A 30-Year-Old Woman Said High-Value Men Want Kids and Low-Effort Men Do Not — She Is Childfree and Looking for the Exception

A post shared to r/GirlDinnerDiaries describes a 30-year-old woman's frustration with a pattern she has noticed while dating.

She wrote that men who have "really done the work to improve themselves" and share her hobbies tend to want children, while she cannot have kids because her tubes are tied.

The poster described her own life in detail, writing that she described herself as a competitive athlete in her spare time, a licensed engineer earning six figures, and is in the process of buying a house. She has spent recent years working on her wardrobe to feel "cuter/less tomboy" and has built a close circle of friends around her.

According to the post, the men she meets who don't want children tend to fall short in other areas. she wrote that those men had often "stagnated in their mid-20s" lacking a stable career, a shared outdoor hobby, or any experience with therapy.

She ended the post with a question to the thread, "Where the frig are the men that have put in the same effort into making their lives successful that don't want kids?"

Reacting to the post, one commenter pushed back gently on the poster's conclusion, writing that "there are definitely good men who don't want kids," while acknowledging they "might be harder to find depending on your age or where you live."

Another commenter suggested, "Or find a man who already had kids. I have no kids. My husband’s kids were all adults when we met."

One commenter replied to the previous comment, detailing how she was less successful using the same idea, "I'm a childfree woman who took a chance with a man with two teenage daughters. It didn't go well. I didn't click with his children at all, our relationship was very awkward. And to top it off, I hated how he treated his daughters. So I had to walk away from it all."

However, one more commenter disagreed with the idea, talking about problems with adult children, "Not necessarily a great idea if you don't want to be involved or responsible for kids at all. Even adult children can become problems (drug addictions, pop out babies and leave them for grandparents to raise). If anyone's interested, I'll share a great NYT article about a couple (on the edge of retirement) who faced this situation."

The Daily Dot was unable to independently verify the specific details of the original poster's dating history or the men she describes encountering. The details above reflect the post and comments as shared on Reddit.