ANSWERS: 36
  • Women feel compelled to have children because it is adaptive to do so. Individuals that are not repruductively successful do not contribute genetic information to the next generation, thus their maladaptive behaviors are removed from the gene pool. If a woman fails to produce children it is possible that her behavior may change unexpectedly prior to menopause in order to remedy this. All of the organisms on earth today are the result of the selective pressures that influence reproductive success. Those individuals that express behaviors which enable them to produce more viable offspring are more well represented in future generations. As the selective pressures change, so does the operational definition of which behaviors are adaptive. One point to consider is that behaviors that improve reproduction are almost always favored by existing selective pressures. The point here is that it is adaptive and entirely normal for a woman to feel compelled to have children. We are all the descendants of those who were reproductively successful in the past. Genes that influence behavior to be reproductively successful are what we inherit from our parents and pass on to our children. If you have not reproduced you are effectively genetically dead. If a person becomes permanently unable to reproduce and they have no offspring then they are in fact genetically dead. If you have children you are genetically alive as long as your genes survive, even after you are biologically dead. Women have a limited window in which to produce offspring. So if they have not had children by 30 or so they may begin to experience more intense desires to do so. This can often be expressed in erotic dreams or attraction to alternate males. If they are in a sexual relationship that has been exclusive and ongoing for a number of years they are much more likely to cheat, end the relationship, or both. All in an effort by the instinct driven centers in the brain to ensure that reproduction occurs. It is important to remember that the conscious mind will find a way to logically justify or explain the behavior, (This has been demonstrated experimentally), even though in these instances the conscious mind has very little control, because it wells up as emotion. Remember the expression,'You can't help how you feel?". Usually when inputs to the conscious mind from the deeper regions of the the brain are noticed by the conscious mind it is a emotion or a 'feeling'. A woman's biological clock often begins to tick louder as she approaches menopause, especially if she is childless. Her behavior may change in order to achieve reproductive success.
  • Not all women do.
  • I find this question interesting because although I have met a number of women who really want children, and a number that definetly don't, I have never yet met a man who said that he didn't want children. Many are eager to reproduce themselves (I've actually split with boyfriends in the past over the fact that they wanted kids and I didn't) I've known a few who've said they aren't sure, but none that said he didn't. Women ove rthe age of about 21, however, tend to know whether or not they have an inclination to reproduce. I think your answer is that women as a group don't actually feel any more compelled to have children than men, but they do tend to make a much bigger deal about it when they do (and when they don't) and tend to make a decision about it at a much earlier age). The thing is, for various biological and social reasons, a man can afford not to know whether he wants kids. Biologically speaking: A woman's fertility drops significantly after age 35. Some women, if they haven't had children by this age, even with advances in IVF, will never have a chance to have kids of their own. Harsh but true. A man's fertility, although it does decline with age, isn't so much of an issue- a man can reasonably expect to be able to father children into his 40's, 50's or even 60's- and looking around you'll see there's no shortage of fertile women in their 20's and early 30's pairing up with men ten or twenty years older. Also, a man can father children and be a good Dad without it having any real effect on his career or promotion prospects. A woman has important choices to make when it comes to her career if she wants kids- does she give up work indefinetly? Does she go back to work once they start school? Does she go part time? Does she use a nanny or nursery, and if so is that mora; and how will she pay for it?. If a woman takes a career break to have and raise children, as laudable as that may be she will have adversly affected her future earning potential and prospects of advancement in the company. Whichever way you look at it, having children and raising them often involves sacrificing one ambition in favour of another (as does choosing not to have them, for that matter). The result is, that women who want children have to plan it. They need to know they want them, they need to accept the sacrifices, they need to work out how they're going to manage the whole process, and they really need to kick the plan into action as soon as possible before its too late. A woman just can't afford to let time slipstream away thinking "well, maybe one day.." in the same way as a man can. So I would argue that women actually don't feel anymore compelled to have kids than men- its just that wanting them is a much bigger deal for a woman, so we get to hear about it more. Personally if you gave me the choice between motherhood and prostitution I'd be screwing in the red lightbulb before you could say "bedtime story".
  • I don't feel compelled to have a baby at all. The one time I THOUGHT I was pregnant I was hysterically crying,throwing sh*t,praying to god and making deals with him for it to not be so..I actually want to get sterilized but the doctors won't let me yet because I am too young and don't have any biological children. but as for women in general I think it's the need to have something that is supposed to love you unconditionally. Some women have babies for the attention. baby showers etc. Some have babies to trap men this was the case with my husband's ex she didn't want the kids really..she just wanted a meal ticket which is why she left when they were both babies she couldn't handle the responsibility. She has another one now and I am sure she will leave it too when it get's too rough for her. women have different reasons to have babies Some good,some bad
  • Because men can't? I don't know...I never felt compelled to have children, (although I have two but the father of the kids wanted them more than I actually did when we first found out about my pregnancies - that view has reversed over the years, but that's another topic) and 50% of my female friends do not ever want children. So...I guess I am not really answering your question. Ummm, maybe the women you know feel compelled to have children because they are lonely? Or they feel that their time is running out? Or because they want to solidfy the bond between you and them?
  • For me , when I was a teenager, I wanted one, just so that I could have someone to love, that loved me back, immature thinking. I did wait, and then my thoughts completely changed, then I wanted children, because, I love children. Part of me, wanted to prove, I could do a better job, than my mother.
  • Cause they have the gift box.
  • I don't feel like I have to, or that I NEED to. I myself just wanted to. When I was young it was the thought of someone loving me no matter what, because I never had that before, then I grew up and realized that even your kids make you feel like they don't love you sometimes. I have two little ones now and for me I just knew that I wanted kids and wanted this role in life. I love my children and would never do anything to change the past where they wouldn't be here. But I am only one type of woman, the other doesn't want any at all. Some for superficial reasons, some who think they lack the good mommy gene, some who lack the responsibility to care for someone else and others just would rather get hit by a bus then have a baby. There is not right or wrong answer, we do not live in the society anymore that sees us just as reproductive beings, women have evolved into so much more. I don't care which group women fall into, as long as they are happy what does it matter?
  • I'm a guy, but I believe that the reason why is the same with why guys want children. They want to feel the joy of raising a child. They want to take a bigger step in the relationship. A child is something speacil, something that only two people have.
  • I have been single for 2 years. I'm 38, and its hard to find a woman who does not want children, let alone does not have any around my age group. I absolutely want noooo kids. I don't want to date a woman with kids. So this is the sacrafice-single.
  • I had a lousy childhood. DIdn't want kids. Neither did my siblings. But (independent of each other) we decided that it was the thing to do. Once we had made that judgement, it was all I could think of. It was the focus of my life and for two devastating months I didn't concieve. My sister went through the same thing. So did my sis-in-law. It seems that it isn't really unusual for women to decide that they don't want to have children. But if a woman does decide that she does, the drive to have a baby can be overwhelming to the point of being unrealistic. It has to be something in the genes because I have never obsessed over anything else in my life like I did that.
  • Women give birth I am sure it is natural for them to have this drive. It is a good thing too...the majority of us are here on the earth because our mothers had this drive. It makes sense that women would feel this way. If it were not so I believe most of us wouldn't be here. If you have seen a woman give birth or you are a woman who has, then I really have nothing more that I need to say. It is not the most comfortable thing to do.
  • I know it is not true of all women but I think it is true for most PEOPLE, men included. TO many, it's what makes a family, a very special way to show love for a spouse and to have that love grow into another person, almost keeping that love immortal. I never felt that. I was happy just being a family of two with my husband. But I understand the need of many other couples to share their love with children, their own, or children they've chosen.
  • Well I am a 35 yr old woman who would love to have kids now but in the past I met men who did not want kids. Since 18yrs old I only dated three guys and not one of them ever wanted kids. So I hate when people ask me dumb questions, as to why I do not have kids. All three men strung me along and refused to have kids in the end but lied in the beginning and said they did want kids. I was with each one for up to four years. Then when you get 35 single and childless people all of sudden want to know why are you attractive , successful, and childless. Its crazy.
  • Because society pressures them. In a lot of countries a woman is seen as worthless without them. But you look at some of the greatest female artists: Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Georgia O'Keefe, Marie Cassatt and George Eliot and none of them had children. They were certainly not worthless!
  • Not sure that applies to all....
  • Because women want the experience of creating a life that came from her and the man she loves, to see her image and her man's merged in a brand new, thinking, feeling human. Women's success is still measured by her personal life accomplishments such as marriage and children; having a child is the ultimate badge of womanhood. Women want to experience the mushy moments when they are the center of attention such as at their baby shower and they want to know what it's like to have their man coddle them with adoration over the fact that they are carrying his child. Men don't get to experience a human being growing inside of them and they also aren't as mushy as women. Women love all things cute, cuddly, romantic and soft. We want to give and receive love all the time! Men are just happy being on their own and getting laid from time to time.
  • Lots of women I know hate kids.
  • Because society pressures them to breed. Many women are obsessed with having children anyway because they think they're "cute" and a "blessing". They want to breed to keep the human race going. I could careless if the world population decrease. We're already suffering from overpopulation. I actually hate women who want children, but I love women who never do. Having kids is a crime.
  • I am so tiered of people asking this question and treating women like they have the plague if heaven forbid they should want kids. Look around more and more women are choosing to not have children, and hand in hand with that figure women seeking help with infertility has gone up. IF the choice is to not have children that is fine with me. But don't whine about it after it is too late. They should allow women who do not want kids to be sterilized! If they are going to make that decision it should be a solid one. If you can not tell yes I have kids so go ahead and start hating! I did not want to become a mother to carry on the gene pool, trap a man, or be loved unconditionally. I also did not choose this path to "Do a better job" then my mother. In this day and age things are happening that make it even harder to provide a solid life for your child. More then likely their life will be a struggle just like anyone else's life is. I was on birth control and still conceived all three of my children. The Dr. said I just happened to be that 1%. So my job now is to PROVIDE the unconditional love. My kids are hear and they are going to need someone who wants them, cares, and is willing to sacrifice their money, looks and yes sometimes sanity to do so. I have friends who have chosen to not have kids. I don't judge them, and they do not judge me. Neither side can say that their decision is self less. As for the common things I have seen posted the top three are loosing looks, money, and overpopulation. So does that make me any more selfish or immature then those people? This is something that was handed to me and I accepted it. I would not have changed a thing. Just remember folks you could have been swallowed! From what it sounds like to me Axeman should have been.
  • idk, im not even close to the age where i should be thinking about having kids but i already do, they are so adorable :)
  • They are built for that!
  • to make their relationship stable
  • I don't believe all of them do. I think those that feel the desire to give birth feel that way because it's natural for them. But I've known some women who felt they had to have children because they were pressured by their parents or husband or just the fact that if they didn't, as they aged that was a constant question "why didn't they have children", and from the women I know that chose not to have children, they tell me it makes them feel funny to tell people they didn't want them or that they like children as long as they aren't theirs or that they just didn't like them. They feel it makes people think they are cold-hearted if that's their choice! I personally think the women that don't have them because they don't want them are smart not to.
  • It's programmed in their dna and sometimes they are driven more by their insecurity.
  • Not all women feel compelled to have children. Personally I have never had the desire to have children. I wouldn't want to bring a child into this world right now, and the thought of being a parent just isn't appealing to me. I'm pretty sure there are many women out there who feel the same way as well.
  • I wish I had a solid answer for you. For me, it was a drive, straight up. Plain and simple. Plus, I waited until later in life to have them. I was 34. Since I had no prospects of marriage in the near future, I had a baby with a man I had been dating for 4 years. Had I known that I was going to marry at 36, I might have waited, but I doubt it.
  • Basic reproductive instinct. (On its most basic level, that is.)
  • I think most of us that want a baby are pretty nurturing in nature. I don't believe everyone is cut out to be a mom and they shouldn't if they don't have the real desire. People have them for the wrong reasons sometimes. I knew this girl who thought she could keep her man. So she got pg on purpose. We all know that doesn't work. Sounds weired but sort of like dogs, some make way better mothers. My neighbor had a dog that came under my house with her pups and then abandoned them. He got her fixed. But she didn't want to mother them. I think it's great that women are choosing career first and thinking about babies second or not having them at all. It's not for everyone.
  • Mostly younger women at the age of 18 feel that they need to have kids at a very young age and their dream Is to get married as soon as possible.
  • Because they are designed (that's right, I said it!) to give birth but also care for them. Ever notice that even little girls like babies? They like to feed them, dress them, etc. It's just nature doing what it does.
  • plain and simply mother nature
  • Not all do. When I was 20 I was a legal secretary. The other legal secretary in the department was 30, and had been happily married for 10 years. She and her husband had decided on no kids prior to their marriage. She told me that she had to see SEVEN different doctors before finding one that would agree to tie her tubes, after she underwent "counseling". She told me that she didn't want kids, but that she did want a nice Corvette. I met her when she was 30, and she had that nice Corvette, and didn't seem to regret it at all. So, not all women feel compelled to have kids, you just have to search harder for them. In the meantime, if you don't want them, consider a vasectomy. I witnessed my ex getting his, and at least from my seat, it wasn't too horrible.
  • i personally dont like kids. i never have and just the thought of ever having one...ahhhhh!never! i have a uterus and plan on never using it. plus i hate being a woman. the thought that men will never experience childbirth is unfair to us women. if my man was to experience the pain then only then MAYBE but not really will i have a child. who am i kidding i hate kids and men. and for those who think i am afraid of pain, i am not. i just think its unfair.
  • In response to "science_geek has left the building"; It is also highly documented that non reproductively superior behaviours occur time and time again. The non reproduction seeking female , the homosexual. How is this behaviour passed on genetically according to your simplified genetics based behavioural theory ? You claim sexual behaviour is passed on genetically yet how dose this account for the many female posters here with no desire to have children ? How did these so called non reproducing genes from genetically dead ancestors get passed along time and time again and to these people ? The simple answer may be that human behaviour has social, cultural and environmental as well as individualistic influences in additional to influence of base biological imperatives and that even those are not so cut and dry or influential as you claim. Yes it is true people tend to justify intuitive emotional responses with logic however intuitive intelligence is still thinking , faster in some cases and more efficient, holistic for certain regarding the tasks to which it is best suited. The leap in causality from an intuitive emotional intelligent response and behaviour to a foundation on biological genetic instruction is pure conjecture. Oft intuitive intelligence is mistaken for instinct which is but one of the contributing factors in this complex informational behavioural processing. I really can't stand all that biological , evolution , we are the vessels for our genes under the delusion of free will talk. I agree we are all endowed with sex drives but birth control has allowed us to cheat, and social codes of reproductive practice have played a big role in recent history. What does evolution say of overpopulation ? Sub atomic structures form up to molecular Chemistry, Chemistry organizes to form Biology, Biology organizes up in the case of humans to form social entities.... why what point has it all ? Evolution is a phenomenon of the natural universe and it can even be applied to electronics design. It's informational organization without conciousness. I really get bothered when people try to find meaning in evolution. It's a how, a process, not a why. Even though I am not religious and I think that religions have oft attempted to shape peoples free will only science (or a lay persons popular, lazy, interpretation of such) as of late has the arrogance to flat out deny that humans free will exists. We actually can control what we feel. We often don't especially if we are under the impression that it is not possible and don't learn how. The subjective perceptions on which we base our behavioural decisions our attitudes, are changeable as our brains are plastic , both informing our thought patterns by physical structure yet able to be altered in structure by our own thought patterns. This two way causality is still perplexing and most neuro-scientists ignore psychology as a pseudo-science even as they measure the brain structure changes occuring as behaviour is modified. They see only physical causes and abstract mental effects even though this is a two way street. Being convinced you have to follow fickle , emotions of unknown origin rather than realizing your state of mind has a big impact on your emotions and that they are tools for learning behaviour is very dis empowering. Simply taking anything you feel , or are compelled to do as genetic orders from wise old (slow and fatal to 98% of all organisms that have ever walked the earth without abstract reasoning ability ) evolution you give up that control over your own destiny. Am I glad to think I no longer need attempt to control about my behaviour as my genes are in charge and I their slave and any notion that I really choose my actions is just delusion ? No. Is it just a shame through some twist of evolution designed for mating and finding food in trees that I ended up with this annoying abstract thought ability and an IQ of 180. Only if I think it is so. Of course given that our logic seems but an extension of the tendency (unlike the naturally increasing entropy of the universe) of all things leading up to intelligent life to organise ever more complex structures I wonder if there is not a place of mastery for logic after all. That these organizations are in the abstract realms of say language, mathematics , the social sciences instead of physical molecular protein strands is of little consequence. Why did evolution split the atom anyway ? To help men kill for mating and food resources ? It's not very likely that global nuclear war is conducive to human survival perhaps we do need to think after all. Why because evolution is mindless, slow and only we will have descendants who show it's ultimate usefulness however primitive they will regard us and how ever inconceivable their nature may be to current homo sapiens. This evolution will be cultural , and technological , digital , abstract and far beyond it's crude ancestor; base biological evolution. It will be a tool of intelligence this process of evolution just as chemical reactions and biological reagents are now our refined tools not just "wild" phenomenon. Remember though that crude biological process must never become social, moral foundation. The Nazis came about on this platform of ignorance and eugenics borrowing from the pseudo science based philosophies of that erroneous fool Frederick Nitze. Given our unique logical gifts and rapid social technological , informational and communications based leaps in development our biological evolution is relativity stagnant. Man 2,000 or 10,000 years ago while hardly that different in biological capability could not walk on the moon or split the atom. Yet in a in 100 years we leap forward beyond the the sum progress of 10,000 years of mankind, and in 50 we leap forward again always to be an ever increasing the factor and with grater acceleration in building on the cultural past. Evolution and our genes will serve us , not the other way around. Believing we serve our genes mindlessly is regression not forward evolutionary movement. If all this babbling on science seems out of place, or over kill regarding a behavioural social question it's because it is. This only goes to show the absurdity of every lay person (and even some actual scientists) now days to tout a watered down contextually misplaced description of evolutionary phenomenon or Darwin the theory of evolution and the origins of species (over 150 years after it was published) as the be all end all answer to the motivations and purpose of the human experience. Darwin's scientific discovery is but the unifying "theory" of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life. Not the meaning , purpose of life, human behaviour and endeavour nor is it proof free will is a delusion and what ever anyone thinks they feel like doing is best and natural. Remember when using science to preach that we are but overly complex, deluded, instinctual machines of reproduction that should we subjugate will , mind , social , moral and logical process for genetic instinct that on we will be effectively burning along with arduously refined social codes, man's last several hundred years of cultural progress and atop that bond fire will sit squarely this thing we call Science.
  • Well we don't have to feel compelled 'cause it happens naturally anyway.

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