I Always Wanted To Be A Dad: Men Without Children

For those who wanted children but life didn’t work out that way, the triggers are everywhere.

By Robert Nurden

The family of four looked in high spirits on their jaunt into central London. The kids were pulling faces and snatching each other’s iPhones as the chilled parents looked on. The scene that played out on the train seats opposite me was so normal that it verged on the banal. We exchanged watery smiles across the aisle.

Then it hit me. Run-of-the-mill it might have been but my life was as far removed from this domestic drama as it was possible to be. I have no children, and at 72 I never will have. Just when I thought I had come to accept my loss, decades of mute grief came flooding back.

The gut punch that such displays of happy family life can inflict on me is a familiar one for many men and women who don’t have the children that they always dreamed of having, whether that is due to infertility, poor judgement or just bad luck.

This gut punch is not just loneliness; I have a partner who has grown-up children and I have many friends. But my life is fundamentally different because I am not the father that I expected to be. I missed out on parenthood, the social status that brings, the responsibility, the opportunity for caring and nurturing, the legacy of children and grandchildren, and having these people to look after me in later years.

I just thought it would happen in time and became complacent.

Quite naturally, this issue of unwanted childlessness mostly focuses on women. The trope basically goes that men don’t ever want children (not really) and when they end up with them it is because a woman twisted their arm to have them. Not true! At least not any more. Men can feel just as deprived as women when this doesn’t happen. I know: I’m one of them.

The phenomenon of male childlessness is more widespread than society acknowledges. Some 25% of men over 42 are childless, according to Dr Robin Hadley’s book, How is a Man Supposed to be a Man? The numbers are growing, which has massive implications for health and social care provision. It has to be said, of course, that many thousands of adults remain
child-free by choice.

But for those who wanted children but life didn’t work out that way, the triggers are everywhere. Childless men dread Father’s Day. I usually hunker down and read a good book. The advertising industry is geared towards the ideal family. Chats at work about one’s colleagues’ children are commonplace and driving past schools as parents collect their kids can hurt; everyday ambushes like these can plunge a dagger into the heart of the parentless.

I regret so much in my life. I look back at wrong turns, poor decision-making, bad timing. Should I have worked harder at making a relationship work? Should an ex-girlfriend and I have decided that she should have an abortion? Later on, there was a miscarriage. Then there was a broken engagement.

I just thought it would happen, so I blame myself for complacency. I look at my friends who never wanted to be dads yet have four to whom they devote a scant amount of time. There are the hardly-there fathers – alcoholics, absentees, adulterers, abusers or just not very good ones – and you wonder if you would have done a better job.

I first started to get broody in my early forties. The problem was potential partners were the same age and were divorced and either had children and didn’t want more, or were past the age of having children. I could have settled for a compatible but childless relationship but I still wanted my own kids.

Traditionally, men want to leave a legacy by seeing the family name continue. Those who are not fathers often find a substitute activity such as teaching, nursing, charity work or sponsoring a child to try and fill that yawning gap. I returned to teaching but it was nothing like caring for one’s own offspring.

So, why didn’t it happen? Why will no child of mine ever phone up and say: “Hi, Dad! How are you?” Dr Hadley suggests that one may need to go back to one’s childhood to find part of the answer. Anxiety over early years’ attachments with one’s care-givers may cause one to have problems with trust. That certainly resonates with me.

Is it all too late for me, then? Yes, basically. It’s time to clear up the widespread view that men can procreate with ease into old age. Statistics show that fewer than two% of fathers are 50 or over. The Mick Jaggers of this world are a rare species. Quite apart from a stack of evidence showing the medical dangers of fathering late in life.

There are upsides. I have the freedom to do things fathers can’t do. I belong to a Facebook group called the Childless Men’s Community, which is very supportive. And I have written a book. Here I am meant to fashion a neat conclusion but there isn’t one – except of course to say that you can never have everything you want.

I Always Wanted To Be A Dad: Men without Children, by Forest Gate author Robert Nurden, was published in August 2023
and is available from Newham Bookshop and via his website: robertnurden.com.

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