Note that this post is coming from a U.S. perspective.

I was just thinking about this from another thread. Most of the men I’ve interacted with who have said they want kids don’t realize how expensive daycare is. Yet pretty much every woman past the age of 22 knows. Because the media/social norms/family tell us we NEED to have kids. So it’s always been a question on our mind. And so we’ve researched to see if our career will be worth it. Whether we’ll want to stay home when the kids are young and re-enter the workforce. Or whether we won’t want to risk the “career damage” of being out of the workforce and therefore put our kids in daycare and/or with a nanny asap.

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And yet men can just say they want kids and that’s that. Never worrying about the impact to their career. Never worrying if they’ll have to give up their job because daycare costs too much.

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Same with childbirth. Bet most men couldn’t define episiotomy or ectopic pregnancy. But I bet most women here know what they are. Or that most women who have even considered becoming pregnant know what they are.

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Most of this wouldn’t be a problem except for the fact that they try to legislate our bodies every chance they get.

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So have any of you experienced this? For my non-US ladies is it different in places where maternity leave isn’t a joke and/or where daycare expenses are subsidized by the govt? Anyone have any good ways to vet for this short of it just coming up naturally in conversation? Most of these interactions were when I was early 20s and these guys were as well - Does it get better as you get older?