This is a related article about how young men seem to want children more than young women (gift link):
From the chats I’ve had with male friends — quietly, late in the evening — I think there is a second type of “unspoken grief” going round.
A female friend told me recently that she had been in the pub with a mixed-gender group of peers. She had asked whether they would rather have a) a partner who would stay with them for ever or b) children. All the women said partner; all the men said kids.
…
Several men told me they would desperately like children but their female partner was less sure. Often they were slightly ashamed. How terribly unprogressive to feel that you are putting pressure on the person who indisputably bears the greater burden. And so they didn’t. But the feelings were there anyway. I found myself thinking that these men seemed to have even less control than women do. It isn’t their body, at the end of the day, so it isn’t their choice.
It seems there is a vast hidden swell of pent-up emotions, of important things unsaid, when it comes to young men and children. I’ve always thought that we damage women when we put all the pressure of fertility at their door. But it strikes me that we also damage men.