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The Generalized Demise Of Fatherhood
Let me take a couple of angles here.
The Perception From Women
As someone that inexperiences infertility who is with a woman who wants a slate of biological kids, and who has friends for whom pregnancy is semi-easy, I can tell you this is something I think about a lot, i.e. “What is the role of a man in a relationship?” Now, we can pie-in-the-sky the male role as “provider” or “partner” or “helper” or whatever. I think all those are true, but I also think there’s a baseline whereby if kids are wanted and the guy is part of not delivering those kids, everything else behind that eight-ball kinda fades in its own right. You can still have a cool life without biological kids, and I’d never argue that. But, I think it is a “baseline” for some. Obviously, baselines change.
All that said, there is much research/survey work in the past 5–10 years about how men don’t pull their weight so much as partners and dads. Here are two offerings on that:
