Antiseptic,

The best way to reply to you is with the
following tale:

A bossy man decided to change his behaviour
towards the Chef in his restaurant.
He called him in and said:

"From now on I'm going to treat you fairly."

"If I'm a little late with lunch you won't
verbally abuse me?" asked the Chef.

"No," said the restaurant owner.

"If the coffee is not to your liking you
won't throw it onto the table?"

"No," said the restaurant owner.

"If the steak is not to your liking, you
won't deduct its cost from my salary?"

"Definitely not," assured the restaurant owner.

"Okay," said the Chef.

"Then I'll stop spitting in your soup."

Looks like injured egocentrism won the day. Sad.

Antiseptic,

No, not at all. What is sad is that
perception lost the day.

I once had an "antiseptic" lecturer
who preached peace in the world while
creating dissension in the classroom.
Like a rattlesnake he always had fresh
venom. And made even the simplest
subject sound complex. He took special
pains to confront us with his bitter
reality as he saw it and he also
managed to paint such a bleak picture
of male/female realtionships.

Ah well. I shan't be responding to you
any further. I entered this thread in
good faith - it's a mistake I won't be
repeating

Anti
The Yorkeshiremen scenario was really about expecting this to be a 'see it is women's fault that men don't want to commit' and to see who can outdo who on victim status.

My comment in regard to commitment was more from observation. We have already agreed that statistics and reports can be manipulated to suit a position, so rather than that, take a look around at what is happening in the real world. People young and older are still committing to marriage or long term relationships in the main. Human nature does not change, men and women both seek companionship, security and happiness. This for most of us appears to be achieved through making a commitment to another person, and usually, but not always, involves children. There will always be exceptions.

Trying to work out some kind of summary. I doubt this is complete so please fee free to expand on the list.

The claim (my interpretation of it) - women wanting to have children are finding it harder to find a male willing to commit to the father role.

What's the same
- The biological drives towards parenthood.

What's changed
- The stability of marriage
- The availability of sex out side of marriage (it's always been there but is I suspect a lot more available than it was earlier)
- Easy access to fairly reliable contraception for women.
- CSA and what has been apart from the shared parenting provisions a family law system widely believed to be heavily biased against men. Those shared care provisions are under serious threat.
- The cost of living such one income is generally not considered sufficient for a family (eg a greater pressure to get established before starting a family)
- Social pressures to have children have decreased, plenty of couples choose not to have children and the social stigma about that has decreased significantly.

R0bert

Pelican:"expecting this to be "

See, there's the problem. By reacting to what you "expect" rather than what is said, the conversation is driven in the "expected" way rather than in a new one. That's at the root of my issue with Lexi: she's a smart woman but she seems unable to address topics objectively based on what is said. I guess that's human nature in action.

Pelican:"People young and older are still committing to marriage or long term relationships in the main."

Are they? What's the data say?

http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Products/1D63A0059ECDFDCFCA2577ED00146123?opendocument

That shows a steep decline in the marriage rate since 1989 (when the series begins), from 7 per 1000 population per year to just 55. That's a 25% decline in just 20 years.

Cohabitation is doing better.

http://www.aifs.gov.au/institute/pubs/diversity/10cohabitation.pdf

"Since 1986, the percentage of couples
that were cohabiting has increased by approximately
two percentage points every five years."

although

"between 1981 and 2001 the
proportion of those aged 15 or over that were married
fell by eight percentage points (from 60 per cent
to 52 per cent), while the proportion cohabiting
increased by about 4 percentage points (from 3 per
cent to 7 per cent)."

and

"Of partnered people aged 25-34 just a quarter are
cohabiting. Of partnered men and women aged 35-
44 just over 10 per cent cohabit and fewer than 10
per cent in older age groups cohabit."

and

"Relatively few cohabiting relationships endure as
cohabiting relationships in the long term – most
end in break up or in marriage."

so it doesn't look good for your hypothesis, Pelican.

What about kids, do cohabiting people have them?

From the AIFS link above:

"Although many cohabiting
adults have dependent children living with them,
they are considerably less likely to have children
than are married couples."

So I'm afraid I can't agree with you on this, Pelican. The data simply does not support your view.