My cousin said only women get sad over fertility issues but not men, true or not?

[DanaPonds]

The topic about infertility somehow came up and my female cousin said only we get sad over it because wanting kids is a women's thing. She thinks more men would either be happy or be indifferent if they couldn't ever father a child. She also thinks that since we're always the ones rushing into marriage and kids (due to biological clock), if it wasn't for us reminding him of having kids... men wouldn't want to naturally have kids on their own pace without a woman bringing up the topic first.

I think I saw a male poster too at some point that claimed the same thing... that an infertile man wouldn't get that sad. What do you think? Is that claim accurate or not? I would like to think men aren't that much different.

True... more men would be happy to be infertile

False... more men still want kids

[Boromir]

Men also suffer from infertility. They just might to brush it off as men are taught to be tough.

[LiamJHayden]

Just from my perspective as a guy who is congenitally sterile, I'd say that your cousin is being rather presumptuous.

[Anonymous]

No way. To be fair, infertility has not been a problem for me - with four kids. However, although all the pregnancies in my case were unplanned, I remember when their moms told me that they were pregnant, yes, I was nervous, but I was also wildly happy.

It is sort of the strangest mix of anxiety and joy - and I would not have changed a thing. Plus, there is no greater feeling than when they put that little gift in your arms. No joke, when they put my first child in my arms, I literally cried. He was the most beautiful little thing I had ever seen.

Plus, honestly, there is evolution at work. The human male's natural instinct is to impregnate a female - even when intellectually he knows that he does not want to. For the human male, putting his sperm inside a female, in effect taking control of her body, is just instinctive.

Grant, we are supposed to have moved past our mere instincts and be something better than animals. Yet that part of us is still there. Tell me that a woman I am with is - or worse still that I am - infertile, and you just feel less than complete.

So nope, your cousin is not right. Any man who reflects on it wants to be fertile and even having - as I have done - casual sex, that underlying instinct to make a baby adds something. Hard to put into words, but nonetheless real for that.

[DanaPonds]

Thank you for the well explained evolution in the male species. Yeah, we wouldn't have survived as a species if it weren't for you guys too.

[Opinion Owner]

Thanks. Yes, it is sort of a cooperative process, you might say. It is - for men - both an evolutionary aspect but also an individual emotional/psychological one.

[HelpfulWoman]

your cousin is a fucking moron.

[Anonymous]

I say false.