Really? The point of reproduction is to make sure your DNA survives. Why do animals die for their babies or the chance to reproduce? (It can’t be cultural!)
The drive to reproduce is as old as humankind. It is not a recent cultural idea, whereas midlife crisis is.
ETA - animals will protect their eggs/pregnant mothers with their lives even after the sex act is complete. It is not just a drive for sex, the drive is to successfully reproduce.
horseshit. you, from the OP
This is the thread when I started mentally narrating all of Dio’s posts in Sheldon Cooper’s voice from The Big Bang Theory.
It really makes a lot more sense that way.
And yet they treat infertile people as if they’re dying and inist – on this board – that fertility treatments are just as important as chemotherapy for cancer.
Who, in this thread or on this board, does that statement attack?
I think it makes the point that anyone who doesn’t show the proper reverence is accused of being hostile or insensitive.
This is bullshit. That’s not grief, that’s just not getting something they want. Calling it “grief” is exactly the kind of hyperbole I’m talking about.
Then why do they say that fertitlity treatments are the same as chemotherapy? Why are they saying it’s equivalent to grieving a death?
It’s true that animals will fight to the death for a chance to mate. They’ll also die for their offspring. But what I’m asserting is that the infertile ones aren’t lamenting over their infertility. The idea that they would hold the abstract concept of a future baby in their minds, and compare that counterfactual with their present state seems highly unlikely to me.
I think a better metaphor for Dio, who has issues with sex, might be romantic love. Imagine you have some problem that means you still have the desire to love and be loved in a romantic relationship, but for whatever reason you know this will never happen again.
Now plenty of people live perfectly fine without love. Some people even prefer it that way. But for most people, knowing you would never be in a romantic relationship again would be devestating, doubly so if you were the type of person who dreamed about what your wedding dress would be like.
Just to clarify - are ‘they’ society in general or are you basing this idea on one post on this message board? Because from the OP it sounds like you think there is general pressure now in mainstream society to treat infertile people like you would treat someone with cancer. That is the idea I think people here are responding to (and the idea that infertile people don’t deserve any sympathy at all). I haven’t seen or experienced that kind of reaction.
If the thread is bashing one post, then I think you are giving it too much attention. People express all kinds of extreme views here that don’t conform to societal norms.
Try this. In the course of three years have seven miscarriages. Seven times that you imagined the child inside you being born and being a parent to that child.
Try that and you can definitely be entitled to that opinion. Until then, I GRIEVED each of those losses. (As did my husband, my parents, my sister…)
That is my brand of infertility.
Was it cancer? No. Was it heartbreaking and life-altering? You bet it was.
Thanks for letting me know how I feel about my own situation. And for completely and utterly discounting what I wrote on the first page of this very thread, trying to shed some light on it for people who can’t relate.
You really are a piece of work.
I believe (but may be mistaken) that some species of animals do become depressed/distressed when their attempts to reproduce don’t result in a baby. Don’t some animals attempt to steal others’ offspring or eggs if they don’t have any? Isn’t that proof of the desire for offspring? What about animal mothers who ‘adopt’ other babies as their own? Is that proof of the motherly biological desire to nurture and raise babies in and of itself?
This is still not comparable to simple infertility, in which there is nothing to grieve.
I only look for sympathy and advice from immediate family and close friends (only three of my friends know we’re struggling, only one knows the details). I think most people keep these kinds of issue private in real life, but perhaps not on message boards (like SDMB). I find that people are more open and honest online, and look for advice or sympathy because there is a huge number of people with a huge variety of experiences online vs. in real life. Comparing the posts on a message board to real life isn’t really fair, since none of us act or express feelings in the same way in both situations (internet vs. real life).
I have never, in real life, had anyone tell me to be more sensitive to the ‘infertile couple’, or be overly sympathetic to me because of what we’re going through. Probably because people don’t really talk about it in real life.
Do you really think that not being able to conceive a child is equivalent to having a child die?
You need to define what you mean by infertility then, because of lot of infertile couples do conceive, but lose it early. I have a recent loss, as well as one a number of years ago. I’m still ‘infertile’.
I know for a fucking fact that I grieved, and still get pangs now and then.
If you can point me to anywhere that anyone equated the death of a child with not being able to conceive, I’d appreciate it.
I mean not being able to conceive at all. Of course I feel sympathy for miscarriages.