Robin Hadley
Dr Robin Hadley, researcher and author of "How is a Man Supposed to be a Man? Male Childlessness – a Life Course Disrupted", independent research consultant and associate lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University specialising in male involuntary childlessness.
4
APPEARANCES
3
PODCASTS
May 25, 2026
James DavisHOST
Yeah, what, what, what's the backstory to why you got involved in this? It's quite a unique area.
Robin HadleyGUEST
Uh, I'd worked for 30-odd years as a scientific and technical photographer, and then digital photography came through, and, uh, I wasn't wanted.
Robin HadleyGUEST
I was really, really, uh, not very confident about taking exams and all that sort of thing.
27 MINS LATER
Matthew SyedHOST
Divorce in his 20s, followed by a second failed relationship, led him to experience high levels of broodiness as a single man, and it took him by surprise.
Robin HadleyGUEST
I had desperately wanted in my mid-30s to be a dad, and one of my colleagues, same age as me, and we worked very closely, and he became a dad, and I was so, so jealous of him.
Matthew SyedHOST
But perhaps more than the biological are the social constraints on becoming an older dad.
Clare McDonnellHOST
Did you start to feel broody at a certain point in your life? And why didn't it happen?
Robin HadleyGUEST
And part of that, I think, was a biological urge to become a father, which we don't often appreciate within men.
Robin HadleyGUEST
But then there's the social aspect as well, about being out of sync with my peer group.
Robin HadleyGUEST
And there's a great sociologist called Leslie Karnald in Australia who brought this up, that actually as important as a biological clock for women was a social clock, that peer pressure.
Clare McDonnellHOST
Are you hopeful, Robin, that by saying this now on the record, doing it in the way that you have done in your book, you get people to recognise those patterns in their own life so they don't take that forward?
Clare McDonnellHOST
Did you start to feel broody at a certain point in your life? And why didn't it happen?
5 MINS LATER
Clare McDonnellHOST
Are you hopeful, Robin, that by saying this now on the record, doing it in the way that you have done in your book, you get people to recognise those patterns in their own life so they don't take that forward?