To think society is misogynistic and often toxic about infertility?

Infertility is devastating for men. Assuming it's age related infertility for their female partner, as a man there is an awful powerlessness as there's little we can do. We grieve for our partner and we also grieve for the part of ourselves we are losing - 'expectancy' . We are conditioned, I would say are biologically conditioned, to want to help make babies and when we can't fulfill that it's very hard for men too. One thing I would say is if a woman freezes eggs ( normally meaning ideally around 20-30 eggs collected between 33 and 37, across 2 or even 3 rounds) then that does help, because it means that there's hope for ivf success. I know of 3 women in their mid 40s who had babies recently from their 35 year old eggs. It takes away the time and stress about having to do the egg harvesting at say 39-41 when it just won't be as successful any more, even in fertile couples. I read a lot of articles knocking egg freezing ( and others too blithely supporting the notion) but there's no doubt that it is better for a woman to do it then not to try it. To be blunt, most men would expect a woman of 36 plus to have done the procedure, ideally twice. Nothing remotely sexist about that - just as DH cuts on alcohol, coffee etc and keeps fit for sperm quality. I think it's really important that primary as well as fertility doctors have that chat with women, ideally at 30. Anecdotally, I hear that female doctors are more comfortable in doing so. In general society is only starting to properly engage with fertility as a major health topic. Which is great for the 30 year olds of today. We are now having a baby by egg donor at the age of 43.

Who knows if my friends would've been able to conceive naturally if they were with a man that had decent swimmers.

You are part of the problem of the stigma of male infertility. How would you feel if a man with no fertility issues saying he might have been able to get a woman with decent eggs pregnant?

The couples I know that have had IVF have been due to the man's fertility problems.
Yet they are perfectly happy to see each round of failed IVF as the woman's fault...

Their fertility problems aren't known to the
general friendship group but every time there's a failed cycle & I hear the blokes talking about their partners' fertility issues, I just want to scream 'you're the bloody problem here, not her!!'

Who knows if my friends would've been able to conceive naturally if they were with a man that had decent swimmers.

Men don’t talk about infertility (as much) because it’s seen as a slur on their manhood.

Tictoc runs on algorithms, presuming you are female - you will get different videos to your DH if he searched the same phrase. Me and my DH watch tictoc all the time and it aggravates me that i get shit videos compared to him. If we are watching together we will watch his tictoc because mine is filled with misogynistic shit comparatively; Never once have i searched about make up, shopping, dresses, cleaning products & face filters - but i get video after video of this stuff when DH gets videos about interesting stories, space, history, explosions, aircraft, gangsters, comedians and other "manly" shit....

You may be right about your thoughts - but you cannot base your decisions on what videos you are shown - when you don't have a comparative feed of a male.

#rantover

Well we keep on hearing women don't want men involved in any decisions in pregnancy nor be at the birth then once the child is born they dictate that the man is not doing it right

'My body my choice'

It has to be my way or no way

Then when it all goes wrong 'he needs to pay' and if he does anything positive he is called 'Disney dad'

Now I agree with some of it but there is pick and mix that it has to be as the mother says, so why would they be desperate for that?

Kind of agree re men - the toxic masculinity/virility angle means I can easily imagine that virtually no man is going to post about infertility being down to them... And although some do desperately want children, I don't think it's as common as in women.

With women - well, I'm apparently infertile (had all the tests, it's unexplained, never been pregnant), but since I was also not especially bothered about it, I just updated my internal narrative to "childfree" and got on with life.

Since I don't have a huge need for children and don't think about it very much, don't feel hurt about it etc etc, then I neither post about it nor seek out content based around it - it's just something which exists and I feel is not particularly important about me, like my hair or eye colour.

So I can also totally see a world in which people who aren't that bothered really wouldn't ever feel the need to make content about it - that makes perfect sense to me. And anyone who was desperate to have children and had to come to terms with not - I imagine they'd probably be very sensitive to others in a similar position and also wouldn't want to post that kind of content as they'd see it as insensitive...

Also wondered if the algorithm will mainly show you women based on your own profile. If you were a male or the app had profiled you differently you might see different results.. I don’t know this but I suspect it’s the case.

I really appreciate your take on the single message!!

We've been struggling with infertility for going on 7 years, and it is hard and I am sad about it. But I also think that I'll have a beautiful life even if there isn't a baby in it. The internet is full of "if I don't have a baby I'll die" and "not having a baby is the best thing that ever happened to me." I don't want to take away from those real feelings that people have, but it's hard to find room for "I really wish I could have a baby, but I accept that not everyone can have what they want and I'm rebuilding in other ways." I'd love to hear more of those perspectives that don't just talk about how much travel you can do without a kid.

A the nuance! Well done @onefinemess . You're so very cutting with your row of laughing faces

Isn't the point the OP was making that social media is actually a reflection of societal attitudes?

You think society is misogynistic for not posting on a social media site?

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Should all the misogynistic men out there join Instasham just to make you feel better?

Ever heard of privacy?

I don’t see it as misogyny. But IMO men are much less likely to talk about their own infertility - they often see it as a slur on their manhood and are ashamed of it. I’ve heard more than once of men who won’t even produce a sperm sample for checking - presumably because if it turns out to be their ‘fault’ that their partner can’t conceive, they can’t handle it.

It was literally years before the DP of a friend of a dd agreed to have his checked - he took it as a massive slur that anyone could imagine he wasn’t capable of fathering a child.

I am in a similar position to you though thankfully my marriage survived. Had infertility and IVF, now in my early 60s I love my freedom and my peaceful home and our lovely holidays. I’m glad you are enjoying your freedom too.

I was/am infertile. I was very upset at the time, for several years in fact. Felt I'd failed as a woman etc. You're right OP - it is misogynistic. The prevailing culture is that the ultimate in womanhood is bearing and caring for children. My overwhelming feeling was the failure and how to deal with it. It actually broke my marriage up

Ten years later, I am so over it. The thought of having lived through the last few years with small children is a horrifying one! The thought of the years to come, and what children will be facing makes me very sad. While it's a pity about my marriage, marriages end for all kinds of reasons and I doubt we'd still be together if we'd had children. He'd actually have made a bloody awful parent and I doubt I'd have been too much better. Obviously I'm concerned about old age. That's the main thing I'm sad about

But as for the here and now, I'm enjoying my freedom and not being a slave to boring routine. I like not having children.

You seem confused, OP. On the one hand you suggest men don’t want to be parents, therefore mustn’t be bothered by infertility and that this is ‘misogynistic’, based on posts on sm. On the other you complain about the narratives of ‘devastation’ on social media — you get how SM works, right, that it’s just Chloe from down the road posting on behalf of herself, not crafting some kind of Message of Hope? And that the age of the largest TikTok user base is 18-24, not a time when most people are considering children. (AND that, if we’re honest, the average is of TikTok posters is smaller than their shoe size, so I wouldn’t go on there looking for anything thoughtful.)

I feel very sorry for anyone struggling with infertility, but I think that if you want narratives of hope/survival, put them out there yourself.

I think men are generally less interested in having children that women. If I hadn’t wanted children, I’m pretty sure we wouldn’t have one. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t love her or that he is isn’t a good father (he is). He just doesn’t have that biological urge to have them.

I don't normally post on AIBU threads because they tend to give me a migraine, but this subject hits close to home.

All my tests came back okay. However, my DH has been diagnosed as subfertile, or otherwise known as functionally infertile, due to a sperm count of 11 million per millilitre of ejaculate. The few he does make are above average in every other measure, it's just the count is too low. And believe me when I say he is a broken man for it. He's got low T aswell which is not helping with the count and he's always struggled with low mood and motivation. Because the relationship between testosterone and sperm production is still not yet known, the only way to boost testosterone is to encourage his body to make testosterone. He has tried everything he can and there has no been no change in count. His body can be given all the ingredients it needs to make testosterone, but his body simply doesn't know how to make enough of it.

He cries himself to sleep. He hates himself. He self-deprecates every day. Every failed attempt to get me pregnant makes him feel less of a man. He will NEVER show any of these emotions to anyone except me and even then, he doesn't show all of them because he feels so embarrassed. Unfortunately whenever infertility is talked about, the focus is always on the woman. People forget that it takes two to tango and frankly it pisses me off that society has been so ignorant. Whether society likes it or not, men matter an awful lot and it's high-time they are bloody well listened to and cared for.

Not necessarily. I’ve been in those communities for years.

As someone who has/ is affected by fertility issues I don't see any positives. I think child free by choice is valid and there are many positives to being child free if you chose it. I did have my happy ending with one dc through ivf. I've met countless couples with infertility and I don't hear them speak of positives. Most are in fact devastated, however thats not to say that they (we) feel that way forever. Like any adverse experience people mostly deal with it and find a silver lining somewhere- whatever that lining is, it's very personal to everyone.

The coworker thing is one issue; however discussing it in the ward where presumably people around her wanted kids and were now facing infertility does in fact seem … like it was maybe quite insensitive.

What I said was that I felt lucky that this had happened to me rather than someone who would have found that additional factor to be devastating. Every person on the ward had kids themselves - I saw their families - and were in their late 40s and 50s, so outside of the normal window for fertility. Not that that makes it ok to be glib if indeed I had been glib, but I do not think that I was.

But noted. A 30 year old on an oncology ward shouldn’t express anything about their experience that isn’t “infertility is the worst thing imaginable”, how incredibly thoughtless of them.

The coworker thing is one issue; however discussing it in the ward where presumably people around her wanted kids and were now facing infertility does in fact seem … like it was maybe quite insensitive.

An example from my own history would be when I miscarried my first unplanned pregnancy. We were considering an abortion at the time (although we would likely have carried to term in the end, tbh) - now it would be inappropriate to discuss this when I was in the medical bay in the early pregnancy unit, surrounded by those who were going through miscarriages with babies they intentionally conceived.

To link it back to the Spain situation, if I were somehow in some sort of situation where I was in a room full of people waiting to find out if they could indeed move to Spain, if we all found out we couldn’t move to Spain, it would indeed be insensitive for me to say “well I didn’t want to move to Spain anyway, there are loads of good things about not living in Spain - in fact, living in Spain is quite rubbish to be honest” since many of the people in the room would be devastated to not to be able to move to Spain.

@Newname221 but the point is that, despite her situation, @fitzwilliamdarcy still wasn't allowed to express it in a positive light, eg the comment from her coworker. It's as if you weren't allowed to go to Spain but also had to pretend to be very upset about not being allowed to go to Spain.

I think its the opposite of misogynistic. The fact we live in a society where it would be pretty unthinkable for a man to admit his impotence seems pretty crappy to me.

This thread is a breath of fresh air.
My son was stillborn which absolutely destroyed me. I was in a very bad place about it for a long time and I've done lots of work to be able to enjoy life again. Which I do.
I've had two miscarriages since having him and no living children yet.
My son died due to having trisomy 13 and I now do volunteer work in this space. I heard a lot of 'I could only heal when I had my healthy child' but when that journey is difficult, you have to be able to see a light either way.
I'm feeling content in my life at the minute and although I do really want a healthy living child, that is proving very difficult so I do look at my life and what I will do and how I will enjoy it one way or another.
Love to everyone who has suffered on this thread in any way.