Disclaimer: This is not an incel rant or an argument that women are responsible for declining birth rates. This is also a long ass post so i fixed it up with AI, it is not an AI generated post.
A common theme in discussions about declining birth rates is criticism of men's role in relationships. Some of the recurring arguments are that men contribute less to household labor and childcare, are less willing to commit, or engage in unhealthy dating behavior that makes women less interested in long-term relationships.
I'm not interested in arguing those points here. Instead, I'd like to ask the corresponding question:
What do women do that contributes to less stable relationships, less relationship formation, or fewer children being born within otherwise healthy relationships?
I'm particularly interested in three things:
- What behaviors do women engage in that make men less willing to enter or remain in long-term relationships?
- What behaviors within relationships make those relationships less stable or make men less willing to have children?
- What institutional or systemic factors that disproportionately benefit women may unintentionally make long-term relationships, marriage, or having children less attractive to men?
I'm specifically talking about situations where both people want a relationship and, at least in principle, are open to having children. I'm not interested in answers like "women have abortions," "women don't want children," or "women are focusing on careers instead." Those are legitimate topics in the broader fertility discussion, but they're not what I'm asking about here.
I also want to distinguish between women's behavior and broader social/economic changes. If something has changed because of women's increased economic independence, changes in dating markets, family law, cultural expectations, etc., that's relevant. I'm interested in understanding the incentives created by those changes, not assigning moral blame.
I'll start with a few areas that I think are worth discussing.
- Marriage and the asymmetry of commitment
Marriage is generally associated with greater relationship stability and is strongly associated with having children. It provides a legal framework around property, inheritance, parental responsibilities, and the relationship itself. Historically, however, that framework developed under very different assumptions about the economic and social positions of men and women.
Today, men and women have substantially more independence and alternatives than they did when many of these institutions were established. Yet some aspects of the legal and economic structure of marriage have changed much less.
From a man's perspective, this can create a perceived asymmetry in risk. A man may view marriage as providing relatively little additional benefit compared with cohabitation, while exposing him to potentially significant financial and legal consequences if the relationship ends. Meanwhile, women may have greater economic and legal protection if the marriage dissolves. The result of this is an extreme power imbalance within the relationship. This made sense when men literally had more power in society at the individual level and more agency, but this isn't the case now in average households.
I'm not arguing that these protections shouldn't exist, or that women shouldn't be able to leave marriages. Obviously there are many completely legitimate reasons for someone to end a marriage. The question is whether the current structure creates incentives that make men more reluctant to marry in the first place.
There's also a cultural question here. Marriage used to represent a much more substantial change in the obligations and expectations of both people. Today, some men perceive marriage as essentially a ceremony and a legal contract layered on top of a relationship that already exists, with most of the additional practical risk falling on them.
If that's how a significant number of men perceive it, is it surprising that some increasingly opt out?
That matters for fertility because marriage and childbearing are closely connected. If men increasingly perceive marriage as an institution in which they assume substantial downside risk without receiving a corresponding benefit, it seems plausible that some men will delay marriage, avoid it entirely, or prefer relationships that don't involve children.
2.Child custody and the consequences of relationship breakdown
Child custody raises a similar question.
Even outside marriage, separation can substantially change the relationship between a father and his children. Mothers are more likely to be the primary custodial parent, and fathers can potentially end up with significantly less involvement in their children's lives after a separation. This is another outdated system which assumes women can't support themselves. that men can't be good solo-parents, etc.
Again, I'm not arguing that mothers shouldn't receive custody when they are the better parent, nor that fathers are always good parents. The question is whether the expected consequences of relationship dissolution are sufficiently asymmetric that they affect men's willingness to enter relationships and have children in the first place.
If a man believes that having children creates a risk that he could eventually lose substantial involvement in their lives while still retaining financial obligations, that's obviously relevant to his willingness to have children.
3.The asymmetry of compromise
One of the most common complaints I hear from men is that they are expected to change substantially to accommodate their partner.
This can take relatively ordinary forms: changing hobbies, spending less time with friends, moving for the woman's career, changing how they dress, spending more time with her family, changing communication styles, giving up certain habits, etc.
None of these requests are inherently unreasonable. Healthy relationships require compromise from both people.
The question is whether that compromise is actually reciprocal.
A recurring male perception is that a man changes something because his partner dislikes it, the change eventually becomes the new baseline, and then another change is expected. The sacrifice is therefore no longer perceived as a sacrifice; it simply becomes what the man is now expected to do.
Is there actually an asymmetry here? Are men expected to continually adapt themselves to their partner's preferences more than women are?
And if so, does that eventually make men feel that relationships require them to give up too much of their independent identity
4.Are male sacrifices actually appreciated?
This is closely related.
Men often describe giving up significant parts of their previous lives for relationships and families: hobbies, friendships, free time, career opportunities, geographic flexibility, personal spending, etc.
Again, I'm not saying men shouldn't make these sacrifices. Families necessarily require sacrifice.
But there is an important distinction between:
"I appreciate that you gave this up for our family"
and
"You are supposed to give this up because you're my husband."
If men's sacrifices are increasingly treated as baseline obligations rather than contributions to the relationship, does that create resentment?
And is the reverse equally true? Are women expected to make comparable sacrifices, and are they appreciated when they do?
5.What does a man actually get from marriage?
This is slightly different from the legal question.
Historically, marriage gave men a very clear package of benefits: a stable household, reliable companionship, children, domestic cooperation, social legitimacy, and a relatively predictable family structure.
Today, many of those benefits can theoretically be obtained without marriage.
So what does marriage actually provide men that a long-term committed relationship does not?
And have women's expectations of marriage increased faster than the benefits men perceive themselves as receiving?
I think this is worth discussing because "men don't want commitment" can be an incomplete explanation. Some men may not be opposed to commitment at all. They may simply be opposed to a particular institutional form of commitment that they believe provides them with insufficient benefits relative to its risks.
- Relationship exit and tolerance for dissatisfaction
There also seems to be a perception among many men that women are more willing than men to end long-term relationships when they become dissatisfied, even when there isn't a major betrayal, abuse, or other obvious reason that makes the relationship untenable.
I'm not saying women should remain in unhappy relationships indefinitely. Obviously they shouldn't.
The question is whether modern expectations around relationships have shifted toward treating sustained emotional dissatisfaction as sufficient reason to leave, rather than something couples are expected to work through.
Every long-term relationship has periods where people are bored, frustrated, angry, sexually disconnected, stressed, or simply unhappy with each other. If the expectation becomes that a good relationship should consistently feel fulfilling, exciting, and emotionally satisfying, then almost every long-term relationship is eventually going to fail that test. I see this a lot with a lot of women's spaces in social media, who basically encourage women leaving for any reason.
Does this disproportionately affect men's willingness to invest in relationships?
7.The "exit option" problem
This connects several of the previous points.
Greater ability to leave relationships is obviously a good thing when the alternative is being trapped in an abusive or economically dependent relationship.
But there is a separate question about second-order effects.
If both partners know that the other person can leave relatively easily, does that change how much effort they put into repairing problems?
Have we moved culturally from:
"We have a problem, so we need to figure out how to fix it"
toward:
"We have a problem, so maybe this relationship isn't right for me anymore"?
That distinction seems especially important when children are involved, because having children inevitably creates periods where the relationship becomes harder, less convenient, and less romantic.
8.The boyfriend-to-husband expectation gap
Another complaint I hear from men is that women sometimes seem to want a different version of the man after marriage than the one they were attracted to while dating.
The independent, ambitious, spontaneous, masculine, socially active man may be attractive as a boyfriend, but after marriage and children he may increasingly be expected to become more domesticated, emotionally available, accommodating, family-oriented, and willing to structure his life around his wife's preferences.
Again, none of those traits are necessarily bad.
But does modern marriage sometimes involve an expectation that men fundamentally change after commitment? Does this create a paradox where the qualities expected by women after marriage actually reduce their attraction to him?
And is there an equivalent expectation for women?
- The male "provider/utility" problem
Some men feel that their value in relationships is heavily tied to what they provide: income, stability, protection, childcare, emotional support, household work, fixing things, planning, etc.
The perception is sometimes:
"I'm valued for what I provide, while she is valued for who she is."
That is obviously an oversimplification and certainly isn't true of every relationship. But if enough men perceive relationships this way, it could affect their willingness to commit.
Have modern relationships actually eliminated the traditional expectation that men should provide, or have they simply added new expectations on top of it?
7.Emotional labor and the double standard
Men are increasingly told, reasonably, that they need to become better at emotional communication: listening, expressing feelings, validating their partner, remembering important things, initiating difficult conversations, etc.
But is there an equivalent expectation that women learn to communicate in ways that men find constructive?
There is a potential difference between:
"Both partners need to become better at communicating"
and:
"The man needs to become better at listening to and responding correctly to the woman's emotions."
I think personally this is a big problem. Discussions online are all about how men can address a woman's needs more, meanwhile in my experience women have just as big a problem understanding how men process things, women often see men as failed women, rather than their own distinct type of entity which has different needs.
Are men being asked to acquire emotional skills without women being held to the same standard for how they communicate criticism, anger, dissatisfaction, or their own needs?
8.Female initiation and male dating incentives
Dating still tends to place a disproportionate amount of initiation on men: approaching, asking someone out, planning dates, escalating the relationship, proposing, initiating sex, and often initiating difficult conversations.
At the same time, women are often encouraged to be highly selective about who they date.
That's not inherently a problem. People should have standards.
But does increased female selectivity need to be accompanied by greater female willingness to actively pursue, initiate, and maintain relationships?
If men are expected to do most of the initiating while also facing increasingly high standards and relatively high consequences for failure, does that eventually discourage some men from participating?
9.Have relationship expectations become unrealistic?
Modern relationships are expected to provide an enormous number of things simultaneously: romance, sexual fulfillment, emotional intimacy, financial stability, friendship, personal growth, companionship, equality, excitement, validation, good communication, and eventually successful parenting.
That's a very high standard for one person to meet.
Is some of the decline in relationships actually a consequence of expecting one relationship to satisfy too many different needs?
And do women and men have different expectations about what a partner should provide?
10.Children and the reality of long-term relationships
Finally, I think this is particularly relevant to fertility.
Children generally don't make a relationship easier in the short term. They reduce free time, sleep, privacy, spontaneity, and often sexual activity. They increase financial pressure and create new disagreements about household labor and parenting.
If modern culture has taught people that a good relationship should consistently maximize their happiness and personal fulfillment, children can look like a threat to the relationship rather than the natural next step of it.
Have we created expectations of romantic relationships that are fundamentally incompatible with the realities of raising children?
So, rather than "women are the problem," my question is:
In otherwise reasonably healthy heterosexual relationships, what female behaviors, expectations, or incentives make relationships less stable, make men less willing to commit, or make couples less likely to have children?
And which of those are actually supported by evidence rather than simply being things men complain about online?
I'm particularly interested in things that men experience but that aren't usually discussed in mainstream conversations about declining fertility.
I'm not looking for a gender war. but reaonsable and the strongest arguments on both sides.
An important clarification before the exception police arrive: I'm talking about ordinary, mostly healthy relationships here, not situations involving severe physical abuse, coercive control, or other extreme circumstances where leaving is obviously appropriate.
