There a vasectomy can be reversed or not depends on the tissue heals & scars, and there is no way to predict his in advance. No one, male or female, should ever depend on being able to reverse a surgical sterilization if they change their mind.
I don’t think it would cause any measurable effect. In fact, the reason why there isn’t one now is because ‘Big Pharma’ has done countless studies which show that it would be enormously unpopular and a guaranteed huge money loser. A male birth control pill would simply be considered too emasculating and a PR nightmare to market. What can I say, us guys are selfish, hypocritical pigs! 
If it became popular (which apparently it never would) birth rates would skyrocket. Men simply don’t have the same motivation to remember to take birth control (or to actually take it when they do remember) that women have.
And a once a month pill? I can barely remember to–shit! I just realized I haven’t paid the rent yet. I’m not even joking! See why male birth control wouldn’t work?
Well, think about how many guys get upset in child support threads where they point out how they have little control over the choice of having a child, because the decision to have the child, once conceived, is entirely the woman’s. This would be a way for a guy to cover his ass, without a vasectomy. No worries about accidentally impregnating someone and getting hit up for child support–you’ve got control over your fertility. That’s got to be a plus for some guys, no?
assuming teenage boys can’t get it (age restrictions, side affects, parents are blind to the obvious) - not much will change - adults who wish to block conception are usually already ahead of the curve at the timing and preparedness.
I’m sure the MRA types would find some other reason to justify wanting to abandon their children.
Please give some citations. I think you will find that the condom is “enormously unpopular” and “too emasculating” and men would use an alternative to those if available.
Those are reasons why it might become popular. I was taking as granted Hail Ants’ claim that pharmaceutical companies have looked into it and decided that it wouldn’t. I agree that there are many reasons for men to want male contraceptive pills to exist, and have no idea whether they would actually become popular.
My point is that however much men might be motivated to take them, they will never be more motivated than women. Becoming a father when you don’t want to is undoubtedly upsetting, expensive, and traumatic, but becoming a mother when you don’t want to is necessarily more so. But according to Wikipedia and the CDC, the failure rate of the female contraceptive pill in real life is 9% per year, while the failure rate when used perfectly is 0.3%. That’s a lot of women forgetting to take the pill (or not paying attention when the doc says not to rely on it when taking antibiotics), despite being the ones who bear the greatest consequences. Men who fully intend to take the pill would forget too, and they’d forget more often than women, because the consequences for them, while severe, would be much less.
Ah, as strange as it may sound there’s a huge difference between merely putting a sock over your johnson versus talking a pill which ‘depotenizes’ your biological man-ness. A condom is a simple, tangible thing, albeit annoying. And it’s hardly emasculating. If anything it’s sort of like ‘sheathing your man-sword for her protection!’ Medication has a much bigger psychological implication. Sort of like the difference between listening to white noise to help you sleep vs. popping an Oxycodone.
If a male birth control pill ever is marketed I think it will be the biggest bomb since the Edsel and New Coke!
Again, I’m not for a second defending or denying the hypocrisy of this, just stating the realism (IMHO)…
Disagree almost completely.
A condom is a total downer to use. A med that, per the OP, has zero effect other than sterility would be awesome and a big hit with a huge number of men. For them it’d be returning to the worry-free sex of the 60s. Or the worry-free sex of the vasectomized, but without the permanent part.
To be sure, there is a subset of men that intend to have sex with whomever and intend to ignore any offspring that may result, at least to the degree the legal system lets them get away with it. That group would not be interested in this med any more than they’re interested in condoms.
But for the majority of single or cheating men that *do *want sex and *don’t *want pregnancies & all the ensuing complications, this would be a MASSIVE improvement in their ability to achieve their goals.
It’d also provide a (mostly) fool-proof way for married men to ensure the wife doesn’t have an oops. I suspect a huge fraction of kids conceived in marriage would never have happened if the man had gotten what he actually secretly wanted in his heart of hearts. If these meds could be had in secret a lot of “mysterious” infertility would occur in marriages across the land.
Which group of men is larger & which has more impact on the birth rate is not a question I’m qualified to answer. But net net almost anything which reduces individual fertility ought to depress total birth rates.
I don’t think that would make the birth rate sky rocket, though. Likely, if there were a male birth control pill, many (or most) women would continue to use their own methods. I think this would just be an added way of ensuring no unwanted pregnancy among men for whom it was a priority. The same way a woman might be on the pill but also use condoms, especially before being in a longterm relationship.
I could see that, too. Interesting implications if a woman gets pregnant and the guy is on the pill…
That is a terribly cynical view of married life. When you say a “huge fraction”, what do you mean? 5%? 20%? 50%? 75%? Do you really think men default to not wanting children, and women default to active deception to get them, even within the framework of marriage?
This just doesn’t match my experience at all.
As I said above, I think the timing of pregnancies would change a lot, and a great many people would have their babies a little later, and maybe with a different person. But I think they’d still have them. And I think lots of guys who maybe currently roll their eyes and say “I dunno, she talked me into it” would actively opt in, if that was the only path to fatherhood. Jocularly decrying responsibility can be a funny way to deal with anxiety about parenthood, but most men I know who are fathers wanted to be fathers.
Many men don’t trust women to take them either. Women have a choice whether to be a parent or not once they become pregnant. Men do not. Privilege. Check it.
I not sure where anyone would find hard data on how many births are “accidently on purpose”. The only person that knows the answer for certain is the mother and she has every reason to keep her mouth shut. In reviewing women’s health oriented sites and mommy boards the feedback around similar questions seems to be that it’s not a black and white calculation for women in stable relationships. It’s all about probabilities and if a woman wants children and the man is delaying in being fully on board with making kids women, especially women in their 30’s, will take unilateral action in timing their birth control and related measures that skew the odds much more heavily in favor of making babies. These are not scenarios where children are unwanted, they are “wanted” hypothetically… just not right now. In those scenarios the large majority of the time the man, assuming he’s a decent guy, will square his shoulders, smile and climb onboard the baby train.
If a man was taking birth control in the aforesaid scenario those AOP babies would never happen. How many kids are born like this? Who knows, but if a fertile woman in (what she perceives as ) a committed relationship really wants a baby she will find a way to make that happen regardless of her SO’s lack of hard commitment.
One, I am not sure that impressions gained from a dude reviewing women self reporting on the internet means anything at all: there’s about 5 layers of confounding variable in there.
Two, even if your impressions are accurate, I disagree that that means the AOP pregnancies would never happen. I think a lot of mildly reluctant fathers are more reluctant about the exact timing (and possibly the other parent) more than they are reluctant to ever be fathers. I think there are a lot of people–male and female–who are loose about BC because they are ambivalent, and leaving it up to chance is a way to get what they want without having to 100% deliberately make the leap.
Now, having had a child or two might well mean that a man never participates in a planned pregnancy–but had he reached the age of XX with no kids, he might well. And I think that’s what would happen.
Your points are well taken, the data on this is nebulous at best. This only point I might disagree with you on is your assumption that eventually the man will want kids at age XX these days. I think this is wishful thinking. There is little compelling economic or lifestyle reason in advanced economies for a productive and self supporting man in 2015 to *want *babies before they are born. Some men do want kids very much but in the main the reason most men want babies is because they wives want babies, and they want their wives to be happy.
Men have tendency to get comfortable in their current scenarios. If a guy gets into his late 30’s or early 40’s sans kids I don’t think you should be counting on some male version of the male biological clock to kick in. If a pill exists that allows the man to keep his comfortable lifestyle he’ll take it.
Astro, you are just wrong about this. Plenty, maybe even most, men want kids and would feel their life is incomplete without them. And men generally reap more rewards and have fewer risks than women fave. The main difference is that men may not feel as much of a time crunch.
I would guess that most married men, excluding those who are specifically married to people committed to a childfree life, expect and want kids sooner than later. That’s a big part of why people get married these days.
I don’t dispute most of that, but what about the common phenomenon of men leaving after impregnating a woman (before or after she gives birth), and/or the phenomenon (possibly widespread, but we don’t know) of women “oopsing” themselves into pregnancy, and/or the phenomenon of men with no plans (or no current plans) to impregnate anyone, but intoxication or something similar ruins their plans?
Also, the longer someone goes without doing something, then, all things being equal, the less likely they are to do it at all. In the case of fertility, some people delay parenthood and then die before it can occur, others delay parenthood and then become infertile for one reason or another, and many more delay parenthood and become used to their lives, with no plans to change them so dramatically. All are written about by social scientists, particularly the last one.
My belief is that desire for children falls along a curve. If a man is still dithering about having kids into his mid 30’s and early 40’s his actions will speak louder than his words. A lot of women quite reasonably think men in these age cohorts must want babies because that’s what the men will usually say when quizzed by women. They often say this to either be socially accepted or placate their SO. “No I don’t really want kids” is a conversation and relationship killer on many levels.
Men do not have a biological push to “have kids”, they have a biological push to have sex. The lifestyle rationale to have kids is weaker in modernity than it has even been in the history of mankind. Most men will go along with their SO desires but there are IMO a substantial group of men, who if they had the option to opt out at a certain age will take this route.
Would men really be so gutless that they’d take the pill in secret? Why not say “Honey, it’s not fair that you should keep taking the pill–which has side effects. It’s my turn to take responsibility.”
Of course, we’re assuming the male pill would have NO side effects, unlike every medication ever…
And what if the baby’s old enough for pre-school & Mom thinks its time to get back in the working world? Most men would be happy but some do prefer the little lady at home. Would they stop taking the pill in secret?
I see married men who can’t communicate with their wives. And single men who’ll be risking a bunch of nasty infections.