the pipe dream of marrying young and having a big family, which is denied to them because of the choices of women.
The very sad thing I've observed along my own path through existence is that all of the
most marriageable women I've known (beautiful and virtuous, didn't mess around, married young) were snapped up by men who wanted to put exactly one or two babies in them and then get a vasectomy.
Often this was not discussed before marriage, the women just assumed their to-be husbands were on board with the traditional standard, and the young men rode those assumptions all the way to the altar, hung the framed copy of the LDS "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" on the wall - and then a few years down the road it's
"we can't afford more children" or
"but I want your body all to myself again."
The "hottest" girls I knew from way back ended up divorced after two children because their husbands insisted on some kind of indefinite/permanent birth control thereafter.
My friends and I circa-twenty-years-ago would like to know the location of the hidden stash of young men who want big families. Even in the very pro-natal Mormon church, these were rare. My friends and I joked about how we wished women could have babies together, because we all wanted tons of babies ASAP and it was incredibly difficult to find a young man who didn't want you to be on some kind of birth control for the first couple of years of the hypothetical marriage
"and then we'll see."
Most of the men I've known to actually WANT large families, are middle-aged-and-older men who did plenty of frittering in their youth and have come around to an understanding of what they've been trading away and what they could have had instead. They were not DENIED anything when they were young; they chose the "shiny" path of material and sensory gratification because it looked like a better deal to them than the "old ways" that would saddle them with obligation and place restrictions on their liberty.
"Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free" was the mantra that preceded the question of
"Where have all the good women gone?"
Kind of like how
"A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" was the precursor to
"Where have all the good men gone?"
Both sexes have been targeted wholesale with propaganda designed to undermine family formation.
We live in a world where many people will only come to see the truth through the sorrow and heartache of having been deceived.
I feel for those young people who have earnestly spent their youth preparing for and seeking marriage, and find themselves lacking suitable available options. What I wish for young men AND women who find themselves in this position to realize, is that they are in that position partly because they themselves are rare.
Maybe a lot of what I say comes across as trying to point the finger back at men, but my point is not "well look at how bad most men are."
It's just this: If you are a young person who truly desires to follow the "old ways," marry young, raise a large family for the Glory of God, etc. -- please understand that you are a very rare person, seeking another very rare person.
If you (man or woman) assume that you are basically typical of your own sex (that is to say, that MOST of your peers also want these good things for good reasons), and that it's only the
opposite sex that is mostly wayward... this will not equip you to understand and relate to those rare people of the opposite sex who ARE seeking the same things you are.
"I'M the statistically disadvantaged/victimized one because I am (my own sex). Finding a good spouse should have been easy for you because you are (the opposite sex), and most of (my own sex) are highly qualified for and actively seeking marriage. So what's wrong with you that you haven't settled down with one of your countless available options yet???" is the mindset that seems to develop from these sorts of assumptions, and it is a mindset that serves nobody but Satan.
