to ask: what if men could also get pregnant?

[ThisIsClare]

Saw this question on another site and wondered what, indeed, would have happened, or, rather, how society and men's and women's roles within it would have evolved, had men also been able to get pregnant.

What if both men and women could bear a child, but(and this is quite important to this question) it were down to fate who got pregnant every time? What would society look like today?

My mum always used to say that if it was men who gave birth, the human race would have died out thousands of years ago!🤣

Most definitely a massive, massive change in the maternity wards! First thought that came straight into my head!

Proper pain relief being given and patients not being dismissed rudely even though they know what they are talking about.

Not being left in a bay after giving birth forgotten about.

Not being made to feel so guilty it triggers depression over breast feeding.

Mainly, nothing like it is now!!

Not being made to feel like you've committed the ultimate sin by pressing the bed buzzer for something really important!!

I saw a made up thing on Fb about this once. There was a breastfeeding (chestfeeding?) lounge in the swanky city office, with a bar, fridges, leather armchairs etc and lots of business type conversation going on alongside the feeding.

Realistically it would be outsourced like the rest of the work men don’t want to do. They’d just take permanent, side effect free, birth control and leave the childbearing to women or poor men that they could pay to be surrogates.

There would be a section on Strava for childbirth

Joking aside, I'm torn between maternity care being better, or actually being worse. There's the man flu effect (epidurals for braxton-hicks? ) or would it be bad because half of the birthing population refused to get help/acknowledge problems so why bother providing services for it?

Lower birth rate, less accidental pregnancies, more even split custody arrangements, more involvement in parenting. Would be very interesting.

@BabblativeBean

If men had evolved to bear children, I suspect that women would have been done away with long ago.

The sex industry would disagree there. Not forgetting the small matter of childcare and eldercare.

I think there are 2 different thought experiments here. Firstly what if men had always given birth as often as women - what would society look like? Then an alternative scenario where suddenly men in our society now could give birth as often as women.

In my view it has always been the power imbalance that fuels the behavioural issues- stemming ultimately from physical strength differences and the effect of testosterone on behaviour . I don’t think men are significantly more liable to abuse power than women, I think they are just more likely to have it . If both men and women had always given birth and if men and women were equal physically there is no reason to presume a man would be more likely to avoid child birth than a women, or more likely to outsource it.

If men in our current society suddenly acquired the ability to give birth without anything else changing , then I agree with the points here about it might not be an equalising step forward overall.

I know the point of this discussion is to go ‘woe is me, men are cruel to women’, but in reality this discussion and topic is entirely different. If men and women could get pregnant, society would have developed entirely differently. We’d have to go back to the start of mankind and consider each era of human life and how it would be implicated by the change. There wouldn’t really be men and women...we’d essentially be a hermaphroditic species where roles were equal. Everything would be so very different, it’d have nothing to do with just pretending things were all the same but magically men grow a baby too. Maybe babies born to men would be shunned since it’s not from the maternal parent...assuming the concept of maternal even applies? Who knows how humanity would have developed under such different circumstances.

I think being pregnant would be an honour and pregnant men would be seen as higher than a pregnant woman. In ages past (and some cultures still) in the way a male birth was something to celebrate the man getting pregnant would be the ultimate way to conceive. Female born would be a slur people would use to insult others. Probably called something like Bitch Birth.

I don’t think it would make things better for women. In fact I think it would make worse.

A pregnant woman would look bad for the man who didn’t get pregnant himself. So he would resent her.

Hospital nurseries would make a come back - they'd ring a bell, tell the staff to take baby so they could sleep for as long at they wanted - and without judgement.

They wouldn't just expected to care for a helpless infant after surgery or hours/days of being awake & going through a major event ( birth)

There would be a much more dignified pain free method developed. You can bet that periods would also have effective pain relief.

lol, interesting thread. I am heavily pregnant and I have found it very hard. I have said to my DH on multiple occasions now that unless there are great advancements in medical science, that mean he can grow and carry baby, that this will be our only child!

My mother always said if men had to give birth there wouldn't be any children.

If men didn’t need women for sex and reproduction they’d wipe us out.

Be careful what you wish for.