Do women desire marriage and children more than men?

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I can only speak for myself, but as a female, I think I am extremely unsuited to both marriage and motherhood, and have no desire whatsoever to get married or have kids. My brother has a girlfriend and one of my female cousins has a boyfriend, but I haven't asked and so don't know what their ultimate plans are.

April,

I am fortunate now that I do have a lot of people who do care about me.

Among my family and friends - I think the distribution of wanting or not wanting a family is roughly equal between the genders. The women seem more obviously decided either way than the men - their time window for such a decision is narrower and their input, at least on physiological level, is much greater - but I don't think they want "more". Just the ones who want children want them more obviously and the ones who don't want them also don't want them more obviously.

In my society the desire for a family and children plus a solid, long term commitment are pretty equal also between the genders.

Dear Fnord,
You are unfortunately quite accurate as regards many men....which is why we have so many one-parent households.
And why it is almost always the mother who is trying to carry the burden.
The burden which got to be too heavy for the husband/father/boyfriend, so he....just left.

If she was rich and footing the bill Id consider it - but even then i doubt it

From my ASD perspective, it's cultural. I was just talking to my therapist about this. In my marriage and at my workplace (mostly male) it is expect that I care for the emotions (and others). I can tell you that there are absolutely men far more capable than I am to do so, but they will not b/c they don't want to be made fun of (I see them make fun of each other when one gets "out of line"). I'm the Autistic one and I am put upon to manage the family and workplace emotions b/c I am the woman - not b/c it is my nature or my skill.

So when I had to figure out what next to do in life, I chose family as did my ASD-like grandmother and my ASD-like mother before me. Both chose nurturing men to care for the children. Unfortunately my caring grandfather was ridiculed by his contemporaries and left it up to grandmother (which didn't go well). Unfortunately my caring father who was pressured by his contemporaries was more involved but still left it up to my mother (which went meh). And fortunately my caring husband is a very active father (in fact he has the kids right now while I refresh my spoon supply), so it's going much better for the children.

I do not see my (NT) husband nor (ASD) myself as more or less desiring of marriage or children.

I've chosen a long time ago that I was going to live a life of freedom.