Why Your 20-Something Boyfriend Wants A Baby
Five reasons men in their 20's may want children as much as women.
It's a common stereotype that guys in their 20's are just interested in sowing their wild oats: drinking cheap beer, hanging out with their bros and having massive amounts of random sex. Not so true. A recent study by the Guttmacher Institute revealed that 53 percent of men in the 18-29 range (as opposed to 52 percent of women) would like to have children if circumstances allowed. Among men 25 and older, the number jumps to two thirds.
Scary fact: The study showed that a surprising number of young men didn't know much about contraception and conception.
Interesting fact: The male participants were as willing as females to answer the survey questions and spent more time on them than their lady counterparts did. Is this a trend? Are young men interested in parenthood? Actually, yes, and the reasons men want to be parents aren't so different from the reasons women want to grow little ones. Here are five.
1. Men have biological clocks too, y'alls.
Men have hormones and a biological drive to procreate, just like women. As U.S. New & World Report covered earlier this year, young men are more likely to have healthy babies. Plus younger dads are more physically equipped to handle wee ones and to provide for their long-term care. Why Do Men Get Married?
2. They want to settle down.
Being a wild and crazy twentysomething may be fun, but the uncertainty of singledom can be exhausting and anxiety-producing. Some people, mistakenly or not, feel like having a baby will set their priorities straight and create a grounding force in their lives. 9 Signs You Should Make Him Engagement Chicken
3. They want to be real men.
In America, the accepted course of life is this: you are born, you grow up, you get married, you have a baby. There's nothing wrong with deviating from that path, but the recognition and benefits that society and the government give parents turns starting a family into the holy grail of adulthood. Have a kid, become a man, our culture seems to say. The New Way To Have It All: First Baby, Then Love
Well, the average age of marriage is in the late 20s, so I guess it's not too surprising that people in their late 20s might want kids.
The thing is that they said "circumstances permitting." I wonder how many people believe that they need to finish school or earn more money before they have a kid. So they can say they would if they could, but they really wouldn't.
