The Forgotten Silence of Childless Men

At several points over the past few years, I’ve showcased a story about women who make the personal choice not to have children. Usually, their stories are ones of personal bravery, confidence and empowerment. This week I came across an article that was one of the first to talk about a more invisible side of this equation: the men who love women who don’t want children.

Sometimes staying childless is a mutual choice. Other times, the man in a relationship can be the one who desperately wants to have children while his partner doesn’t. An article in The Walrus this week was titled “My Husband Wanted to Have a Child. I Didn’t. Here Is How It Went.” The conclusion of the article was relatively unsatisfying:

“I was terrified that Erik and I would one day have a conversation ending with him saying he had given up on fatherhood for me because he loved me. And that he now regretted that decision, but he and I agreed that the way forward was for me to believe him when he said that I was the family he wanted, and that if I didn’t want to become a mother, a life without a child was right for us.”

Will Erik always feel this way? And why don’t we see more articles about those men who do want to be fathers but either haven’t met the right person or end up with someone who isn’t really interested in having kids? We don’t hold much space in the world to understand or engage with men who long to be fathers. Especially as they are challenged to be supportive husbands or partners to the women in their lives who may have already decided they don’t want children.

In the new survey from Pew Research on how Americans view men and masculinity, the research revealed that traditional expectations of men and masculinity continue to persist among more than half of the survey respondents. Fatherhood (or the choice not to become a father) was not covered … which is perhaps the best metaphor for the issue itself. Fatherhood needs to become as fundamental to a conversation about masculinity as motherhood is for women … whether someone chooses to have children or not.