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.

There are men who identify as women who want validation through the process of gestation. It's the validation that matters, not having and bringing up a child.

Given that there are women who identify as men who gestate a baby whilst still taking powerful cross-sex hormones, regardless of the effect on the foetus, and remembering the aforementioned breastfeeding males, I wouldn't bet on men who identify as women being all that worried about the effects of medical interventions and substances on the foetus.

And if present trends continue in many countries, I can't see any legislation being brought in to stop them.

The baseline assumptions on this thread are silly

This would be ethically wrong because the baby cannot consent to that horror show. The drugs involved to stop rejection alone could be catastrophic to a developing fetus! Meanwhile pregnant women aren't allowed to eat cheese or take thrush medication. Beyond a joke.

It is all just a fetish for these vile men.

I think any meaningful change to motherhood penalty would have to be if every man could possibly get pregnant.

And there were the amount of births from men that there are women, and that men were still men, like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Junior.

So this idea of motherhood penalty disappearing by male pregnancy will always be a fantasy.

OP, I think by "experts" you mean "salesmen."

Two quotes from the rat article stand out for me:

"While Zhang says it was not her intention to explore the possibility of male pregnancy in humans, bioethicists who spoke with The Scientist say that the authors should have been aware that some would interpret their study as a first attempt at just that. "

However unlikely the possibility of male pregnancy is, it doesn't mean its not an interesting thought experiment regarding pay gap, motherhood penalty etc.

A second, most illuminating quote:

"“This study certainly gives one much to ponder from the philosophical to the logistical,” says Kelly. “But one obvious conclusion is that females are not simply males with a uterus, as any biologist could have told you prior to this study being conducted. -Clint Kelly, a biologist at the Université du Québec à Montréal who studies studies sexual selection and evolutionary biology.

Well well well!

There's one in the eye for the 'scientists say sex isn't binary' brigade.

Don’t be so bloody daft.
Until they can give a Man a wider pelvis, an ability to soften ligaments, double their blood supply and not reject a foreign body leeching from their bones and tissues,
it’s not going to happen - which means it’s NEVER going to happen.
How are they going to change millions of years of evolution? Pregnancy is a dangerous business in bodies that are made for it.

What on earth makes you think this?

It would be dangerous, unethical and immoral.

Unfortunately, people do dangerous, unethical and immoral things all the time.

Depending on the legal, social and political systems in the places they live or can get access to, and their status in those systems, they are sometimes permitted and even encouraged to do those things.

I know that a few hundred years ago nobody imagined we would be able to create flying vehicles to travel between continents in a few hours or put a man on the moon, and I'm am sure that future generations of humans will achieve things that we don't imagine to be possible now.

But at the same time I think some people are confusing science with magic.

I believe there are limits to what humans will be able to achieve with new technology, and changing sex is one of them. Travelling to space is one thing. Overriding hundreds of millions of years of evolution to change sexually dimorphic mammalian reproduction is quite another. There are tons of things doctors don't understand about bog standard conception and pregnancy in the female body. To think they could recreate those conditions well enough to allow a male body to gestate and birth a baby is utterly bonkers. Even assuming that medical ethics has become a thing of the past, which it would have to in order for this type of experimentation to even be permitted.

And quite frankly, even if scientists were clever enough to achieve this, wouldn't their exceptional ability be put to better use devising a way to prevent catastrophic climate change and the resulting extinction of human and animal species, rather than helping trans women to give birth?

This dystopia has some road left to travel I'm sure; until eventually the buffers of reality are hit.

I think that one of the buffers of reality that will eventually be hit is that no hormones, surgery or medical intervention of any kind will ever cause a human or any other mammal to change sex.

By changing sex I mean become capable of performing the opposite role in human reproduction, because that is what sex is.

Even if this becomes a possibility, I can't see many men wanting to go through with having their penis removed, a transplant operation, and then all that pregnancy and childbirth involves.
Transwomen are a tiny minority, and within that, only a minority of them are likely to both want and be medically suitable for a womb transplant.
So, to answer your OP I don't think it would have any effect on the gender pay gap.

Transwomen will be able to get a life-changing womb transplant in the 'near future', leading fertility experts have claimed.
Only tiny modifications would be needed to make it a reality for men too, according to world-renowned voices in the transplantation field.

What "tiny modifications" do they mean? None at all, right?

Given the utter lack of studies on testing drugs on pregnant women - because it would be unethical - how are they going to suddenly know that a man taking a massive cocktail of fuck knows what is OK for the foetus? That's just for starters.

Given the utter lack of studies on testing drugs on pregnant women - because it would be unethical - how are they going to suddenly know that a man taking a massive cocktail of fuck knows what is OK for the foetus? That's just for starters.

They may not know. They may not even look. See also the lack of serious research into the effects and results of "gender affirmative healthcare".

It depends whether "trans people" are regarded as a special, elite, privileged group who are allowed to do things others aren't.

It's 2150 and i've been dead for about 100 years so couldn't give a toss as to ethics or what ifs. I'm just bones!

bizarrely i still had this as a paste option as it was the last thing I copied yesterday for a different thread:

A SQUAT grey building of only thirty-four stories. Over the main entrance the words, CENTRAL LONDON HATCHERY AND CONDITIONING CENTRE, and, in a shield, the World State's motto, COMMUNITY, IDENTITY, STABILITY.

The enormous room on the ground floor faced towards the north. Cold for all the summer beyond the panes, for all the tropical heat of the room itself, a harsh thin light glared through the windows, hungrily seeking some draped lay figure, some pallid shape of academic goose-flesh, but finding only the glass and nickel and bleakly shining porcelain of a laboratory. Wintriness responded to wintriness. The overalls of the workers were white, their hands gloved with a pale corpse-coloured rubber. The light was frozen, dead, a ghost. Only from the yellow barrels of the microscopes did it borrow a certain rich and living substance, lying along the polished tubes like butter, streak after luscious streak in long recession down the work tables.

"And this," said the Director opening the door, "is the Fertilizing Room."

I wrote a story about men giving birth when I was at school over 30years ago, and what happened to society as a result. There was no egalitarian outcome then either. Women found themselves in a form of servitude having still to do all the household management and working and the childcare post birth too. The man was so distraught at the alien style birth that he had ptsd

It was all fiction but of 16 year old me
could recognise that as the likely outcome

This thread is great - you all express what I think/feel but have not the knowledge or eloquence to express.

My two’pennarth is: it’s all fucking pie in the sky, a fantasy for a very niche group —of fetishists—

The “5-10 years” comment is frankly laughable - I’m not sure why anyone would take this guy seriously - as a pp said, he’s simply touting for business.

OK I'll bite.

How do we get from 2023 where this is not possible to a 2150 where it is possible without performing highly unethical experiments on the unborn?

Whether or not it comes to pass, I think the thought experiment is interesting, thank you OP. I remember similar discussions about IVF. When society can choose the father of their baby without needing to DTD, over time would that have a significant effect on mate choices? In this thread, the question is in the world men have babies, what else changes? I think if male gestation became widespread then it would have an impact. In other areas, as soon as men come on the scene perceived value shoots up (computer programming is one that springs to mind). The lowest paid work of all is care, which is also nearly exclusively done by females. It is also distinctly avoided by men so remains lowest paid.

So there is the issue of evolved preferences. Women who can't have children but become mothers are still doing the care work. Society/genes, who knows what the causes are, almost certainly a mixture of the two. Evolved preferences take generations to change, but of course culture changes far more rapidly.

I loved every moment of being pregnant and of giving birth (both times). I think the vast majority of women would not give that experience away,. I am the main breadwinner in my family and don't much like it. DH and I have basically swapped roles and I think it sucks. He does his fair share, 100% of the cooking, washing and most of the childcare. But if it was a financial option for us, I'd be the main carer in a heartbeat.