The Free Press
Women complain of the pressure of the biological clock—which dictates many of the choices we make like where to live, or whether to go for a promotion—and do all sorts of things to try to escape it, like freezing our eggs. Meanwhile, men skate blissfully through their twenties without so much as a second thought to family matters.
But imagine, for a moment, another solution. Imagine if, instead of ridding women of their biological clocks, we forced men to have them as well.
Below, Amelia Miller, a student studying intimacy and technology at Oxford, conducts a—well—ballsy thought experiment over what might happen if all men were obligated to get the snip, around when women’s fertility starts to drop.
We’re basically already in a sci-fi movie when it comes to making babies anyway. But feasibility and, you know, morality aside, Miller’s satire gets to an important point. Namely, “the real social problem that’s enabled by men’s nearly lifelong fertility: prolonged adolescence.” Hopefully we can solve it. Failing that, there’s always reproductive dictatorship.
A version of this story originally appeared in The Oxford Student.
—Suzy Weiss
Thousands of women will freeze their eggs this year, or thaw them if they’re ready to mate. Fertility interventions, like in vitro fertilization and intrauterine insemination, are becoming the norm for women who can afford them, and feminists praise the technology for freeing women from our biological constraints. But as women rush to the clinic, we should take a step back.
What exactly are women trying to delay? And why?
The common refrain is that women today want serious careers, aren’t willing to sacrifice ambition for motherhood, and need to borrow time. But the real problem isn’t that women’s biological timelines are too short—it’s that men’s and women’s timelines are mismatched. For years we’ve complained that women feel pressure that men just don’t. That’s because women’s fertility taps out around 40, while men can keep hope alive through 70-plus. Just ask Al Pacino, who had his fourth child last year at 83. It’s a sad fact of nature: Most women are eager to start a family before men are.
But why should women bend over backward to slow down their biological clocks, when we could more easily speed up men’s?
Imagine this: A young man of 22 visits his doctor for his annual physical. The doctor, acting in accordance with the law, informs him that sometime between the ages of 30–40, he will have to get a vasectomy. When, exactly, is up to chance. The odds will be set by the age distribution of the female fertility cliff—that is, the age after which women begin to struggle to reproduce. The authorities will roll the dice for each man when he’s 25, to give him ample time to prepare. And then, their date is set. Some men will have their tubes tied, to borrow a phrase, at 30. Some may be graced with a lucky break and get until 39. But none will glide through women’s prime reproductive years without having to worry that if they don’t have kids now, they’ll be out of the running forever.
In short, the clock will tick for men too.
Yes, I know, government-mandated vasectomies may, at first blush, read a tiny bit dystopian—but if we’re trying to level the playing field, is there any other way?
The vasectomy, after all, is a routine procedure—quick, safe, and reversible—though in the post-patriarchal society of this thought experiment, reversals will land you in jail. Sorry, guys! Egg extraction and IVF, on the other hand, come with a range of complications like mood swings and blood clots. Vasectomies are cheap, running about $1,500, while freezing eggs is pricey, ranging from $10,000 to $15,000 per cycle. From a cost and risk perspective, the superior social choice is clear.
I can hear the men, who already resist the male birth control pill, screaming: Are you kidding? A compulsory surgical intervention? In such an intimate domain? Oh, please. These are sacrifices that most women are quietly expected to make today. We take mind- and body-altering hormonal contraceptives or install intrauterine devices to make it easier for men, and women, to have fun. Not to mention what we go through for childbirth. Why shouldn’t men’s bodies be on the line for once?
With male skin in the game at last, we will finally start to address the real social problem that’s enabled by men’s nearly lifelong fertility: prolonged adolescence. Most women who freeze their eggs don’t want to delay starting a family. Some feel they have to put off parenting to advance at work because it’s still too hard to do both in today’s corporate culture. But many others freeze eggs because it’s simply too hard to find a man who knows what he wants and is ready to settle down during their fertility window. As anthropologist Marcia Inhorn reported in her recent book on the subject, 82 percent of women who froze their eggs were single, and “being single was why they froze their eggs.”
The mating market is inefficient when fertility incentives for men and women are so out of sync. While women have to get serious in their 30s, men can mess around for much longer without compromising their domestic ambitions—and no one bats an eye. I’m not talking about men in their mid-20s who, like women, are still figuring things out. It’s the “Seinfelds” (married at 45), or the “Hugh Grants” (wed at 57). And, most importantly, the men who approach 30, date women who they know want to settle down, yet still ask themselves and their girlfriends: What’s the rush?
Under the compulsory vasectomy regime, the rush will be clear.
In some ways, a long fertility leash is a privilege—most women envy the time men get to explore the world or build a career without worrying about finding a mate. But at some point, unbounded freedom can turn into a burden. With nothing to force maturation, boys wander. They report being confused and unhappy. As women grow up all around them, men seem to become stuck.
In a world of state-enforced fertility parity, we would all march to the clock’s steady beat. Men would quit fretting over whether and when to grow up—they would just do it.
We would see men thinking backward, the way women do today. “If I want two kids by 35, I need to be married by 31,” a single man might confess to a friend on the cusp of his thirtieth birthday. Thirty-plus bachelors would be pitied—“Poor thing, can’t he find someone to marry?” Men will jostle each other to catch the bouquet at friends’ weddings. We might even see a reversal of the age-old ultimatum: Men will tell their girlfriends to put a ring on it, or it’s over.
Impossible? Maybe. Unethical? Perhaps. Insane? Possibly. But when fertility harmony is just a court-ordered snip away, a girl can dream.
Amelia Miller is researching technology and intimacy at the Oxford Internet Institute. She was previously a tech investor.