by Perry McCarney

Created on: August 08, 2008   Last Updated: November 22, 2009

Men are far more comfortable talking about their future career prospects or the material things they desire in their future than they are about the future of their relationships. That is simply a reality for most of us. If our relationship with our partner is currently comfortable from our perspective, we do not see any need to discuss it or where it may be going.

At least until the urge to be a father hits us. And it needs to be recognized that a larger proportion of men than women seem to never develop that urge. The biological imperative is also not as strong, men quite simply have a longer time-frame available to them than women when it comes to procreation, or at least natural procreation. Women having a more strongly evolved desire to raise children than men because women know for a certainty that a child is theirs, while it is always questionable for men on an emotional basis. Despite recent genetic biotechnology making it more determinable. The sense of the "clock ticking" with regards to having children is one that applies to women to a far greater degree then it does to men. This may be a strong influence on why women generally mature earlier than men.

No matter how much a woman feels the ticking of her biological clock, initiating a discussion on the prospects of the long-term future of their relationship earlier than six months into the relationship is far more likely to lead to an ending of the relationship than it is to marriage. Certainly with younger men under 25 years of age. Although this may vary depending on the familial and cultural upbringing of the man.

This is in part due to the liberation and freedom felt by young men leaving the family fold and the parental constraints that were imposed, but is also in part based on the perceptive social construct that still sees the man of a family as being the provider, even in modern Western society. My emotional willingness and desire to be a father matured at the age of 26 when I was well established and confident in my career and future earning prospects. I was 27 when our daughter was born and took out a mortgage to buy our first home a month later. Confidence in social position and ability to generate income providing some confidence in being able to fulfill the role of father in a family, no matter how illogical that might be.

Until a man has reached this level of confidence, discussions of the future feel threatening and negative; we are more likely to turn away from a relationship asking this

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