My point was that if a man is seen as emotionally stagnant, it’s not because he doesn’t have a child — it’s for other reasons (some of which are cultural stereotypes). Whereas for a woman, it’s because she’s not a mother.

I agree with you that our culture often sees men as incapable of deep love (one of the stereotypes I was referring to) and that they are sometimes seen as “expendable” in terms of parenthood. To be fair, we live in a culture where there are still few social consequences for a man who walks out on his children and therefore, it’s still happening a lot. (I don’t have even one friend who didn’t spend at least part of her tenure as a parent being the sole caregiver and breadwinner after the father of their children left the relationship.)

HOWEVER, there’s a lot going on there on both sides that needs to be addressed and corrected. I am thankfully seeing a lot more women fighting to have the father of their children take their share of responsibility and I’m seeing more men willing to do that. I hope that we will continue to see this evolve, particularly in the ways that we stereotype men so that we stop emotionally infantilizing them the way we do with childless women.

Lastly, I am very sorry if you experienced this, yourself. My heart goes out to you. ❤