Very, very few people spend that much on infertility treatments: most stop the process long before they are mortgaging their houses. That said, infertility is much, much cheaper than a child. A round of IVF costs about the same as six months daycare: the price of a round of insemination can cost LESS than the potential monthly increase in a person’s insurance premium when they have a child.
I’m actually shocked–shocked–at how inexpensive fertility treatments are. We recently went through an IVF that involved genetically mapping all the chromosomes of our embryos. The cost for that whole part of the procedure–the biopsy of the 3-day embryos, the courier to New York, the analysis with 24 hour turn around–all that cost under $4000. People–middle class people–spend more than that on vacations. There’s nothing crazy with spending that kind of money to make sure your child doesn’t have a painful and debilitating disease.
Incidentally, my comparison to cancer came from a recent thread on this board in which a person taking time off from work to get fertility treatments was compared to taking time to get chemotherapy treatments for cancer, which I thought was patently ridiculous.
Having a career as an NFL quarterback is not equivalent to raising a child.
And I know this has been explained to you multiple times, but actually it is a disability. Being infertile means that you are not fertile. Fertility is a normal ability of a human body. Lacking that ability is abnormal. Lacking an ability = disability. No, you don’t need a special placard for your car for it, but saying it’s not a disability is simply inaccurate.
PS: My “$100,000 fertility treatment” comments above were not intended to imply that I think most fertility treatments cost anywhere near that much. If someone is pursuing multiple IVFs and spending that kind of cash on it, then I am a little bit WTF about that, but in general yes, fertility treatments are quite reasonable and affordable.
This was true for me also. I never got the whole OMG babies thing until something switched on for me around age 26. Then it was on my brain all the time. I explained it to my husband by telling him, “think about how much you thought about sex pre vs. post puberty. I am now ‘post baby-puberty.’” Sure, some of it is conditioning but a lot is biology too, like sex. People want sex even if they don’t grow up in a sex-crazed culture.
I do think the analogies to having to live a sex-free life are apt. It is not a ‘tragedy’ in the sense that people do it all the time, people even choose to do it, but for some people it is harder than others, and it is a loss. Some people have more of a drive than others, for some it is about the cuddling, but others really want that biological urge satisfied. It is not the same as wanting a material possession, and I don’t think spending the money on a house or college is morally superior to spending it on a baby. Money is money, it is only worth what it gets you.
What % of the population folks play sports at an elite level and consider it part of their genetic destiny? A slightly smaller % vs. those who have/want to have children. Apples and wrenches.
OK, but can you understand being bummed out about it? Because what I’m hearing from you and Dio is, “It’s not a disability, there’s not even anything wrong with it, so I don’t get why people are upset at all.”
There’s a middle ground between “deserving of sympathy akin to a loved one dying” and “deserving of no sympathy whatsoever.”
I think comparing things like this are always ridiculous. ‘My hardship is worse than your hardship’ serves no purpose.
ETA: I also agree with those saying in general, I don’t see people saying being infertile is the same as being terminally ill. I have friends who have gone through fertility treatments and people were sympathetic, but nowhere near the level of people I know who have cancer. But on a message board, you are bound to see extremes I guess.
Yes, I agree with that. I’m not saying they should get no sympathy at all, I’m saying that I think the pressure is to show disproportionate sympathy, akin to a person having a terminal disease.
I guess I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place here. On the one hand, I don’t want to appear like an insensitive jerk. But on the other hand, I don’t want to encourage in any way the belief that child free people are somehow deficient. Offering condolences seems to me to be buying into that belief, and possibly contributing to the distress that some infertile people feel about themselves. As a matter of fact, I think people are probably going to be happier in the long run if they don’t have kids, even if they feel distress about it right now. The study I cited earlier said that parents aren’t any happier than non-parents. Parents actually have a higher rate of depression!
I agree with that…it seems odd that you feel that kind of pressure. I have never seen an infertile couple get the kind of support/sympathy a person who is terminally ill gets (or even a person with cancer who is not terminal.) I would expect that if you gave anyone the choice of being infertile vs. being terminally ill with cancer, 99% of people would choose infertility.
No one has averred that child-free persons are deficient, at least not that I have seen.
We have asserted that persons who wish to beget biological children and are unable to do so are grieved by that, and that such grief is legitimate. Persons in this category don’t consider themselves child free, because they want to have children. We’re not saying that you should want to have children.
You can offer sympathy just because they are suffering/sad without implying they are deficient, I think. I don’t think anyone wants people to feel bad about themselves if they can’t have biological children, yet it is still understandable that they do feel bad.
You may disagree with it, but the reason why people treat infertility as a disability is pretty clear - it is the impairment of a normal bodily function, not a normal range of function. And legally, it is a disability, at least in the US.
Obviously, it is not one deserving of sympathy like a terminal disease - but I have yet to see any evidence that anyone actually claims it is. I’d say it certainly is worthy of some sympathy, if a person is bummed out about it, similar to if they had no ability to have sex for a medical reason (but wanted to).
I still don’t know what social circles you run in where a) people are openly talking about their infertility and b) where the expectation is that people are going to be fawning over them in sympathy. The idea that we are expecting the same level of sympathy as someone with a terminal disease is…laughable.
I can understand the desire for sex being biological (babies being a natural by product of sex, of course), but I don’t see how the desire for a baby (which is separated from the act that produces it by nine months) would have evolved evolutionarily.
It’s very difficult to disentangle what’s biological versus what is cultural, since every functioning human being is influenced by the culture they live in. And (not surprisingly) the cultures that survive tend to be the ones that encourage reproduction.
I don’t think “baby fever” is any more biological than the “midlife crisis.” It’s just that people get to be a certain age, and either conciously or unconciously they assess their life goals versus what they’ve done so far. If there’s a gap between the two that can cause distress.
smaller % vs. those who have/want to have children. Apples and wrenches.