Was it known to be a myth in the mid 80s? I didn’t check on it then, my wife was advised by her doctor, perhaps this was not well established at the time. Waiting didn’t hurt, there were other means of birth control to use for a month that don’t require abstinence.
I think it was probably not well established at the time. But I’m not sure. Which is to say, it’s not like your doctor was a quack or anything. It seems to me this was prevailing medical wisdom and still is in some places.
That’s what I assume. And once started medical myths have persistence. This one luckily was harmless in our case. I can see potential harm for others as a result of bad advice.
First of all, it wasn’t light, and second, yeah, I haven’t had sex with anyone but him this entire century– millennium, in fact (at least so far-- I could outlive him).
Also, FTR, I wasn’t on the pill at any point during our marriage, least of all when he was in Iraq, so the birth control I didn’t use wasn’t hormonal, and any stats regarding getting pregnant the first month off the pill are irrelevant, as are any cautions against trying until you have been off for 3 months.
He got back on December 23th, 2005, and by the time he had to attend his first drill at the reserve hall in February of 2006, we already knew I was pregnant. He had to tell his Staff SGT and company clerk, because he had to do some (minor) insurance paperwork, so the news whipped the company like fire at an Oragami convention, and he got a little teasing, and advice to get a paternity test.
Actually, IIRC, he shut people up with some quip about how his sperm just works that fast, and I wish I could remember it verbatim.
BTW, the larva turns 17 next week.
Oh no. We were both well aware that any single instance unprotected was a game of “Vatican Roulette”. We were just discussing teenager behaviour because her school staff was buzzing that a few of her students had skipped school that afternoon. Apparently before they got caught shoplifting at the local mall, they’d gone to someone’s house and had a BJ contest. Since she’d had a very sheltered life growing up, she was not aware that so many were that active. Teenagers will, however, take greater risks because even if they know the consequences, naturally “it won’t happen to them”. Especially if the first one or two times, nothing happens.
One statistic I read was that the changce of a pregnancy “catching” if sperm and egg are together at the same time is about 1 in 5. (YMMV) That’s better (worse?) odds than Russian Roulette and is probably what drives risky behaviour on the part of the less diligent. For every “it happened after one time” anecdote there are plenty of stories of conception taking months or more. I sort of wonder if there are other species that have the same problem - or do most animals more likely conceive every time the female goes into heat if there is an accomodating male? (I.e. when horse breeders pay for stud fees, how often is it not money well spent?) Is there something weird about human physiology?
I think that what’s weird about human physiology is that we don’t go into heat – humans are generally sexually interested whether they’re fertile or not. Most other species aren’t.
And, partly but not entirely because of that, there’s no easily perceptible signal by which to tell somebody’s fertile – even for the person themselves. A few get quite good at judging, but most female systems aren’t that predictable and don’t give clear signals. There are modern techniques that can improve the chances; but not only do those need to be learned (and some of them require equipment), but they don’t always work. Whereas a female cat in heat, or I gather a baboon or lots of other species, are really hard to miss; at least for males of the same species (the signal in some species may rely at least partly on scent, or on the right pattern of light flashes, or other things of the sort).
And there are still occasional misses.
When I read the thread title, the first thing that came to my mind was a theme from the Game of Thrones books (I never saw the TV series), multiple references to King Robert Baratheon having “strong seed”.
What they meant by that was not that he impregnated women easily, but that all his natural children strongly resembled him and could be expected to strongly resemble him. The context was accusations of infidelity against his wife, whose children with him bore no resemblance to him.
So, is that a thing? I’m not a scientist, but I’m thinking that if a man had lots of dominant genes, especially in the genes that determine obvious physical features, they maybe could be said to have “strong sperm” in that sense.
Ed Houben, off to a slow start but seemed to get the job done, over a hundred children, liked to do it the natural way.
One of my uncles looked nothing like grandfather or the other two boys (my dad and other uncle). My dad says they used to tease him that he’d been switched at the hospital. Yet my brother ended up looking very much like that uncle (chubby cheeks) whereas I look like my father. (and in case someone has some good jokes, my parents had left England long before my brother came along). However, my brother and I both have the right ear larger than the left, like my dad. So there are definite genetic components for appearance, but the whole point of genetics is “mix and match” depending on which bits get handed down. Perhaps some appearance genes are more dominant? Perhaps it depends whether the partner’s genes are generally more recessive?
My husband’s entire family is ethnically Sicilian, my husband has a crazy curly 'fro full of black hair. You can see the family resemblance in all of his uncles and cousins. We thought for sure our kid was going to be a dark-headed curly-haired boy. Nope. His hair is straight and dark blond, exactly matching my own. It’s the damndest thing. Except in the back of his head he has one curly patch that always creates problems when I’m trying to get his hair to lay flat!
I can’t explain what happened because nobody in my family has curly hair, but our kid doesn’t really look like either of us, or possibly he looks like both of us with such perfect integration that he looks like neither of us.
The first thing that came into mind for me was The Postman, but in context I think it meant “[sperm] undamaged by radiation”.
I often wonder about the (apocryphal) “He looks ******” . Perhaps the first group of hunter-gtherers to settle in a particular area are essentially the dominant ancestors of many of the locals - so the general facial appearance is a blend of those original settlers, or the wave of invaders who came centuries later, or, or…? There is always some mixing and matching with outsiders, but presumably in the more backwater regions, not so much.
Old habits die hard. My husband is one of the few cousins that didn’t marry another Italian.
And uh… there have been in past generations a fair amount of intermarrying. It’s a big family, when you count extended family we’re talking hundreds of people. His Aunt and Uncle were married, now divorced, but always cousins.
Speaking as someone of partly Italian descent - I’m not so sure Italians/Italian-Americans marry cousins any more than any other ethnic group. What I’m sure of is that we are more likely to know distant relatives than many other ethnic groups.* On that side of my family, I know all my second cousins , most of the second cousins once removed and some third cousins. On the other side of my family, I know my first cousins and their kids. I could have easily married a second cousin and just thought his family came from the same town as mine.
*There is an Italian-American politician whose first marriage was annulled by the Catholic church because they supposedly didn’t know they were (second) cousins when they got married. If he was any other ethnicity, I might believe it
There is a term in animal breeding called “prepotency”, a desirable feature, which means the sire appears to have an unusually strong genetic influence on his get, no matter the dam. More inbred males with more dominant homozygous genes could be likely to be this way, I’m guessing. It is desirable because male breeding animals are much more carefully winnowed than females. Only the very superior are generally used for stud.
Justin Morgan, the sole founder of the Morgan horse breed in the 18th century, was famous for this. His get typically looked and acted much like him, and you can see this plainly in his more important sons who were much memorialized in drawings and paintings. There is a Justin Morgan statue at the U of Vermont horse farm, and stallions are often posed there to show off their resemblance, to this day.
In bulls, testicular circumference is thought to be a good way to measure semen production.
In humans, the Prader Testicle Orchidometer is used. The doctor palpates a teste while feeling the beads with his other hand. Size is noted.
On first glance, I read that as “testicle odometer”. Hmmm…
@kayaker I have always admired the breadth of your interests and experiences. You’ve come through again. 
Yes. It’s evolution in action. Those with the strongest sperm have a higher probability of passing on that trait to offspring.
Yes and no. It’s rare that sperm from more than one man are actually racing to the same finish line at the same time. (Hmmm) So presumably appearance and pwers of persuasion are more iportant in the level of success, considering after that a billion or more sperm from that one person are working towards the same goal.
The presumption would be that fertilization happens whenever the egg and sperm are in the same location, given that there’s a billion sperm to choose from. The only detriments would be much lower motility or sperm count, meaning the sperm never get there. Pregnancy does not result after fertilization, presumably, from lack of implantation. Miscarriage - sometimes - from defective genetic material?