We’ve all read those interviews with famous men. You know the ones: the guys who just became fathers for the first time or have a well-established brood and say it’s changed their life. They talk of seeing the world differently, that it’s been the making of them, that they truly understand unconditional love and what it means to have responsibility. They’re evangelical, optimistic and, we have to believe, sincere. But what if none of that applies to you? What if you’re childless and it doesn’t look like that’s about to change any time soon? Where does it leave you?

Parenting has undergone a reinvention over the last few years. Sure, there have always been proud dads and family men, but for many men fatherhood is no longer an obligation, it’s a lifestyle choice, or a goal, but more achievable than becoming a millionaire, managing a Premier League football team or being taller than your biggest enemy.

Men who opt out of having children – or have the option removed from them by circumstance, or them or their partner’s infertility – can be forgiven for feeling left behind. The world seems more geared toward families than 20 years ago. Think of how older men are portrayed in adverts: there are plenty of dependable dads, doltish dads who don’t know how to turn on the washing machine, or handsome “dilfs”. And when you’re out and about it’s inescapable too: pubs and restaurants know being family friendly is lucrative and places have discounts, parking spaces or special loyalty schemes for those with children.

Traditionally, a man making middle age without having children might be congratulated on being a player, or a hero, for dodging a bullet, whatever his private feelings on the matter. The language around procreation has favoured men, as free spirits meant to make their way in the world with marriage and children mere obstacles (think of references to men being “trapped” by pregnancy). To be childless may be seen as freedom, but for many men it’s also seen as a failure.

Straight men in their forties and fifties who find themselves back on the dating scene after a failed relationship may discover they’re treated with suspicion. Ben, 46 and twice-divorced, says life in the dating arena is tough when you’re a childless man. “Often women can’t believe I don’t have kids at my age, especially with two failed marriages behind me. One or two have said outright, ‘There must be something wrong with you!’ But the truth is it just never happened.”

It doesn’t help that society still clings to milestones many of us are expected to meet. The grim inevitability of engagement, a wedding, buying a house and then having a family might seem mediocre or a cop out to some, but if you follow this path, you’re rewarded by the rest of society leaving you to get on with it, enjoying your tax breaks and priority parking outside Sainsbury’s.

Fail to conform and all eyes are on you. “But why?” people ask. Think of the constant conversation around when married couples will have a child, or the speculation in the press about women of a certain age who have yet to become a mother. There’s been an overdue backlash against judging a woman’s worth only on their role as a mother – in 2016, Andrea Leadsom watched her Conservative leader hopes vaporise when she suggested her maternal experience might make her more suitable to lead than opponent Theresa May – and with online forums, TV shows and women’s magazines openly discussing fertility, motherhood and childlessness from a woman’s point of view, there's a lot of support out there. For men, however, it’s not discussed as much.

Barney is in his mid-thirties and married to a woman five years his senior. They’ve been through two rounds of IVF and are about to begin their third, which Barney says will be the last. “My wife has been an inspiration in how she’s dealt with this, she really has,” he says. “She has a huge network of friends round her; I think women talk about this more than men do. I do feel I have let her down, that it makes me less of a man. It’s something we’re all supposed to be able to do, isn’t it? It’s nature.” Barney thinks that the idea fatherhood makes you a more rounded, complete person is harmful. “I don’t know what it means for my future if there won’t be children in it. My wife and I have each other and I will always be grateful, but there will be things I ‘don’t understand’ because I’m not a father.”

Part of this anxiety may come from how men are judged at every stage of the reproductive process. The restrictive nature of masculinity means men are expected to be turbo-boosted sex machines, thinking about nothing else but getting our end away. Being unable to get an erection, delay orgasm, feel horny or maintain desire are all huge blows to a man. While all women face these issues too, Clare Faulkner, psychosexual and relationship therapist at The Thought House Partnership, says in her experience women don’t seem to internalise it as failure as frequently as men. In her role as couples therapist, she notes: “The feeling of failure that a man should be hard and ready all the time – the pain I see goes deep. The perception is, ‘I’m not a man if I don’t want to have sex all the time.’”

Many people are, of course, choosing not to have children at all. As Clare Faulkner says: “In a period of great economic instability, some people feel staying childless is better for the world and the environment – it’s a moral and ethical choice. The historical idea of having children so they could look after you in your old age or to stave off loneliness is becoming old-fashioned – few would want to actively burden their offspring in that way.”

Whatever your gender, not having children can be dismissed as selfishness by outsiders. There can be an air of irresponsibility afforded to men because they’re not a father, like they couldn’t hack the pace or never wanted to grow up. Envy from those with children is misguided and can be painful.

“We enjoy being auntie and uncle to our friends’ kids,” says Barney. “But there’s that perception we’re ‘lucky’ to have our ‘freedom’ and that somehow our lives are less stressful because we don’t have any children of our own.”

Clare Faulkner says there is a type of bereavement to go through for anyone who does not become a parent, and even for those who have them. “Even men and women who have children and decide one is enough or two is enough, there is still a grieving process that can take place knowing there won’t be more.”

So when it comes to the childless men, don’t look up to us as players, pity us as victims, congratulate us on a bullet dodged or see us as untrustworthy snakes who shirk responsibility – we’re just living our lives differently. We can’t all be family men – there wouldn’t be any room for all our huge people carriers in the car park, for a start.

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