#4: So what about the men?
Yes, really.
Yes it is around International Women’s Day that we tend to hear this. Why not men? What about the men? Mostly from men. But I have been saying this again and again on social media recently. You could not have missed the recent article that stated the Office of National Statistics (ONS) data to show how women’s fertility rates have declined so that more than 50% of women under the age of 30 are ‘childless’ these days. It said that in 1971 just 18% of under-30-year-old women had no children but that figure had risen to 50% now. Besides the many sorts of data bias and confirmation bias that this article and the datasets showed, my question is:
Why do we still judge women on their reproductive choices? What about the men?
Even as several people are trying to explain these reasons, for me, personally such headlines are problematic because as always these perpetuate the belief that women’s bodies and reproductive choices can be monitored. On the other hand, no one is asking men why they are delaying having children or making a choice to stay child-free.
As I trawled through the ONS datasets, and there are many, there was only ONE dataset on men’s fertility according to age and only for the year 2017, not across the time period as for women.
Why are men’s fertility choices not being recorded? Why are we not asking men if and when are they making a decision to have a child, whether they have decided to delay it or remain childfree. There is definitely paucity of data about men’s willingness and desire to conceive and start a family with several studies reporting the lack of male participants as a limitation.This in itself could be perceived as a sign that men are not as engaged with their fertility as women seem to be, and so in many studies the male view is only represented through the voices of their partners (particularly in a heterosexual relationship).
I did a survey on twitter and only 40 men replied but out of these 68% said that they had decided to not have children (I have started a campaign #askthementoo)
I wrote a whole book (that just came out in PB) about reproductive justice and inequality, an intersectional view of how even in this era of unprecedented freedom, women do not have the autonomy to make decisions about their own fertility. The idea of motherhood is expanding. Some people want to be mothers, and some do not. But it is safe to say that no matter what decisions we make, and the choices that are on offer to us as women, the notion of motherhood shapes so much of our lives, whether it be deciding not to be a mother, or having the burning desire to be a mother by any means possible.
What else in in my tabs on my computer, and my phone?
Besides the widespread moral panic around women’s fertility and its decline, there is data and evidence to show that male fertility is declining too. No one is making a song and dance about it.
Male infertility contributes to at least half of all cases of infertility worldwide. Yet historically, women have shouldered most of the blame for the inability to conceive.
We don’t have data in the UK but studies in the USA show that since 1980, the fertility rate for men in their 30s has increased by 21% and for men aged 40 years and older, the rate has increased nearly 30%. In contrast, the fertility rate in men younger than age 30 years has decreased by 15%.
I really loved this piece in the New Yorker by Akhil Sharma. We don’t hear many stories from south asians about infertility. This is one of the reasons I wrote my book because I had felt so very alone when I was going through the numerous rounds of IVF. And it has been so touching since then to receive messages from brown (and black) women about how much they related to my experience and how this has validated their own experience. And we hardly ever hear from men about their experiences of wanting a child or their journey through fertility treatments. This essay touches on so many different aspects of home and belonging, of inter-racial marriages, of the lines between desire-said and unsaid- and this line made me very emotional: “One of the reasons I began thinking about I.V.F. was that I was overflowing with love for my wife and wanted a place to put that love.”
This essay I read recently by Emi Neitfeld in Rumpus called INFRADIG is nothing to do with fertility but it is to do with women’s bodies, about trust and mistrust, the silence around our own experiences, and the shame and trauma that we can carry around with us.
And this one by Irina Dumitrescu is titled The Professor, about how things stay with us even when we believe that we have left them behind, and our turmoil about our bodies and our agency.
And, so here I must say goodbye for now.
I hope we can continue this conversation another time.
In the meantime, here is something I hold on to by Walt Whitman:
“Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)”
Why can’t I be ambivalent? Why do I always have to know my mind? Why do I not have the freedom to contradict myself? Why does society expect me to always know my mind?
You can read a longer version of his ‘Song of Myself’ here.
Pragya