To wonder if men giving birth could actually end the motherhood penalty

[ReginaRegina]

Obv we're talking a fair few years from now.

My prediction is that, despite all the talk about male privilege, a lot of women wouldn't actually want to be the main breadwinner. However, it would certainly create more choice in terms of shared parenting.

I have close to zero doubt that the first man will give birth to a child in my lifetime.

A man cannot give birth ! Period !

You lost me at ‘when women become men’.

If / when they develop the necessary tech and procedures to allow a foetus to gestate in a pseudo-uterus or transplanted uterus inside a male body (definitely not happening any time soon), the process will be medically hugely complicated.

Any man who does it will be feted as a hero and cared for throughout the gestation by endless medical attention. He will be supported by his employer and the community as someone who requires serious constant medical intervention.

Meanwhile pregnant women will be told to suck it up and get on with it, and that they have it easy compared to pregnant men.

i love it when men think all pregnancy takes is a uterus. Bung one in a bloke and bobs your uncle. It’s pitiful really, the ignorance of these silly men of what actually happens within the female body during pregnancy even outside the uterus. The myriad processes and changes that happen and that cannot be transplanted. And as for giving birth! No inverted penis wound is capable bros! Another fetish fantasy bites the dust. Cope harder.

The motherhood penalty isn’t, for the most part, down to giving birth.

See, for example: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/718565#:~:text=We%20estimate%20child%20penalties%20in,10%25%20and%20decrease%20over%20time.

Regardless, I don’t think many men would opt to bear their children over the ease of having a woman do it, even if medical advances made it an equivalent physical burden to a woman carrying.

I was part of an experiment once that looked at public perceptions of whether different potential scientific advances were a good idea. Men being able to get pregnant was one of them. All the women in my focus group thought it was a great idea, none of the men did! The results of all the focus groups showed a huge difference between men’s and women’s opinion, with women much more in favour. It was the only question that had a significant difference of opinion between the sexes. I think only a tiny number of men (even transwomen) would actually choose to do it, so even if the motherhood penalty was about pregnancy, I don’t think it would have a significant impact on it.

Remind me again how you squeeze a baby out through a penis

I'm guessing there's probably a novel, out there somewhere where all children are created in test tubes.

Indeed there is, @ReginaRegina , most famously The Matrix.

Made by the Warchowski sisters (formally Brothers) who plough some of their vast fortune back into the trans industry I believe? I think they personally fund some kind of foundation or clinic or something, even though they don't say a huge amount about the issue publically (unlike, for example, Elliott Page).

The thing is, if there are is no shortage of women in the world who are not just perfectly able to have children, and millions of babies are born each year, then what is the purpose of developing the possibility of men doing so?

It is not going to benefit human kind. It won't stop women giving birth, or even being forced to have babies against their will. It certainly isn't for the good of the baby. It's going to benefit only a very small number of men, for reasons that are, frankly, nefarious at best.

So why is it such a priority, suddenly and exactly who is funding it?

You don't squeeze a baby out through a penis, you perform a caesarian section.

As to which countries would allow implanting a womb into a man and attempting to grow a foetus in it, Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand and India for definite.

Men who identify as women are given powerful drugs in order to breastfeed babies in several countries, including the UK. Already.

But in general

1. hardly any men who don't identify as women would want to gestate a baby
2. the reasons men who identify as women would want to do so have nothing at all to do with helping women, as a PP has pointed out
3. again as a PP had noted, pregnancy and birth are a small part of the motherhood penalty - it's succeeding years of caregiving that fall mainly on women that is the major part.

So even if some men succeed in gestating and birthing babies, that will do bugger all to improve the position of women.

I'm guessing there's probably a novel, out there somewhere where all children are created in test tubes.

Yes it’s called Brave New World and it’s incredibly dystopian.

I'm fairly convinced it's a motherhood penalty. Another factor is that WC women tend to go into low paid jobs whilst WC men often do very well. A bricklayer can earn £45k nowadays and loads more in big cities. Self employed tradesmen earn more than graduates on average.

You’ve got this completely the wrong way round. These low paid jobs are low paid because it’s predominantly women who do them. Girls who don’t know what they want to do get pushed into care work. Boys get pushed into trades. Bricklaying, for example, is no more complex or worthwhile than childcare (literally growing children’s brains) but one is very well paid and the other is not. It’s sexism, pure and simple.

The men hypothetically 'giving birth' would be the ones with a sexually motivated pregnancy fetish. There's far too many of them for my liking, however if we rely on a few men with pregnancy fantasy paraphillia's to keep the human race going - We're fucked.

It's often clear however from the threads on here with posters talking about feeling privileged to be able to hit the gym/pursue hobbies whilst the kids are at school. I hated office work. So fucking dull! I'd not want to do that for another 35 years.

Ah, another thread resenting mothers.

Why shouldn’t a woman who has spent possibly a decade of her life caring for small children round the clock, go to the gym in the five hours of the day when she is not caring for children once they finally start school? A childless woman has six hours every evening and all weekend to pursue her own hobbies and go to the gym.

The men who would opt for this are not men who would lessen women's burden.
They would insist on 24 hr care and assistance as their right !
They 'd probably get it too.

Any man who did this, like men who try to simulate breast feeding, are doing it for themselves and have no consideration of the risks and harms to the baby. Pity any poor baby who exists purely to validate a man and whose needs come so secondary to theirs.

Hah HAH feminists regineregine sure has checkmated you and all your arguements re motherhood penalty/discrimination/the gender pay gap.

Join us next week when we'll be discussing how dogs can become cars and the impact this will have on climate change.

I’m intrigued by the hormonal problems that people think are similar to providing everything a man would need to mimic a gestating woman. Totally ridiculous. Does anyone really think that you can stick a female womb in a man and add hormones and then the result will work just like a woman?? It’s laughable.

If you stick a jet engine on your Ford focus and poor the appropriate fuel over the top are you going to fly? Would you think it was a great vehicle to carry your children on the school run?

Men can't give birth.

Not even worth engaging.

It would take some staggering medical breakthroughs. Gestation isn't just about a uterus. Its an enormously complex system from to how the immune system adapts to a foreign entity growing inside the body to how the brain and endocrine system interact. All of these are different in female bodies.
You'd practically need to replace and regenerate the entire body on a cellular level. That's not in our lifetime or just a few decades away.

There are quite a few (!!!) women with wombs and ALL the associated support systems who can’t carry a baby. Are you suggesting that in 5 years time they will be fixed by the magical remarkable clip in plug’n’play mythical wonder womb?

Don’t be daft.

That experiment on rats is disgusting. And pointless.

Gestation outside the human body would be easier, safer for the baby, and closer to a natural gestation than gestation inside a male body.

While the medical science could certainly one day be developed to make gestation inside a male body possible, the majority of the medical interventions and drugs would be administered to stop the male body's natural reaction to reject the foreign material that had been implanted. Those drugs would obviously enter the baby's bloodstream with a negative effect on the developing immune system.

All the other interventions and drugs would be about mimicking what the female body does naturally in terms of providing the developing baby with all the nutrition and hormones needed. That could be done more accurately and safely in a tank.

The fundamental responsibility of any parent is to put the baby's best interests before your own. There is no circumstance under which it is in any baby's best interests to be gestated in a male body and therefore subjected to all the additional treatments and hormones and hormone blockers that would need to be administered. Therefore any man who wants to pursue this option is de-facto not fit to be a parent.

It also assumes that mothers spend their days doing yoga and lunches.
Some of us are still in those bloody offices. And those who do stay home are doing the childcare that those who work in offices have to pay for.
Being a mother isn't some get out of jail free card to get out of working.
This is a common MRA talking point- the idea that women all lead this life of leisure that men pay for. It has no basis in reality.