possibility of going it alone, an option that must seem increasingly attractive in a culture where men are seen as hopeless and mothers complain of partners 'always getting in the way'.

Men's apparent inability to perform even the simplest of childrearing chores such as changing nappies has become a well-worn comedy trope. The idea that we are all a bunch of hapless Neanderthals when it comes to the domestic sphere has leaked into men's psyches, often damaging their sense of self worth. As women's low expectations gnaw away at their confidence is it any wonder younger males are choosing to opt out of marriage and parenthood before they have even had a chance to prove themselves? They see cowed, emasculated men struggling to maintain a grip on their relationships while simultaneously being told they are somehow complicit in women's subjugation.

I was reminded of this strange paradox when I joined a workshop entitled 'changing masculinities' at a junior school in south London. The young men, many from deprived backgrounds, were astonished when the instructor explained how they lived under an oppressive patriarchal power structure and should therefore reject tyrannical institutions such as marriage along with all forms of traditional masculinity; this from a school where nearly all the teachers were women and over half the boys came from fatherless households. Telling young men they are responsible for structural inequalities must surely damage their ability to engage with the opposite sex later in life.

Despite our current obsession with demonising all things patriarchal, the evidence suggests we are in fact moving towards a more matriarchal society in which men are encouraged to stop talking and take a backseat. In a 2020 United Nations study entitled 'Tackling Gender Norms: A Game Changer for Gender Inequalities', Joanne Sandler, former Deputy Executive Director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (or UNIFEM) called for male leaders across the globe to 'step aside… as an expression of their feminism.' Indeed our government's reaction to the pandemic has been overwhelmingly matriarchal in tone – with the big state choosing to mollycoddle a helpless, infantilised populace that doesn’t know any better.

The idea that we should replace one gender with another as some kind of virtuous payback for historic injustices doesn't foster trust between the sexes. Indeed, it may even inhibit men from taking the risks that inevitably come with marriage and fatherhood. If you keep repeating that men are a toxic liability while at the same time promoting the idea that only alpha females can save us from ourselves, what you're effectively saying is that men have become surplus to requirement. But how is this any different from the oppressive patriarchal system they seek to dismantle? In such a dispiritingly cynical age, why would any man choose to reproduce?

In her latest book What do Men Want, philosopher Nina Power argues that we do men a disservice by throwing around vague terms like patriarchy. 'We cannot in fact... "smash" the patriarchy, because it is not a being, but rather the structure of a certain kind of being, that is to say, how a society is organised. But organised by whom? Transmitted how? How and why have some - or many - women gone along with it?' She continues 'By dismantling patriarchy … we have also collectively done away with all the positive dimensions of patriarchy as well: the protective father, the responsible man, the paternalistic attitude that exhibits care and compassion rather than simply places constraints on freedom. If anything, we have dismantled patriarchy in a rather extreme way, resulting in a horizontal, competitive society that suits consumer capitalism very well.'

In a culture that views traditional masculine virtues as a liability, there will inevitably be fallout, in a justice system for instance that appears to discriminate against fathers, as happened to an acquaintance of mine who recently lost a custody battle along with his house and all of his savings. Now effectively destitute, he told me how much he regrets his decision to have children; what was the point when he barely gets to see them? The trauma of separation has made his life almost unbearable.

This is the embittered culture young men now find themselves caught up in. A culture where cowed single dads fear being labelled misogynist if they step out of line, a place where those same fathers are too often hung out to dry by a system described by author Greg Ellis in his book The Respondent as 'the only branch of the legal system that doesn't begin with the presumption of innocence.' Outcasts find little in the way of succour or redress other than succumbing to the bitter extremism of Men's Rights Activism. Dare to speak out and chances are you'll be mocked as a whiny, over-privileged faux-victim.

Perhaps the female defence lawyer who contacted me recently was right when she expressed sympathy for young men's hesitancy around marriage and fatherhood, especially given the febrile, often one-sided nature of so many custody battles. Keen to share with me some of the injustices she had encountered during her dealings with men, she revealed how, during family court proceedings, women would often gain automatic custody of their children if there had been any sort of criminal complaint made. 'Since MeToo I've noticed a growing number of aggrieved mothers taking advantage of a system that demands we 'believe all women'. Desperate to maintain custody these mothers will make spurious accusations in a family court and then go on to make the same complaint to the police to shore up their position once they've secured a conviction in the family court. Social services then become involved, helping the mother gain full custody of the children. It's a system corrupted by anti-patriarchal ideologues and there is nothing a man can do once criminal charges have been made. He's on his own, literally.'

Under similar circumstances, men are rarely offered the same level of custody, 'I recently defended an accused husband who had made a controlling coercive cross allegation against his wife. Because he happened to be male and white  she was black and female - he wasn’t considered a vulnerable victim and his plea was rejected.'

Naturally, a rise in such cases doesn’t sit well with the sort of men who might be in two minds about whether to settle down and have children especially when it appears that the law has already made assumptions about male guilt. The lazy stereotype of the wayward, feckless man continues to hold sway.

This year sees the thirtieth anniversary of the hit 90s sitcom Men Behaving Badly in which the obtuse, hopelessly irresponsible man-baby was first conceived. Coincidentally, two months before Men Behaving Badly first aired on the BBC, Loaded magazine hit the news stands with its appeal to so called 'laddism'. Inside that very first edition, a letter from the editor gave an indication of what would become a cultural turning point – 'a new magazine dedicated to life, liberty and the pursuit of sex, drink, football and less serious matters… for the man who believes he can do anything, if only he wasn’t hungover'. The die had been cast and a grotesque caricature of crude, nihilistic manhood lodged itself in the cultural mindset, a mindset that persists to this day.

And so we find ourselves trapped in a deeply demoralising conundrum where pathologised men fear the negative repercussions of marriage and child-rearing while their opposite number recoil from the toxic masculine template they have been force-fed for a generation. Neither sex seems willing to compromise but eventually sacrifices will have to be made, if only for the continuation of our species.