Giving birth is a gender role, a biological gender role. Breast feeding, what the breasts are biological designed for in women, is not a gender role, it is a biological role. Having children requires sacrifice for both parties.

Do you think most men want to go sit in an office all day doing menial tasks to support their family? Since office work is fairly split evenly by gender, do you think men want to go work on oil rig or construction site all day to support their families?

Gestation and feeding are social roles originally assigned to women due to their biological capabilities. But technology has decoupled the feeding role from the lactating capability. It will soon also decouple gestation from natural pregnancy.

And judging by the fact that women have rushed into the work force while men have not rushed home, I do think it's fair to say that people would rather be sitting in an office than chasing a toddler around the house.

Why would you have kids if you feel taking care of a kid is the worst job in the world?

Well, because there aren't always options for folks to avoid pregnancy nor get an abortion. I'd have been sterilized before I was 20 if it were an option to me. I've not had the unfortunate experience of being pregnant, though, and I'm 39 now. Happily childless.

And because some folks have kids first, then find out how horrible it is. The first child doesn't always seem horrible, so they have another.

And because even happy parents find a lot of the work involved absolutely horrible. I'm not sure if anyone gets joy out of waking in the middle of the night to feed the baby, change an overflowing diaper of shit, and/or deal with spit up and so on. Older children keep doing pretty disgusting things for years to come.

Even jobs taking care of folks are considered low-rung, crappy jobs with horrible pay.

Happily childless.

Parenting thoughts from a non-parent - pass.

Just because I'm childless doesn't mean I'm not aware of what others go through, nor does it mean that I've not taken care of children or infants. 'Tis part of the reason I'm childless.

Edit: Besides, me being childless is exactly why I'm qualified to answer part of this question. I understood that, for most of my life, I had to hope that the birth control methods available to me didn't fail (basically condoms, since I can't tolerate hormonal birth control and couldn't afford to be sterilized, if I could even find a doctor).

Seeing what other go through and taking care of others children is not the same as raising and caring for your own children. Regardless of how much you want to disagree with me, an individual's opinion without children holds little weight.

Its equivalent to taking relationship advice from the neckbeard down in his mother's basement.

That's like asking "why would you buy clothes if you think doing laundry is the worst job in the world?" Having kids is great, but taking care of babies and small children is often tiring, boring, dirty, and thankless. Some people like it and that's great for them. But we've also got this massive cultural hangover where we tell women how great and wonderful the job is because for the longest time, we didn't give them the choice not to do it.

Comparing doing laundry to taking care of your kids...

Speaking of laundry, it increases by quite a bit. So yes, their comparison is a good one, though it understates the drudgery of taking care of children.

If you laser focus on "breast feeding" yes the male cannot do that. If, however, you look at it from a "breast milk" standpoint, the male absolutely can take care of that!

I certainly had no problem warming up refrigerated breast milk at odd hours of the night for all three of my children.

I think everyone should pump and freeze. At the very least you'll be more comfortable. The bonus is that you can make your significant other feed the kid!

Punping isn't all that much less work than breastfeeding. It feels like creating work for the dad to do instead of relieving mom from doing work.

Being someone's mother is probably humanity's most important "gender role" and not something people should be trying to escape from.

If it were so great men would want to do it, instead of just telling women how great and important it is.

How in the world is a man going to be someone's mother?

Men can do almost everything associated with the traditional gender role of motherhood, save gestation and breastfeeding. And if any man actually wanted to do those things, we'd be working on the technology I'm sure.

I'm not sure what your point is. Men already become parents all the time. And it's true that motherhood and fatherhood are very important jobs that collectively we really should not be trying to "escape" from. I'm pretty sure the whole point of the push for paternity leave is to let people embrace these roles rather than run away from them.

We're not talking about parenthood in the abstract, but rather traditional gender roles. I.e. where it's the woman that gestates and breastfeeds the baby, and then stays at home and takes care of it. Women have been aggressively trying to escape that gender role ever since we made it possible for them to do so. The vast majority of mothers work, women have far fewer kids than before, etc. Men, meanwhile, have not rushed to take on those supposedly wonderful and fulfilling duties.[1]

We can conclude from these observations that the traditional female gender role isn't all that great, and that there is a lot of value in technology (for now, formula, but soon, artificial wombs) that reduce the need for anyone to do that work.

[1] There is an increased push for paternity leave because dads want to spend more time with their newborns, which is different from wanting to embrace traditional female duties. And a huge part of that push is to set the stage for women to escape their traditional gender role. Dad being more involved from the beginning means that, in the long term, it will be easier for dad and mom to share child-rearing duties. It's harder to do that when, e.g. the child reflexively runs to mom any time it needs something.

Why not? I've never wanted children. I'm female. I'm tired of being told I should want to be a mother, have children, or anything of the sort. I don't WANT children. I have absolutely no desire, and comments like that make me wish I were male so I wouldn't have to deal with it.