Men who steal women’s fertility
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Anonymous
Agreed. Many of my friends decided not to have children and they are happier and healthier because of that. |
Anonymous
My relative's wife did this to him. Lying to a spouse about major agreements in the relationship is just the worst. |
Anonymous
This is horrible. I have a good female friend who does not want children. She is Indian and only wants to date traditional Indian men, many of whom want children. She tells them by the third date that she doesn't want children. This is the right thing to do. If you are on the fence you should be honest about that early on but if you don't want children (nothing wrong with that!) you owe it to the other person to be up front with this information. Very proud of my friend for sticking to her guns on this even though her parents have told her to wait six months. It's not fair to waste someone's time if that is a non-negotiable, especially if you are in your 30s and your stance of children is definitely not going to change. |
Anonymous
Exactly. Quality and quantity of eggs decline with age, but some women struggle with both or one from the get-go. Ryan Serhant (on Bravo NY Real Estate Show) and his wife went through this when his wife was in her 20s. They were only able to get one good quality egg after trying many rounds of IVF. The show documented this and it opened up my eyes to the fact that this is something women in their 20s can struggle with - it's not just about age. |
Anonymous
Very good point. Jennifer never portrayed herself as a.victim. Yet many of the people posting here are so strongly biased to perceive themselves automatically as a victim that they project their own victim identification out to all other women, even the most objectively privileged. |
Anonymous
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I think it's only "stealing" if the man actively lies, as a PP said. Like if the guy claims he wants kids to a woman who definitely wants kids, marries her, and then slow plays it in the hopes he can run out the clock on her fertility, that's awful and I think it's very hard for a woman to see this coming if he's very vocal about wanting kids. I think how this plays out is that he continues to say he wants kids but will put up some seemingly reasonable roadblocks. He wants to wait until they can afford a certain size home (but then also objects to buying said home, always saying they need a bigger down payment or the market isn't right or something). Or he wants to wait until a specific point in his career that never quite comes. And then suddenly he starts saying "oh isn't it nice what we have now let's not mix it up." I have seen this happen.
The problem, though, is that I have also seen both men and women who genuinely do want kids in their 20s, change their minds in their 30s for a variety of reasons. Sometimes because of external factors like career or money, but most often because they realize they don't think the dynamic of their marriage will work well with children. And this can be an honest change of heart, not a trick. But it will feel like a trick to the other party. There are inherent risks involved in joining your life with someone else, and in relying on shared goals. I so hated this aspect of life that in my 20s I decided to become ambivalent about both marriage and kids -- great if they happened under the right circumstances, but I'd be fine with out. And then I lived my life as though they wouldn't happen. They did, and I'm happy, but it was useful for my 28 year old self to envision a life where one or both of them didn't happen, and to think about how I would structure my life and make it meaningful and worthwhile. And the nice thing about having done that now is that I can keep doing it. My kids are going to grow up and move away. My husband and I are already in the middle of our marriage and while it's going great, as you age you also need some space and independence, and not every goal needs to be 100% shared as you near retirement and old age. There's room for more. I tell both my kids this too -- always hold onto your independence of mind, even if you choose to join your life with someone else. Continue to dream for yourself and think about what YOU want and don't simply fold your life into someone else's and give them all that power, no matter how much you love them. In the end it won't serve either of you. |
Anonymous
My husband kept giving false promises of going to counseling and I believed him (I was naive) and wanted to have kids the natural way. Eventually when that did not work out my parents convinced me to stay and go the IVF route to prevent me from bringing a bad rep to the family. I should have gotten out in my 20s but here I am, a shell of my past self, an angry bitter old woman. |
Anonymous
That's not a fair statement. These relationships are usually the husband lying to the wife about wanting kids, dragging the timeline while pretending the marriage is great and then blindsiding the wife with a divorce once the wife demands a definitive time for a baby. Why would the wife freeze her eggs if her husband is telling her he wants kids? Should all women be entering marriages under the assumption their husbands will leave them and they need to safeguard their fertility? That's a crappy way to enter marriage. |
Anonymous
No one is reaching into a woman's abdomen and taking her reproductive organs. Infertility is a medical condition. If a woman is infertile, then she must adopt if she wants to be a mother. If she chooses not to adopt, well, she didn't really want to be a mother, she wanted to demonstrate her fertility. |
Anonymous
There are no guarantees when it comes to fertility. If having a biological child is a priority for a man or a women, then the timelines should be dragged. When a woman agrees to extend a deadline or doesn't hold her partner to it, she is accepting the risk of decreased fertility. If she issues an ultimatum that leads to a divorce, there were likely other issues in the relationship and she shouldn't have stayed as long as she did just hoping it would get better. Hope is not a plan. |
Anonymous
I will agree that THIS is actually stealing fertility! These women are unwanted suppliers to the domestic supply of infants. They are true victims. |
Anonymous
I always heard that Jennifer Anniston didn’t want kids and that is one of the many reasons Brad left her. |
Anonymous
You are correct and it’s gaslighting to pretend otherwise. |
Anonymous
If he’s saying he wants children, but not actively taking steps toward trying to conceive, then he’s demonstrating that he doesn’t really want children on the same timeline. You can call him a liar and complain about it, but I agree with those who are saying that women have agency. If you are not getting what you want in a situation, then you need to take steps to change it. That can be through communication and compromise or divorcing and finding another partner with a similar timeframe, but women can’t afford to simply wait and hope as their eggs dry up and then point fingers when they don’t get the children they wanted. |
Anonymous
| Jennifer Anniston tried too late in her life and she NEVER had her eggs frozen because she didn’t want kids when she was in her prime. This 100% her doing and has nothing to do with her husbands. |