Are reluctant men to blame for so many women being childless? Record numbers are never becoming mothers - and not by choice

Not mentioned below is a major reason why men "won't commit":  Because Britain's feminist-inspired divorce laws make marriage a huge financial risk.  Feminists are the enemies of normal women.

But a second reason for women remaining childless IS mentioned below:  unrealistic expectations of men.  And where do many of those unrealistic expectations of men come from"  Again very often from feminist preaching in the schools and elsewhere.  Men are just normal flawed human beings, not the oddball semi-women that feminists demand.  Most women CANNOT "have it all".  The very idea that you don't need to make compromises in human relationships is amazingly childish and contrary to all human experience


A kind, funny, handsome husband. A dream wedding in the little Norman church under the South Downs where she'd been raised. And then they would settle down in a ramshackle Georgian rectory in the countryside and have the beautiful babies she'd always dreamed of. She'd have at least two - hopefully more.

This was Melanie Whitehouse's dream as she grew up. To her, it was simply unimaginable that she wouldn't one day become a mother.

So why has Melanie, now a 57-year-old author, found herself among the ranks of women in what has been dubbed Generation Childless?

Genevieve Smyth, a 45-year-old occupational therapist from South London, was brought up on the mantra of equality - but she struggled to find a man who fulfilled all her requirements and found herself childless

But the cost has been high. Indeed, the latest statistics show that women in their mid-40s are almost twice as likely to be childless as their parents' generation. One in five women born in 1969 are childless today, compared to one in nine women born in 1942.

And it's not medical infertility that's fuelling the rise of childlessness among these women.

Instead, they are childless by circumstance. Whether it's down to not meeting the right man, or finding that careers absorbed all their time in their childbearing years, or simply deciding that babies wouldn't complement their comfortable lifestyle, women are increasingly starting the menopause without having had a family.

Sadly, it seems that the majority of these childless women desperately wanted a family. Jody Day, founder of Gateway Women, a support network for childless women, says that her research shows 10 per cent of such women are childless due to infertility and 10 per cent have chosen to be child-free. But that leaves some 80 per cent of women without children who have simply ended up in this situation.

Melanie Whitehouse is certainly one of these women. And she is clear about the cause of her childlessness: men.

Or rather, the lack of men who were willing to settle down and start a family with her. The heartbreaking realisation that she was never going to have a baby struck late - in her 50s, while at a reunion lunch with her first boyfriend, whom she had dumped on a whim.

'I hadn't grieved for the children who might have been until then. I realised with painful clarity what I'd lost,' she says. 'Tom had been happily married for 25 years and had three kids, while I had nobody.'

These feelings of grief are common among women who find themselves unwillingly childless.

Melanie Whitehouse's journey has been a painful one, characterised by a certain kind of man, she confesses.

'The men I met from my mid-20s onwards seemed to delight in wooing and dumping me. I suppose if I'd been born in another era, men would have had to commit to marriage before they had sex, which might have meant I'd have got the children I yearned for.'

The next big relationship didn't bring the family she yearned for, either. 'In 1990, at 33, I really thought I'd found someone. I could see us having a family, but it was all over in four months. And the ticking of my body clock was getting louder and louder.'

So are women like Melanie merely unlucky - or all too reflective of a generation desperately trying to convince unwilling men to have a child?

The latter, it seems. And that's because, as ever, men have the benefit of time on their side. Their reluctance to tie themselves down has become even more pronounced today, as they don't have to rush into marriage, a long-term relationship, or even the vaguest of friendships to have sex with women.

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The Most Whiney, Thin-Skinned, Easily Offended Society In The History Of The World

Sorry, but it’s your fault if you’re offended all the time

by Matt Walsh

I truly believe that we are the most whiney, sensitive, thin-skinned, easily offended society in the history of the world.

Nobody has ever been as prolific at getting offended as we are.  Nobody cries over insignificant nonsense as loudly and consistently as us.

It’s the one thing we seem to do better than everyone else on the planet. We corner the Offended Market, and it’s not even close. Modern Americans love to get offended more than we love eating Cinnabon or talking about our fitness goals. If it was an Olympic sport, we’d grab the gold, silver, and bronze every year. If it was a job, we’d all be millionaires. In fact, we have turned it into a job, and the people who do it professionally are millionaires (Al Sharpton, etc). It is our calling card, our national pastime. It is the battle we fight and the banner we wave.

We get offended faster and more efficiently than anyone. And it’s not just our speed that separates us from the rest — it’s our endurance. We have a limitless capacity for offendedness. Every week there are dozens of new national outrages and boycott campaigns and social media crusades to raise awareness about some offensive thing, or to get someone fired for saying some offensive thing, or to teach people that some previously non-offensive thing has now become offensive.

Most of all, I find myself positively dazzled by the dexterity and athleticism with which we get offended. We can juggle six or seven outrages all at once, and then drop them and pick up new ones in the blink of an eye.

Our creativity and meticulousness are also quite notable here. We can look at any situation and extract hundreds of offensive factors that an untrained eye probably would have overlooked. We conjure up more fabricated outrages and controversies in a month than past civilizations could have mustered in a thousand years.

Do you remember what everyone was super worked up about four weeks ago? Yeah, me neither. That’s the point. We move on to the new outrage so quickly and the old ones are buried and forgotten. Well, whatever it was way back then, I’m sure it was REALLY bad and we were REALLY upset.

It’s always something. We have located the Fountain of Eternal Indignation, and we drink it by the gallon.

So then it is no wonder that this is the climate which has given rise to a concept called microaggressions.

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Children conceived through IVF are at 'no greater risk of developmental delays or lifelong disability'

Infertility treatments do not contribute to developmental delays in children, scientists revealed.

There is no heightened risk of developmental delays by the age of seven in children conceived through IVF or other infertility treatments, a new study found.

As a result, scientists concluded that children conceived via IVF are no more likely to have developmental delays than children conceived naturally.

This finding alleviates longstanding concerns that infertility treatments may affect an embryo at a sensitive stage and could result in lifelong disability.

Scientists from the National Institute of Health examined developmental assessment scores of more than 1,800 children born to women who became pregnant after infertility treatment.

They compared the results to those of more than 4,000 children born to women who didn’t undergo the treatment.

There were no differences in development assessments in the two groups, according to Dr Edwina Yeung, an investigator at NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Dr Yeung said: ‘When we began our study, there was little research on the potential effects of conception via fertility treatments on US children.

‘Our results provide reassurance to the thousands of couples who have relied on these treatments to establish their families.'

The Upstate KIDS study enrolled babies born to women in New York state between 2008 and 2010.

Parents of infants whose birth certificates indicated infertility treatment were invited to enroll their children in the study, as were all parents of twins and other multiples.

The researchers also recruited roughly three times as many parents with a baby that was not conceived through infertility treatment.

Four months after giving birth, the mothers indicated on a questionnaire the type of infertility treatment they received.

Those treatments included including in vitro fertilisation (IVF); frozen embryo transfer; assisted hatching; gamete intrafallopian transfer; zygote intrafallopian transfer; ovulation induction, and intrauterine insemination.

Participants also completed a questionnaire that screened children for developmental disabilities at numerous intervals throughout their child’s first three years of life.

The questionnaire covered five domains: fine motor skills, gross motor skills, communication, personal and social functioning, and problem solving ability.

Researchers found that children conceived through infertility treatments scored similarly to other children in the developmental assessments.

They then considered only children conceived through fertility treatment.

The scientists found that those children were at increased risk for failing any one of the five domains in the assessment exam, with the greatest likelihood of failing the personal-social and problem solving domains.

But, they found that twins were more likely to fail a domain than were single born children.

As a result, when the researchers compensated for the greater percentage of twins in the fertility treatment group than in the non-treatment group – 44 per cent compared to 19 per cent – they found no significant difference between them in failing any of the five domains.

Furthermore, of the children diagnosed with a disability at three or four years old, the researchers saw no significant difference between the treatment and non-treatment groups.

Thirteen per cent of the treatment group had disabilities, compared to 18 per cent of the non-treatment group.

Dr Yeung said that because it is not always possible to diagnose some forms of developmental disability by three years of age, the research team will continue to evaluate the children periodically until they reach eight years of age.

The study was published in JAMA Pediatrics.

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Migrant rape fears spread across Europe: Women told not to go out at night alone after assaults carried out in Sweden, Finland, Germany, Austria and Switzerland amid warnings gangs are co-ordinating attacks

Security authorities are growing increasingly concerned by the rising number of sex attacks by gangs of migrants which appear to be spreading across Europe.

Finland and Sweden today became the latest European countries to issue warnings to women to be wary of the threat of sex attacks following fresh reports of sexual assaults in the last week, while the Viennese police chief adviced women not to go outside alone in Vienna.

The warnings come as reports emerged that Austrian and German police tried to cover-up the issue over fears of reprisal attacks on asylum seekers and damage to the countries' tourist trade.

Dozens of arrests have been made today in connection with the wave of recent sex attacks across Europe.

Finnish police said today that they had been tipped off about plans by groups of asylum seekers to sexually harass women following an unusually high level of sexual harassment cases in Helsinki.

'There hasn't been this kind of harassment on previous New Year's Eves or other occasions for that matter... This is a completely new phenomenon in Helsinki,' said deputy police chief Ilkka Koskimaki.

Police in Germany are investigating more than 150 cases across five German cities where women have been attacked by the 'organised Arab or North African gangs, police said.

Cologne has been at the centre of the problem with around 106 reported cases of assault by migrant gangs since New Year's Eve.

Following criticism of the police's handling of the violent clashes in Cologne, the police chief of Cologne has been relieved of his duties today.

Police chief Wolfgang Albers, 60, was informed by the state interior minister Ralf Jaeger that he would be given early retirement, a source told Reuters

A chilling police report about the attacks in Cologne describes women being forced to run through a 'gauntlet' of drunken men while officers themselves were mobbed by victims claiming they had been sexually assaulted.

Two more victims from the night have spoken out today on German TV, after they were sexually assaulted and attacked with fireworks during the city's New Year's Eve celebrations.

One woman, known only as Jenny, suffered serious burns when a firework was shoved into the hood she was wearing.

'I heard a sizzling sound in my hood,' said Jenny. 'I somehow tried to get the firecracker out of the hood. Then it fell into my jacket and burned everything.'

She added: 'The scars will be permanent. I was lucky that it didn't explode.'

One German gun-shop owner Katja Triebel revealed that sales in pepper spray had shot up since the vile attacks in Cologne.

Concerns remain that many of the men involved in the sickening assaults are still at large despite the best efforts by the police.

Further cases have emerged of identical sex attacks being reported in neighbouring Austria as well as Switzerland, where six women reported identical crimes in Zurich on New Year's Eve.

Swedish police say at least 15 young women have reported being groped by groups of men on New Year's Eve in the city of Kalmar. 

Kalmar police spokesman Johan Bruun said today that groups of men encircled women on a crowded square and groped them on New Year's Eve.

He said no one was physically injured but that many of those targeted were terrified.

He said two men, both asylum-seekers, were informed through interpreters that they're suspected of sexual assault and that police are trying to identify other suspects.

When asked about similarities to the assaults in Germany, Bruun said: 'We are aware of what happened in Germany but we are focusing our investigation on what happened in Kalmar.'

Bruun told MailOnline that that the gang 'formed a rings around the girls and started molesting them.'

'They grabbed their breasts and genitals. In some cases they tried to drag girls into a waiting car, but those girls escaped luckily,' he revealed.

Groups of women were targeted as well as women who were on their own at the celebrations.

He also revealed that 11 incidents have been reported including claims from women who said they were molested inside nightclubs on the night.

'This is something entirely new to us and has never happened before.

'There were several groups of men that conducted these crimes and we are working very hard to find them. This is a serious crime and it is important for the citizens in Kalmar to feel safe on the streets,' he said.

He confirmed that two men were arrested at the scene of the crime on New Years eve after they were pointed out by several women.

'The sexual molestation continued after we arrested them and we know that there are many more perpetrators that we have yet to identify since they worked in big groups.

'We have collected pictures and films from peoples mobile phones at the scene and will show pictures of the suspects to the victims.'

He revealed the arrested men did not speak English or Swedish and were carrying the identity cards that said that they were asylum seekers.

Cologne police said they have received a total of 170 criminal complaints related to New Year, including 120 of a sexual nature. In addition to the 31 suspects detained by federal officers, city police arrested two men from North Africa, aged 16 and 23.

Austrian police have been accused of covering up the sex attacks by migrant gangs in Vienna.

Police have dismissed the claims, insisting they had held the information back 'to protect the privacy of victims'.

News of the victims in Austria, which has included several arrests of migrants from Afghanistan and Syria, was revealed after women and girls said they suffered attacks from migrants and came forward to complain to local media.

One identified as Sabrina told Austrian newspaper Osterreich that she was still suffering from shock from her ordeal which happened when she was in a club in the centre of the Mozart city of Salzburg.

In Finland, security guards hired to patrol the city on New Year's Eve told police there had been 'widespread sexual harassment' at a central square where around 20,000 people had gathered for celebrations.

Three sexual assaults allegedly took place at Helsinki's central railway station on New Year's Eve, where around 1,000 mostly Iraqi asylum seekers had converged.

'Police have... received information about three cases of sexual assault, of which two have been filed as complaints,' Helsinki police said in a statement.

'The suspects were asylum seekers. The three were caught and taken into custody on the spot,' Helsinki deputy police chief Ilkka Koskimaki told AFP.

Police said they had increased their preparedness 'to an exceptional level' in Helsinki for New Year's Eve after being tipped off about possible problems.

The suspects arrested from the Cologne sex attacks reportedly included 9 Algerians, 8 Moroccans, 4 Syrians, 5 Iranians, 2 Germans and one each from Iraq, Serbia and the USA.

'Ahead of New Year's Eve, the police caught wind of information that asylum seekers in the capital region possibly had similar plans to what the men gathered in Cologne's railway station have been reported to have had,' police said in a statement.

Dozens of apparently coordinated sexual assaults against women took place on New Year's Eve in the western German city of Cologne.

Cologne police said they had received 120 criminal complaints and quoted witnesses as saying that groups of 20-30 young men 'who appeared to be of Arab origin' had surrounded victims, assaulted them and in several cases robbed them.

Despite the growing number of copy-cat attacks by migrants gangs, Helsinki's deputy police chief said he did not think police believed there is a link between the Cologne and Helsinki incidents.

Shortly before New Year's Eve, Finnish police also arrested six Iraqis at an asylum residency centre in Kirkkonummi, around 30 kilometres west of Helsinki, suspected of 'publicly inciting criminal behaviour'. They were released on January 2.

According to Koskimaki, the arrests were linked to the information police received in the run-up to New Year's Eve.

In November, Finnish authorities said around 10 asylum seekers were suspected of rapes, among the more than 1,000 rapes reported to police in 2015.

Vienna's police chief has has caused outrage by advising women in the wake of sex attacks over New Year not to go out on the streets alone in Austria.

The astonishing claims by Gerhard Purstl were made as it was revealed Austria also had cases registered in which women claimed to have been sexually assaulted by men who were described by their victims as being immigrants.

In neighbouring Germany, more than 100 women have come forward to say they were assaulted over New Year by groups of men who were described in police protocols as being mostly nely-arrived asylum seekers.

In the wake of the scandal, Purstl was asked about the incidents and about the risk that women were in.

He then said: 'Women should in general not go out on the streets at night alone, they should avoid suspicious looking areas and also when in pubs and clubs should only accept drinks from people they know.'

The statement immediately attracted criticism from the country's Green party women's affairs spokesman Berivan Aslan who said: 'Should women now only go out with bodyguards if they want to avoid being told it was their fault when they get into difficulties?'

And the Green party security spokesman Peter Pilz said: 'Is the Vienna police chief saying that he is no longer in a position to protect women from sex attacks? If so, then he has failed in his job.'

Thousands have pledged their support to a German vigilante group which has vowed to protect women from migrants in the wake of the New Year's Eve attacks in Cologne.

The group says it wants to make the streets safer through 'presence' alone but police have warned that 'searching for offenders is not a job for citizens'.

After the group was launched, and gained thousands of followers overnight, a Dusseldorf police spokesman told local media that German police is responsible for public security.

He said the police had no problem with people acting bravely in the face of crime but they were against 'self proclaimed vigilantes'.

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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