After Watching Their Mums Fight To 'Have It All', Gen Z Women Would Rather Be Dads

As attitudes on gender equality seem to be moving backward, motherhood feels more like a trap.

On Assignment For HuffPost

One night at dinner, our friend admitted she hadn’t been happy for a long time. She was the breadwinner, the homeowner, the manager of all domestic tasks despite being in a relationship. She’d hoped it would even out, but it hadn’t.

Her boyfriend was desperate for children, but she wasn’t so sure. She would have to carry and look after the baby, hold the majority of the responsibility to keep the child alive, and pay the rent.

What he brought to the relationship didn’t seem like enough in exchange. A few weeks later, they broke up.

Her story is part of a wider trend: among childless 18-34-year-olds who want children (and don’t already have them), there are about 5 million more men than women. But men in this demographic are also struggling to attain economic stability, complete college and build meaningful social connections.

That gender gap in aspirations for parenthood, and what’s driving it, could deepen growing public concern about America’s declining birthrate.

While aspirations for fatherhood are most pronounced among conservative young men, according to the Young Men’s Research Initiative, having children seems to be an important part of how most men see success in their future.

There’s been extensive reporting on Gen Z men and masculinity and on pronatalist movements and declining birthrates. As Gen Z women who research our peers, we unpack where the Gen Z parenthood divide is coming from and how we think it could be bridged.

Spoiler: if having children meant carrying the responsibilities of our dads, we think we’d be on board, too.

Motherhood doesn’t feel ‘cool’ anymore

The “motherhood penalty” remains stubbornly present: in nearly every country, women’s employment fails to return to pre-birth levels within a decade of having children, while men get an employment boost in their first year of fatherhood.

Then there’s everything that follows: the physical risks of pregnancy (especially for Black women) and the mental load and worry labour that fall disproportionately to mothers.

Meanwhile, the opportunity cost of mothering has increased: sure, the cost of child care significantly outpacing inflation has made having kids more expensive, but so has the value of what’s being given up with motherhood.

The trade-off between our earning potential and providing care labour has become more deeply imbalanced. We’ve broken the village model of care – nearby grandparents to provide child care, and children who one day return the favour – and now we buy it back through apps and care homes.

Motherhood seems antithetical to what we’ve learned about bodily autonomy, particularly at a moment when abortion care is being rolled back and women’s rights are retreating worldwide. Encounters with bodily violation have become normalised, from getting IUDs inserted without adequate pain management to the one in three of us globally who have been assaulted.

Against that backdrop, the thought of becoming pregnant in a world that continues to deprioritise women’s health feels like accepting the oldest lie: women are only as essential as their wombs, and inferior, while men control the creation of life.

With renewed examinations of “my body, my choice,” women are asking real questions about what it really means for them to carry a pregnancy and sign up for a lifetime of parenthood.

Despite the progress by millennial fathers, who are participating more actively in their children’s lives than men in previous........

© HuffPost