Millennial women are saying no thanks to parenthood

[Anonymous]

This is so interesting! My sample is skewed because I live in a suburb where of course all of my neighbors are families and most of the millennials I know are my children's friends (I'm a Gen X mom in my late 40s with ES kids, the youngest is in 2nd - most of the other moms are early to mid 30s). I just assumed that millennial women are being competitive with gen X women and have upped the ante with children as social status - wealthy millennials are having more and more children because it's a status symbol. Having 4 kids means you can afford 4 kids. I had no idea millennials are actually having fewer kids, it seems like so many of them have 3+ whereas every person my own age and 10 years older than me have only 2 kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Millennial men expect their millennial wives to have solid careers and to keep working after kids, without skipping a beat. The women are saying no thanks to that particular type of parenthood, because they know their husbands aren't going to take on 50% of domestic labor and childcare. And also because, outside of the DCUM bubble, most women aren't all that career-driven, especially after kids. They just aren't. If SAHM was a realistic option for more millennial women, we'd see more of them saying yes to parenthood.

Non of my working friends are career driven. They work to pay bills. The moms work to pay for daycare.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Interesting WAPO article -
"Millennials aren't having kids"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/11/03/millennials-only-children/
I love seeing the data on this. It really follows closely what I see in my personal life among my friends. What do you think are the reasons? I don't think it will turn around, millennial are rapidly approaching 40 or are already there.

It is very obvious to me ( Gen x) Women are expected to earn and make a good living AND also be the perfect homemaker/wife/mom. Until men step up women are smart not to fall into the trap.

And stay thin and have enthusiastic sex a min of 4x a week.

That has been the expectation of women/wives/mistresses since time immemorial. That's nothing new.

No it hasn't. Women have been been expected to try to stay attractive and sexually available since time immemorial. The part that has been ADDED is the part where she also needs to hop out of the hospital bloody and leaking milk and resume being the bread-winner for her family. Nothing but a dirty scam in the name of "feminism".

Don’t assume for a hot second that the SAHM’s are any more apt to stay thin and have enthusiastic sex a min of 4x a week.

Ancedata of one: it was for me. Once I quit my (high paying) job, I had more free time to exercise and eat healthier. I lost weight and looked the best since having kids (youngest was 4), and we had sex several times per week. There was less stress in our lives, and we were all much happier.

I had to go back to work a couple of years later because DH wasn't making enough, and yep, I put the weight back on. Mentally, though, working has been better for me. I swear I got dumber after I stopped working.

[Anonymous]

I my be a unicorn on this thread but my parents, both very successful, say their greatest accomplishment was raising three kids who are all doing well. Now, the joy they experience with grandchildren is wonderful to experience. I work full time and we have three kids and chaos is SOP but I hope to achieve the same as my parents. It helps that I have a husband who really pitches in and doesn’t expect me to be his sex slave four nights a week.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Women and couples never really thought they had a choice in previous generations. It was just done. Plus, there wasn't the visibility of how difficult it is to have and raise children back in the day. Now, we all have a front row seat through social media to what a sh*t show it can be.

I think it was a lot less difficult “back in the day”. We’ve built it up to be way more crushing and consuming than necessary, with all the gear and the classes and the sports and the grades and the diagnoses and the camps and the perfect holiday card photos, and then we return to the very same platforms that convinced us we needed all these things to complain about how difficult it is. If everyone’s really making their major life decisions based on what they see on social media—good or bad—they’re in for a rude awakening. That’s not real life, ever.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is so interesting! My sample is skewed because I live in a suburb where of course all of my neighbors are families and most of the millennials I know are my children's friends (I'm a Gen X mom in my late 40s with ES kids, the youngest is in 2nd - most of the other moms are early to mid 30s). I just assumed that millennial women are being competitive with gen X women and have upped the ante with children as social status - wealthy millennials are having more and more children because it's a status symbol. Having 4 kids means you can afford 4 kids. I had no idea millennials are actually having fewer kids, it seems like so many of them have 3+ whereas every person my own age and 10 years older than me have only 2 kids.

GenX and Millennials mindset blur a little but younger Millennials definitely dont think like Gen X’s older generations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Millennial men expect their millennial wives to have solid careers and to keep working after kids, without skipping a beat. The women are saying no thanks to that particular type of parenthood, because they know their husbands aren't going to take on 50% of domestic labor and childcare. And also because, outside of the DCUM bubble, most women aren't all that career-driven, especially after kids. They just aren't. If SAHM was a realistic option for more millennial women, we'd see more of them saying yes to parenthood.

So are millennial men resorting back to 1950s men? I'm young Gen X (late 40s) and the men I know are really, really involved fathers.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don’t want to derail this thread so let’s please not get into Ali Wong and her marriage, but I just wanted to mention that I started thinking seriously about this after watching I think it was her Baby Cobra set? Where she talks about wanting to be a SAHM mom because she thinks being a working woman is a scam. The current configuration where women continue to be expected to be beautiful by misogynistic standards, sexually available at all times, do all the childrearing, all of the mental load of running a household, AND get a degree and work full time is NOT what feminism fought for or is about. It is a scam.

Dating in my late twenties was illuminating to me because I found that misogyny and sexism were as prevalent as ever but look different now. Highly educated and high achieving Millennial dudes all wanted a woman who earned more than them and wanted to freeze her eggs and wait until her late 30s to have kids so they could maximize their own time to travel and party and focus solely on themselves. They openly looked down on women who wanted to have children or who didn’t prioritize high earning careers. They claimed it’s because they were feminists but really they just wanted women to take care of them and wanted zero family responsibilities. They also had zero regard for how hard it is for women physically and emotionally to battle infertility in their late 30s and 40s in order to buy their manchildren husbands a few extra years of party time.

I totally agree with this, especially the bolded. There's also this very specific component to it that I think hits women right when they are postpartum where you look at what you are expected to do just in that first year after the baby is born and it is INSANE. Even if you are a white collar professional with a decent maternity leave, you are supposed to line up full time care for your baby, start storing up breast milk since of course you have to breastfeed, then return to work full time one day while leaving your infant in the care of someone else, hit the ground running at work with no decline in productivity or focus, pump breastmilk throughout the day while working, manage whoever is taking care of your baby, continue to stay on top of doctors visits, your baby's health, weaning, keep them in diapers and clothes as they grow, pay attention to developmental milestones, etc. Oh and by the way, you are supposed to do all this while pretending like your hormones are not on some kind of Level 10 roller coaster ride from hell, and if you didn't know that hormones can continue to have major swings through the first year of motherhood, particularly for breastfeeding moms and especially related to changes in feeding and sleeping schedules (which are heavily impacted by return to work), well, you're about to find out.

It was staring down that gauntlet that made me decide it was a scam. If you asked men to do that, they'd just never have children. Ever. The fact that so many women I know do and it's treated as normal and *expected* in many circles is nuts to me.

I couldn't do it. I think I'm lower functioning than other high achieving women and I just couldn't do it. I had PPD and cried every day and just did not have the will to get myself through that gauntlet. I quit my job, we tightened our belts and I SAHMed for two years while doing small freelance jobs to help out financially, and then I returned to work part time. And that's what ensures that I don't lose my mind and my family functions, but it also means that my career has hit a brick wall and will probably never recover from it. So I did do an end run around the scam so much as reallocate the BS that is working motherhood in a different way. Yay?

I love being a mom but I think the expectations placed on moms today are just stupid.

What you may not be considering is that there are plenty of women who do not find motherhood + a career any more difficult than being a SAHM. I found hitting the ground running at work an escape. I did not breastfeed or pump.

I do have sympathy for women who want to SAHM and are now pressured to work and prioritize a career.

Ok?

Isn't the whole point of this thread that more women are concluding that career+kids is kind of a BS proposition? Good for you that it worked out but, the point is that it doesn't work that way for a lot of us. And thus more women are choosing to not even try.

You likely have factors in your life that make it work for you. Maybe higher income so you can afford more support, maybe family support, maybe very good fortune with regards to mental and physical health, maybe a combination.

I found returning to work to be terrible and I say that as someone who values my career and earning my own money. The year my baby was born was the most brutal mental health challenge I've ever had.

+1 its not easier to be a mom and work. You either have lots of help or you lying. Kids are added stress and you sound like you are using work to escape them. AND that is ok! But don’t make it seem like something easy for the “average” mom.

Plenty of women find working easier. You might not but that doesn’t mean there aren’t many of us who feel that way. I find sitting in an office paper pushing way easier than watching a young child all day.

Um…I agree! Working is 1000 times easier than being a mom. Doing both is harder. Re-read.

Exactly. I'm the PP this person was originally disagreeing with and I currently work part-time as a mom and still find it harder than working full time, in a much more demanding job with more responsibility, pre-kids.

It's not about caring for kids being harder than whatever job you have. It's about work-life balance. When I was a SAHM, I had better work life balance because even though it was hard work, there was downtime, I had a lot of freedom and flexibility. I only had one kid, the experience of being a SAHM to 3 or 4 would probably be quite different.

But being a working mom, even to just one kid -- I find the work/life balance is really tough. And my DH does too, actually. We often talk about how hard it is to feel like you work and work and then when work is finally over, it's time to parent. Now, I love time with my kid but a lot of that is work too, and it's work FOR someone else. Plus since I'm part-time, I take care of the house too, that's more work for others. It's very hard to find time that is just for me. I found it easier when I was a SAHM. It eliminated one entity I had to work for (my employer) which left a bit more time for me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is so interesting! My sample is skewed because I live in a suburb where of course all of my neighbors are families and most of the millennials I know are my children's friends (I'm a Gen X mom in my late 40s with ES kids, the youngest is in 2nd - most of the other moms are early to mid 30s). I just assumed that millennial women are being competitive with gen X women and have upped the ante with children as social status - wealthy millennials are having more and more children because it's a status symbol. Having 4 kids means you can afford 4 kids. I had no idea millennials are actually having fewer kids, it seems like so many of them have 3+ whereas every person my own age and 10 years older than me have only 2 kids.

GenX and Millennials mindset blur a little but younger Millennials definitely dont think like Gen X’s older generations.

Boomer mindset.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Women and couples never really thought they had a choice in previous generations. It was just done. Plus, there wasn't the visibility of how difficult it is to have and raise children back in the day. Now, we all have a front row seat through social media to what a sh*t show it can be.

I think it was a lot less difficult “back in the day”. We’ve built it up to be way more crushing and consuming than necessary, with all the gear and the classes and the sports and the grades and the diagnoses and the camps and the perfect holiday card photos, and then we return to the very same platforms that convinced us we needed all these things to complain about how difficult it is. If everyone’s really making their major life decisions based on what they see on social media—good or bad—they’re in for a rude awakening. That’s not real life, ever.

THIS!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Millennial men expect their millennial wives to have solid careers and to keep working after kids, without skipping a beat. The women are saying no thanks to that particular type of parenthood, because they know their husbands aren't going to take on 50% of domestic labor and childcare. And also because, outside of the DCUM bubble, most women aren't all that career-driven, especially after kids. They just aren't. If SAHM was a realistic option for more millennial women, we'd see more of them saying yes to parenthood.

So are millennial men resorting back to 1950s men? I'm young Gen X (late 40s) and the men I know are really, really involved fathers.

I'm a millennial married to a gen x man - he's definitely more involved than my own father was, but I still carry the load in terms of hiring and managing our nanny and housecleaner, groceries (they get delivered, but I spend a lot of time on making sure we have what we need), staying home from work when our nanny calls in sick, scheduling conferences, signing the kids up for sports and making sure they have rides, meal planning, birthday party invites and presents, doctor and dentist appointments, hair cuts, braiding their hair on the morning, making sure they brush their teeth, buying them school clothes and shoes, replacing sports equipment when it gets lost or they grow out of it, teaching them to read. DH, when he's home, is great about pitching in, but it's he doesn't take responsibility for running the house or the kids. He plans work-related travel without even checking with me on how it impacts my work schedule and the kids activities - a bad habit that I've been trying to break for some time now. So, yes he's better than most boomer dads and maybe even many gen x dads, but I'd say our division of labor at home is still 80/20 me to him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is so interesting! My sample is skewed because I live in a suburb where of course all of my neighbors are families and most of the millennials I know are my children's friends (I'm a Gen X mom in my late 40s with ES kids, the youngest is in 2nd - most of the other moms are early to mid 30s). I just assumed that millennial women are being competitive with gen X women and have upped the ante with children as social status - wealthy millennials are having more and more children because it's a status symbol. Having 4 kids means you can afford 4 kids. I had no idea millennials are actually having fewer kids, it seems like so many of them have 3+ whereas every person my own age and 10 years older than me have only 2 kids.

4 kids is a bit much by today’s standards. Im not talking Hollywood, different baby daddy standards. Its a bit much for working families who have their kids in activities. Not speaking from money standpoint but time. How can you attend to that many kids and maintain your life? Someone or something falls short. It’s not like back in the day whete people just played outside. I see 1-3 kids max in my suburban neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I don’t want to derail this thread so let’s please not get into Ali Wong and her marriage, but I just wanted to mention that I started thinking seriously about this after watching I think it was her Baby Cobra set? Where she talks about wanting to be a SAHM mom because she thinks being a working woman is a scam. The current configuration where women continue to be expected to be beautiful by misogynistic standards, sexually available at all times, do all the childrearing, all of the mental load of running a household, AND get a degree and work full time is NOT what feminism fought for or is about. It is a scam.

Dating in my late twenties was illuminating to me because I found that misogyny and sexism were as prevalent as ever but look different now. Highly educated and high achieving Millennial dudes all wanted a woman who earned more than them and wanted to freeze her eggs and wait until her late 30s to have kids so they could maximize their own time to travel and party and focus solely on themselves. They openly looked down on women who wanted to have children or who didn’t prioritize high earning careers. They claimed it’s because they were feminists but really they just wanted women to take care of them and wanted zero family responsibilities. They also had zero regard for how hard it is for women physically and emotionally to battle infertility in their late 30s and 40s in order to buy their manchildren husbands a few extra years of party time.

+100. This is also why there’s a lot to be said for dating intentionally for marriage in college/grad school and not writing off young marriage as something that only backwoods, flyover state rubes do. Men who are traditionally minded (in that they are on board with, or even actively prefer, a wife who wants to stay home to raise kids while they support the family financially) still exist, but they are off the market early.

I’m from a flyover city and find my friends who attended state colleges and married young have actually done better financially on average compared to friends I’ve met in DC. They also appear happier but that is difficult to judge. This is more from a financial perspective and ignoring other measures of success. It’s like these women knew to lock down a normal guy early on who would be a good provider and support a stable home. A lot of these men now own small businesses, continued in the family business etc.

Sounds like all the perks of white American privilege. As an immigrant, I can’t relate to this but am slightly jealous TBH!

eh... I'm an immigrant, and I wouldn't want that.

I think if you want that kid of life, you should not move to a hcol area. I wanted to be around culture, diversity, large selection of different ethnic foods (a must for me), a large international airport for traveling, and lots of high paying jobs. I've only lived in hcol areas.

We're looking at retiring in the next few years, and we still want all of the above, so I think we are going to have to continue living in a hcol area.

Then you wouldn’t know that you need to be in a HCOL area to find these things. I’ll give you more jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t want to derail this thread so let’s please not get into Ali Wong and her marriage, but I just wanted to mention that I started thinking seriously about this after watching I think it was her Baby Cobra set? Where she talks about wanting to be a SAHM mom because she thinks being a working woman is a scam. The current configuration where women continue to be expected to be beautiful by misogynistic standards, sexually available at all times, do all the childrearing, all of the mental load of running a household, AND get a degree and work full time is NOT what feminism fought for or is about. It is a scam.

Dating in my late twenties was illuminating to me because I found that misogyny and sexism were as prevalent as ever but look different now. Highly educated and high achieving Millennial dudes all wanted a woman who earned more than them and wanted to freeze her eggs and wait until her late 30s to have kids so they could maximize their own time to travel and party and focus solely on themselves. They openly looked down on women who wanted to have children or who didn’t prioritize high earning careers. They claimed it’s because they were feminists but really they just wanted women to take care of them and wanted zero family responsibilities. They also had zero regard for how hard it is for women physically and emotionally to battle infertility in their late 30s and 40s in order to buy their manchildren husbands a few extra years of party time.

I totally agree with this, especially the bolded. There's also this very specific component to it that I think hits women right when they are postpartum where you look at what you are expected to do just in that first year after the baby is born and it is INSANE. Even if you are a white collar professional with a decent maternity leave, you are supposed to line up full time care for your baby, start storing up breast milk since of course you have to breastfeed, then return to work full time one day while leaving your infant in the care of someone else, hit the ground running at work with no decline in productivity or focus, pump breastmilk throughout the day while working, manage whoever is taking care of your baby, continue to stay on top of doctors visits, your baby's health, weaning, keep them in diapers and clothes as they grow, pay attention to developmental milestones, etc. Oh and by the way, you are supposed to do all this while pretending like your hormones are not on some kind of Level 10 roller coaster ride from hell, and if you didn't know that hormones can continue to have major swings through the first year of motherhood, particularly for breastfeeding moms and especially related to changes in feeding and sleeping schedules (which are heavily impacted by return to work), well, you're about to find out.

It was staring down that gauntlet that made me decide it was a scam. If you asked men to do that, they'd just never have children. Ever. The fact that so many women I know do and it's treated as normal and *expected* in many circles is nuts to me.

I couldn't do it. I think I'm lower functioning than other high achieving women and I just couldn't do it. I had PPD and cried every day and just did not have the will to get myself through that gauntlet. I quit my job, we tightened our belts and I SAHMed for two years while doing small freelance jobs to help out financially, and then I returned to work part time. And that's what ensures that I don't lose my mind and my family functions, but it also means that my career has hit a brick wall and will probably never recover from it. So I did do an end run around the scam so much as reallocate the BS that is working motherhood in a different way. Yay?

I love being a mom but I think the expectations placed on moms today are just stupid.

I’m the pp who wrote all that and yes, this was my point. Exactly. Feminism fought for choice to have children, not have children and be respected intellectually, whatever. But it also fought for understanding and RESPECT of women’s bodies and giving birth. Expecting women to work while having a difficult pregnancy go back to work 6 weeks postpartum is the antithesis of feminism. Giving birth is feminine and powerful and amazing work. Millennial men think it’s boring and pathetic and gross or worse, a non-event. That is NOT feminism.

Hear hear! When I talk to my european friends, who grew up in Europe and have never lived in a world without generous maternity leave, free healthcare, and free daycare, it's like we're speaking a completely different language about having kids. Like the conversation just breaks down because the concept of having no paid maternity leave after giving birth, no reduced work schedule for the first 6 years, no free 12 hour a day daycare provided by state employees, is imposible for them to understand.

One thing that States does have going for it is, a dynamic job market so you can dip in and dip out to do childcare. This is unthinkable among my EU friend group, who believe that if they left their job they will never get hired again by anybody. so a lot of the generous leave and childcare options are to compensate for this extremely rigid EU job market. To mention nothing of the fact that a lot of my millenial EU friends are not having babies, either, bc they cannot afford housing on their measly salaries. So it's not al peaches and cream over there but it sure could be a lot better over here!

This is why we don’t have paid parental leave. We also have much higher salaries. The average married woman can absolutely stay home for a year per kid if that’s what she wants to do. Paid parental leave isn’t a necessity here.

I actually think the situation in Europe is worse. From my friendships with Europeans I get the impression that working is mandatory whereas it’s not with my peers here in the US. My European friends also are forced to use daycare facilities, can’t outsource like we do etc. I grew up in a flyover city and most of my childhood friends have very average husbands and have stayed home for decades now.

Outside of some urban areas with highly educated dual income couples, the average American woman who wants a year of parental leave wants to stay home much longer than that. There are cultural and structural reasons we don’t have long paid leaves from the government. Many women have pink collar jobs that easily allow them to reenter the workforce.

The Soviet Union provided one year maternity leaves to moms. Would I rather have a career and live in the Soviet Union? No. Do I think the Soviet Union provided maternity leave because they loved women and wanted moms to have an easy life? No.

This is incorrect. I'm European. In upper class families, there is stigma associated with raising your own kids; only the poor do that. Traditionally, children were raised by nannies and then by a governess. The first sign of social climbing in Europe is hiring a nanny, with cheaper ones coming from Phillipines. It's the same for other old cultures - ask an upper class, older Persian woman if she changed her children's diapers or cooked for them.
Working is definitely not mandatory and most women in the city work, but they don't have the high pressure jobs that we have here. My friends and my SIL dress up, roll into work at 10, work a little, do lunch and gossip, go out after work.

[Anonymous]

I really don’t know who is going to help/take care these people when they are older?