This means that, as we get older, being able to screw pretty young things becomes less important in the larger scheme of things. Other activities like outdoor sports, travel, and visiting friends, tend to become more attractive. This is because, if you excercise and take care of yourself, you can maintain much of your strength and fitness well into old age, even as your physical attractiveness declines. Hense, activities not requiring physical attractiveness become more appealling as we get older.

One of the problems that women around 35 years old or so will have in trying to find a suitable mate is that many of the men the same age are simply not interested in having kids. It may be the case of “been there, done that” or simply that with the waning sex drive, such men are more interested in other activities than “scoring” or having kids. This is one problem that our friend Megan is likely to encounter.

Fred Reed as much to say about this from the perspective of an expatriate. Having lived as an expat for 10 years, I relate to much of what Fred has to say.

Megan is definitely to be commended for being up front and honest in expressing her desire for having kids early on in the dating process. Such candidness saves both her as well as her prospective date time and money and is, therefor, to be respected.

I’m a pretty generic liberal, and so I have a “golden rule” approach to just about everything. I think it’s okay to not want to have kids cause you don’t like the little buggers, as long as you’re not whacking at kids with your cane like Scrooge. People who have kids shouldn’t take it as a personal affront from those who don’t want them, and they shouldn’t be condescending about the person who doesn’t want them not “knowing what they’re missing” or something like that. I also think it’s okay to want kids and have pretty high standards for who you want to have them with, and though people should also recognize that those aspirations can make it hard or impossible to actually meet someone, if they’re willing to hold out for it, well more power to them. People shouldn’t take personal offense if they don’t meet this high-achiever’s definition of the perfect mommy and daddy, or if this person lays out near the beginning of the social interaction (say over the first glass of punch at a party) that they’re really looking for an appropriate co-parent and not just nights on the town or a roll in the hay. I also think it’s okay for single people to have kids because although I think a mom and a dad is maybe best, two dads, or two moms, or one mom or one dad, is a hell of a lot better than a white trash mom and dad who wouldn’t know what to do with a kid if it came out with instructions from God tattooed on it’s back. Nobody should be judgmental about that.

About the only thing that matters more than anything is that people who have kids should realize that once you have the kids, it’s not about you anymore. You may have been commanded by God to have children, coerced into it by a raging biological clock, careless about contraception, or ready and willing, but whatever your attitude is about it, that all has to go away once that little bugger comes out into the world. There are no refunds, so to speak, whatever impulse it is that might have prompted you to have a child.

This is my response, too. I know so many single people, men and women, who claim to want partners and children badly, yet make very little effort to date from reasons ranging from fear of rejection to not wanting to miss their favorite TV shows!

http://www.sens.org

Hello! If the girls weren’t in to you when you were younger and hotter, what makes you think your softer belly and balder pate has made you a great catch to the next class of college grads? If you think having a little more money will help then I have news for you, my pumpkins. Unless it’s the kind of mega-money that has bimbos leaving you love messages day and night (in which case how DO you find time lounge around so much on the internets, naughty boy?) don’t expect that to offer you an edge! No, no, no – more money is the price of entry – what you will HAVE to have in order to still compete poorly against the looks, energy, and fitness of the younger guys. The “secret” is out: aging isn’t just for women anymore. After all, when is the last time you saw attractive young women at the peak of their game helplessly drawn to the sad old guy hanging out late at the club?

Seriously, people want to date and mate people their own age. You may be sure that you’ve discovered the magic formula “I’ll just marry someone younger!” But, by Jove, it turns out that idea has been tried before. And if it were a formula for success then we would expect to see many such pairings in the general population. But, we don’t. Instead, the vast majority of couples are very close in age.

Perhaps it is more related to resource acquisition than fertility, but it turns out that girls prefer youth and energy in their mates, too.

Sorry boys, but what happens when you prolong your adolescence indefinitely, is that when you finally get around to popping the question? You’re the one whose going to be shelling out mega-bucks for your wife’s fertility treatments.

The mentality exhibited shows no self confidence, no physical strength and assuredness, no manly virtue of protecting, defending or providing. All I read is take-take-take… Selfish grabbing

When you boys are ready to assume your place in the world of men… you will be ashamed of what you have written here. Your children will be ashamed and wonder WHO-T-F you really are…

Maybe we should blame the women for rewarding such childish behavior? That would follow the Blame-The-Women meme…

Check out the following:

http://www.annalsnyas.org/cgi/content/abstract/1100/1/409

http://www.sens.org

How you think these developments will affect peoples’ decision to have or not have kids?

Ascribing one to one sex and one to the other is inaccurate, but we can abstract away from that and not lose much of anything meaningful.

(A hypothesis: if we assume that there is some gender difference in aggregate due to a combination of socialization and biology, and model the dating/marriage scene as a hedonic market with high transaction costs, then the sexes’ differences in preferences will be significantly higher among middle-aged singles than among middle-aged marrieds, and they’ll also be more frustrated.

This might explain a bunch of the disparities in anecdotal evidence.

It’s also probably distorted by religiosity levels – which are self-seeking in the aforementioned dating market; and encourage early marriage and natalism and traditional gender roles, all of which are important in the model – and the strong anecdotal evidence that couples grow more alike the more time they spend together.)

I have been a bit confused about this analogy people have been making about men wanting sex. To me it seems apt, and I don’t understand BitchPhd’s response to Ken. I think it has to do with a part of feminism’s attitude towards ‘nice guys’. You can read a lot about it at Pandagon. Basically, those women are convinced that there is a large portion of men who believe they are entitled to sex- those are ‘nice guys’. This may be true, but I think they underestimate the extent to which there are respectful, nice guys in their early 20s who are just awkward and nervous around women, but I think its a perspective that might drive BitchPhd’s response. Is that right, BitchPhd? (if you’re still listening…)

Anyhow, I think the important distinction is not the legitimacy of your desire (kids or sex), but the degree to which you respect the agency of the person you need to fulfill that desire.

Really? Ah, ok, sorry.

I didn’t mean that you were gloating, so I should have distinguished that the source was elsewhere. But I have sensed that theme in the responses to this.

Gotta run.