Men Want Kids Like Toddlers Want Puppies" — Is This True?

Added: 2026-06-02

[00:00:00]I'm on team. Let the birth rate plummet to hell. I am a mother, but because I am a mother, I see firsthand how women and children are treated. So, I am glad that women have the right to choose. So, I want to start off with this post. I'm sorry, this picture where this woman is carrying the sign, defend women's right to choose. I absolutely believe in choice. I'm about to talk about this BuzzFeed article. They were compiling women's thoughts on having children or to not have children. So, this says this woman asked why so many men want kids while women don't. And the top responses are honestly hard to argue with. Men want kids the way a toddler wants a puppy. It used to be a running joke that men were afraid of commitment. The wife was the ball and chain and kids were something women had to pressure them into. But lately, an increasing number of women say the script has flipped entirely. Now they're the ones opting out of parenthood, while men are the ones pushing for marriage and babies.

[00:01:04]As a woman myself, I remember when I was a kid or a teenager, everyone said that marriage and kids were a ball and chain to a man. Never tell a man you want kids or he'd run away. Crystallized Koi wrote in the child-free subreddit. So, they're pulling all of these responses and comments from this child-free subreddit post. She says, "Now, it seems like women are largely the ones who don't want children, and men are determined to find a wife who wants their babies. They want a traditional marriage and a nuclear family. Meanwhile, I see a lot of women who feel like men lie to them about not wanting kids and inevitably switch up on them, thinking they will change their minds, being called selfish or being told they're not following God's word. The fact that religiosity is falling is the reason why they're not following God's word. The that's the reason why that is not going to have any kind of impact. Okay? it could have some impact for the women that are still in the church. It says, "This post racked up nearly 800 up votes and 178 comments before it was locked. However, the responses painted a pretty consistent picture. People shared their theories, personal stories, conversations with their grandmothers, and more. Here's what they had to say. The initial statement itself is worth questioning to begin with. Did women in general want kids? Or was there even just a few decades ago often more pressure, less information, and fewer resources for people to make their own informed choices for their lives and bodies? The same question is still often relevant today. Do people want kids or do they want everything they've been taught that having kids will get them? With more available information and resources, more people are able to realize the fault in that logic and step away from it. And in the age of social media, it's also easier than ever for them to talk publicly about it, even if it's still seen as taboo. Similarly, did men in general used to not want kids or were they just able to more conveniently reject the responsibility while still getting the supposed benefits of having a child? Because they could offload that responsibility on the woman who more outwardly wanted it. If you look under the hood, you'll see that even in the past, many women didn't actually want kids, just like many don't today. But their options for realizing that and following through with it were worse than today. For those men who view kids as a status symbol, it's a problem if now they need to proactively express wanting a kid and find a woman who will want to have kids with them because they prefer a world where all women want kids and they can um get the outcome they want without actually lifting a finger for it. It shifted from something they didn't need to want because it was guaranteed to happen inevitably to something that's no longer a certainty.

[00:04:07]So, the ones just there to milk the benefits are now panicking at the prospect of losing them. It's often said that men want kids like kids want a puppy. Until recently, men didn't have to want kids. It was just sort of assumed that a woman they were romantically involved with would want them first and pressure them into it at some point. Then slowly fewer women started pressuring fewer men and something they just assumed would eventually happen was no longer inevitable. And suddenly men looked around and realized they were in their 30s and 40s and no one was pressuring them into it anymore. and low men realized they actually did want kids, but only after a s sufficient number of women have finally realized what a raw deal it was. That was user eggs and milk toast. Three men want kids the way a toddler wants a puppy. The puppy thing was my partner when we first started dating. He said he wanted kids, but he had never even been around a baby for more than a day. I've told him a few stories about living with my nephew from ages 0 to 4, and he quickly changed his mind. That's user figure 8888.

[00:05:23]Number four, I believe most men have always wanted babies as a status symbol and legacy. They used to be able to get away from responsibility while still being the hero by pre pretending it was their wife's idea, and they reluctantly agreed to make her happy. example, but you're changing the diapers since I didn't want it in the first place. Now that many women don't want kids, they have to convince us to. So, they had to give up that passive role. Different context, new strategy, same goal. And this is absolutely true. They're like, I want kids. I want kids. I want kids.

[00:06:00]Women finally capitulate. And then these dudes are like, they still don't want to do anything.

[00:06:08]And women see this. Single women see this. And this is the reason why, especially with social media, this is the reason why so many child-free women are staunchly child-free. Number five, it's 100% a legacy thing. I just spoke to my husband about this. A large majority of men feel their lives will be insignificant if they don't have kids, that no one will remember them or they will have no impact. Therefore, their lives were worthless. Why do they feel this way? I have no idea. It's a testosterone thing, a male ego thing, whatever. Women don't have this. I don't feel like my life has amounted to nothing because I don't have children.

[00:06:47]Or really, I don't care if my life has amounted to nothing. Men do. Must be an ego thing. My husband is thankfully intelligent enough to realize this is foolish and not let it override his sense of not wanting children, but he still feels it sometimes as well. And many men just give in to this base impulse that is rock girl. Number six, I sat down with my grandma, born in the 1930s, a few months before she died, and really ask her about life, her experience, her choices, her reflections. One of the questions I asked her was what she would do differently if she could do it all again. She said, "Have fewer kids. Five kids was way too many." My grandma felt like she had no choice in the matter.

[00:07:32]and if given full autonomy, wouldn't have chosen to have anywhere near that many kids. I also asked her what some of her favorite memories were. And did she mention anything about her husband or her kids? Absolutely not. She says singing the play Cats in New York was her all-time favorite memory. All of this is to say, women used to face societal pressures, obligations, and obstacles that restricted their ability to decide whether or not to have kids.

[00:08:02]Today, we have more choices. And we see that having kids is not an advantage, but rather a massive disadvantage to a happy life. Number seven, men feeling insignificant without kids feels like a natural symptom of how we tell the story of humanity and men's role in it. We are all taught some variation of great man history. Singular men who allegedly changed the course of history through their solitary efforts alone. In that context, what can slight what can the slightly above average man do to leave his mark on the world? The illogic goes, a great man changed the world. Most great men have children. Therefore, if I have children, I will also change the world. rinse and repeat for several generations until today's men are only left with real men have legacies, which means buildings with their names on them or children with their names on them. By contrast, there has never been that expectation or historical narrative for women. Historically, the most a woman could hope for was to marry well to a great man, bear his children, and wield his influence for her own limited purposes. being average or stellar had no real bearing on her perceived potential impact on the world. Early Chisum is the one that wrote that one.

[00:09:24]Number eight, I work in convolescent homes and talk with older women all the time about their lives, choices, wants, etc. And keep in mind, these women have been living in these nursing homes for years with no smartphones. So, they're not hearing all the opinions about being child-free that many women hear today.

[00:09:42]But every time I ask them what they would have done differently, done differently in life, so many of them say not have kids if they had the option to and not get married if they had the option to. Even back 70, 80, and 90 years ago, women still didn't have um didn't want to or regretted getting married and having kids. They just didn't have a choice if they wanted a stable life. That's mother trucker 97.

[00:10:10]Number nine, I'm a nurse and old ladies ask me all the time if I'm married and if I have kids. When I say no, I'm not and I don't, about 50% of the time they look me right in the eye and say, "Good for you." And that is user cats. Cats cats.

[00:10:28]Number 10. My grandma has been very open for as long as I can remember about the fact that if it had been an option for her, she never would have had kids. Her parents were not at all supportive of her education. She has to go to the private school her brother went to and was told, "Why would we pay for that?

[00:10:46]You're just going to get married and have babies." She didn't even know parents could come to a high school graduation until she got to hers and saw all her classmates parents there. She married my grandfather just to get out of her parents' house. And kids were part of the price she paid to get away from them. That is sad. 11. My grandmother, actually both of them, but the grandmother I see more often, has always maintained that I need to stay single and live my life for as long as I possibly can. She'll say it at random times, whether we're driving or just hanging out. She genuinely hates her life. And it's not because my grandfather was a bad guy. He absolutely adores her. But you can tell she didn't have a choice at all in how her life unfolded. Women really did not stand a chance in many cases. get married, have babies, and god forbid you didn't have a date on Saturday night during your young single years, you were viewed as something wrong. That is Scarlet Cello.

[00:11:48]Number 12. The old stereotype that I grew up with was that men were free spirits and women were always trying to make them settle down and be responsible. The wife was the old ball and chain. Bachelor parties were so the guy could celebrate the last days of his freedom and so on. Guys didn't want their friends to get married because the fun guy they knew would disappear and inevitably wouldn't be able to have a good time anymore because the wife won't let him. I think men generally like this because in a way it elevated them above women and gave them a reason to mock and look down on women as lesser beings who just ruined everything. They bonded over it. Haha. It's funny, right? So, so many old boomer jokes about how men really hate their their wives. I'm sorry. I said men actually hate their wives. It's not like that really changes things though. Then things changed and slowly women stopped pursuing marriage and kids. And the guys were left hanging like, "Hey, wait. Aren't you supposed to want to marry me and have my babies?

[00:12:50]What do you mean you don't want that life with me? What's the matter with you?"

[00:12:55]They want us back in that familiar role.

[00:12:58]The person who is under them, the subject of their mockery. That's what I think. That's user cats. Cats cats again. All right. Number 13. When I was growing up, a wife and kids were seen as a man's balling chain. The show Married with Children was popular at that time, and Al would always insult his wife and children like they were burdens in his life. Even when I was partying in the late 90s, you'd hear guys saying women were trying to baby trap them or that they were dating women who were too clingy even though she's just behaving normally in a relationship. I think the media definitely plays a role in the perception, but also people see how a certain mindset messed up their parents and they want to do the opposite.

[00:13:43]Children who grow up with a father who treats his family like a ball and chain may respond in different ways. Sons may feel driven to become his opposite, while daughters may become wary of relationships with men and more hesitant about having children. 15. Somehow the provider still expects women to do half of the providing. And women are like, "Nope, no thanks. You don't get to financially support us halfway while I do 100% of everything else. That's not the agreement." So now both sides are just more honest about what they want.

[00:14:18]That's tangled up. Puppeteer number 16.

[00:14:22]Women used to want kids because kids used to mean security. We couldn't work.

[00:14:26]We couldn't go to school. We couldn't have credit cards. We couldn't have bank accounts. We had to depend on men and men could just leave us or hurt us as they please. Having kids meant that there was more social pressure for them to stay and a slight deterrent to keep them from abusing us. that carried over to future generations of women who didn't necessarily need men, but they were essentially groomed into believing kids were needed and they were meant to be mothers. Absolutely. A lot of women actually wanted to have kids, but far fewer than those who just said they wanted kids. It's what women did and it's what women were meant to do. Now, fast forward to today. Women don't need men. We can have bank accounts, degrees, work, all of it. We're educated and have seen how our mothers were treated growing up. But now there's the expectation for women to work and also be mothers. Men, meanwhile, get to go to work, come home to a nice home, and do absolutely nothing to help out with the kids. We kind of realize there's no point in having kids anymore, consciously or subconsciously. And it dropped it and dropped it as a major life goal we need to meet. Now the tables have turned. Now babies mean security for men. Men have lost their ability to control women financially, politically, and physically. Now they're losing their control over women through children. Fatherhood was always historically easy for men. They were only expected to pay the bills. They got a bang made and their legacy out of it, but all they really had to do was bring home a check. And women were conditioned to take care of everything else. That's why men want kids so bad now because it's the only easy way to control women and women don't want them for that same reason on top of not wanting to be a single married parent. This name of this person, Big Titty Hmbo.

[00:16:21]Number 17. Now that child rearing costs are the woman's problem and don't eat up his whole provider check provider check, why wouldn't he want them? That's defiant lion. And I'll end with number 18. We became educated, have ready access to birth control, and our ancestors from the early 1900s fought for us to get rights. One of those rights is the choice to have kids or not. And I'll bring it back full circle.

[00:16:47]Defend women's right to choose. We have choices right now in some places. Not all places, but some places. Make sure you fight like tooth and nail for women to keep some of these rights. Because here in America, please know and understand they are working to strip our right to vote, um access to health care, access to our reproductive health rights. Please keep on defending them and don't let all of the things that these feminists fought for in the 60s and 70s fall by the wayside. Let me know what you think of this article from BuzzFeed um join the conversation. Don't forget to like, comment, and share.