Why do more men than women think children equal fulfillment?
Men want sex but women want children. That might sound a bit retro-hetero-normative, but it's been considered axiomatic for millennia. The data from the Australia Talks National Survey 2021 takes these notions and throws them into the skip bin of history along with hats and gloves and pipe tobacco. The statement put to survey respondents was whether "having children is necessary in order to find fulfillment in life"  respondents were asked to agree or disagree. Seventy-four per cent of women disagreed with that statement  three quarters. Forty-eight per cent of men disagreed  one half. That's quite a gap. I read that as suggesting more men now see the role children can play in having a fulfilling life. That's not what many a previous generation was told. And it's not what I felt myself. 'I can't wait to be a dad'  As a young man in my 20s, I had no interest in having children. I had all of the selfish reasons: I want to do what I want, I've got my own thing happening, the last thing I want to be is a parent, I'm way cooler than that. But I would also feel  should I have a more reflective and deeper moment  nothing at all. And I was intrigued by that; there was no deeper drive there. And what deepened my puzzlement was that other men were not like me. The other blokes in my life, in the rare moments between discussing guitar amps, cricket scores and sex, would often say something along the lines of: "Oh sure, I'm having a great time now, but I really want to have a couple of kids. I can't wait to be a dad." I was always struck by this, because I didn't have it. And it wasn't that I was opposed to having children, I was indifferent. Neutral. I could have children or I could not have children, and my emotional response was the same. Ask 30-year-old me the fulfillment question and I would have answered with the women: no, it's not necessary. Women see 'reality', men see the 'rosy glow of fatherhood'  I have the handy outlet of a daily talkback radio show in which to dig a little deeper into these questions. When I put it to the listeners, a text arrived immediately suggesting that perhaps the result of this survey meant that men had misread the question. A theme soon emerged. Margot said that if you ask a woman this question, she is immediately more aware of the reality of childbirth and child rearing. She knows the pain and potential danger of birth, she sees more clearly the grind of nappies and mashing vegetables. Men see the rosy glow of fatherhood, the tousling of a youngster's hair, the dad jokes, the frisbee throwing, the pride of establishing a family. Kate added that even though she knows all about the stereotypes, it's still the case that most women will be saddled with the day-long task of looking after the children, which can put a big dent in the fender of fulfillment, while dad comes home from the workplace to the scrubbed children in their jim jams happy for the diversion of his presence so he can bask in their adoration. There were several calls telling us that they felt the young men they knew were keen to get going with family life. "I'm 26, and in my friendship group all those in a relationship longer than two years it's the guy who wants to get married and start having children and it's the woman who wants to wait," one person wrote. This texter wondered if the trend was a reflection of an attitude bred into men that life is about getting job, getting married and raising a family. Brett agreed, saying he'd always wanted to have kids and when he was at boarding school, his peers all saw nothing else except that they would get married and have children  that's what life was going to be. There's cultural expectation as well. Edgar, who grew up in a Latvian community in the suburbs, said it was still very much expected that you would grow up, work hard and raise a family. It was considered failure if you didn't. Trish said that as a young woman she absorbed feminist views and never wanted to be defined by whether or not she'd had children. She wanted to make choices about how she lived her life and sought fulfillment. It's not that she didn't want to have children or didn't see herself as a mother, but that wasn't the only path to fulfillment. A lot of responses reflected that  female callers said they'd answer that question as feminists. Men, they suggested, were still back with old-fashioned views of gender roles and family structures. Men were more likely than women to say children were key to fulfillment. ( Unsplash: Picsea  A text correspondent wrote: "I'm a 30-year-old gay man. I have wanted children for as long as I can remember. "I help friends out with their kids all the time and the only time I feel fulfilled is when I get to have time with them and really be a guardian to them. "I strongly believe that we have an innate part in many of us that needs to raise children." The opposite of this view would be Luke, who said: "I never wanted to have kids. I thought it was something guys got tricked into." There was also a lot of critique of the question itself. How do we define fulfillment, how do we know what anyone was really saying when they answered yes or no to it, and that maybe I was drawing a long bow to suggest that this question indicated a strong desire on the part of many men to have children. Of course there's as many nuanced reactions to this statement and to the notions of fulfillment as there people reading the statement. My state of mind is reflective of who I am; I'm not someone who projects much into the future. I had two children and loved it  they are now in the their 20s and I realise that I don't have any strong feeling about having grandchildren either. They'll probably come along and I'll probably love them a lot. But it turns out, that's just me. Perhaps the truth is revealed by the comment of Lyn's four-year-old son. He said that he wants to be a dad when he grows up because it looks like less work. The Australia Talks National Survey asked 60,000 Australians about their lives and what keeps them up at night. Use our interactive tool to see the results and how your answers compare. Then, tune in at 8:00pm on Monday, June 21 to watch hosts Annabel Crabb and Nazeem Hussain take you through the key findings and explore the survey with some of Australia's best-loved celebrities.