For couples I can see this being useful, for random hookups I would not assume that a woman would trust a dude telling her that "he's on the pill". I can't see a woman giving up control of pregnancies to a man she only just meet. Then there's also the lack of protection against STDs, which would still make a condom the preferred solution.
For couples it could be a really good alternative. Birth control isn't without risks for women and way to many stay on them despite obvious heath issues. If this new solution where then man takes the birth control is better in terms of health risks is yet to be seen, but it would allow couple to share the burden/risk.
> I would not assume that a woman would trust a dude telling her that "he's on the pill". I can't see a woman giving up control of pregnancies to a man she only just meet.
Well, neither i would trust the woman i just met telling me that 'she is on the pill'. It is better if both sides have independent way to avoid unwanted parenthood.
> Then there's also the lack of protection against STDs, which would still make a condom the preferred solution.
Which is unreliable as the only birth control. People depending on condom often rush for levonorgestrel after condom failure. So IMHO a preferred solution is both sides on pills and condom just for STD protection.
It's good protection for men from female birth control failure, condom failure, and so on. I don't think the intention is that now that men have birth control, women would stop using theirs, but that men could feel secure that they have the same kind of reproductive control that women have.
i supposed it is relatively straight forward to extract directly from the testicles and go with in-vitro fertilization and implantation for planned parenthood
How many generations is "a few?" Contraceptives have been used for thousands of years, and people still want to do the boogie without the baby.
The Romans literally picked a plant to extinction that was, reportedly, a very effective contraceptive that would allow reproduction once it was stopped.
Ancient Egyptians had a mix that utilized crocodile dung because croc dung has spermicide qualities. I don't want to know how they figured that out.
My comment is not saying "contraceptives = bad", just commenting on the irony of OP saying "next generations" having even more reproductive freedom when many countries are below replacement levels of fertility even before new techniques like male contraceptives.
To your point, he effectiveness of modern contraceptives is far beyond croc dung and the peoples who used them in past had much higher fertility levels than modern users.
Assuming high fertility is something that's passed down from your parents. What if it's just poverty that causes it? In that case, people will get poorer until they reach high-fertility levels of poverty. That would be a disaster to have western civilization collapse.
Aside from faulty condoms, you should maybe try the difference, how it feels without ..
In general a safe solution is badly needed. The pill for women is hardly a perfect solution either, it massivly messes up the natural hormon balance in the body. And so far I doubt that this here will be side effect free nor reliable, but it might have potential.
A woman who's worried about getting pregnant can monitor her period and take an abortion pill if it's late. A man, on the other hand, can do nothing to avoid the cost of a child besides trying to persuade her. There are women who try to get pregnant against their partner's wishes.
My point is the woman can shut the door and the horse magically teleports back into the stable but the man can't. So men can benefit from being in control of their own fertility.
And that is the reason male birth control most likely will never replace the other variants. Which woman wants to rely on the man taking care of birth control?
One that trusts her partner? What kind of question is this.
I can't imagine my long term partner, now fiancee, wouldn't trust me with something so important to us both. Why even be in a relationship at this point.
one in a stable long-term relationship where she and her partner trust each other to be responsible when it comes to risky or costly actions that impact both of them
(pregnancy is one, sure, but there's also things like blowing half your yearly salary on a sports car on a whim)
And, as we all know, becoming a father when you do not wish to is completely without consequences, making the entire ordeal risk-free. Male birth control pill is useless, QED.
That's a bit of a hot take ... in the same vein it's also solved by abstinence, but that's hogwash for much the same reason as your statement.
Not only do condoms have a negative effect on pleasure, they also require more planning, and even with proper use (which in itself is less easy than it sounds), they can still fail (they can tear, or come off at inoppprtune moments).
I bet we’ll hear a lot about male birth control by female groups.
It is based on a misunderstanding of the problem to solve. For women, the problem is having undesired children, but once they have, they know they are the mother. For men, the problem is the woman having undesired children.
It reverses the logic entirely: Since marriage triggers automatic fatherhood of the children to be born, whether the man is on the pill or not, male birth control is ineffective in that it only decreases the probability of children being his, but that’s only 70% of the cases of birth during marriage.
A really effective method would be automatic paternity tests. But everyone goes nuts when this is evoked, precisely because of the ridiculous extent of treachery in our society. As a society, we prefer to bury that problem and ask responsible men to raise the children of the other ones.
>but that’s only 70% of the cases of birth during marriage.
The idea that 30% of childbirths are not by the child's supposed father is a misnomer: it's much closer to 1-2%[0]. Certainly, if you've been in a long-term relationship and have been cheated on, you'd probably be very scarred and think that you can never trust women, you can never know if the kids are actually yours, etc. And I can understand that sentiment, especially since in Western society, all the stages leading up to marriage, and all the negative experiences people have, often lead them to become very cynical. But trust me, once you hit around 30, interest in sex starts to decrease, and people are too wrapped up in work, family, and general social obligations to even think about sleeping around. It does happen that two people who are unsatisfied in their marriages, who are good friends and happen to spend a lot of time together, might end up having an affair, but rarely would that lead to another kid, especially since the woman would be extra careful about pregnancy.
Now, I'll grant that if someone is mentally unstable, or its even a power thing, its entirely possible that a woman could cheat on her husband, lie about being on birth control, and get herself pregnant to another man because its like the only way she can get off. But that's probably relatively rare, and there are numerous other cases where the reason is far more mundane, perhaps a woman feels pressured to get married to a man while she has another lover, but her groom is more financially stable and can provide for her better. Or maybe she is just crazy, sleeping with a bunch of different guys without telling any of them about the others, and as soon as she gets pregnant she just tells the most gullible one that its his. But its still 1 in 30 at most. Not something you should think about, unless its too obvious to ignore.
If you are so sure that it’s only 1-2%, then why are people irritated (to the point of burning things) when we suggest automatic paternity tests?
It should be a non-issue.
But let me guess, you are going to find the weakest word I have ever said and aggressively attack me on that?
The proof is in the pudding (it’s also in numerous other proxy statistics which are much more reliable than your study): You do not dare starting automatic paternity tests, and you are much happier asking men to emasculate themselves way before ever questioning women’s sincerity.
Well, guess what happens when something cannot be questioned.
Hey so basically I'm just not gonna take it (the male birth control pill)... I know... UGH I know... It's just that I'm not gonna take it is all HAHAHAHAHRHAHAHA HARAHARHARH
Female birth control is much more efficient. One male birth control and 100 females not under birth control has 100 more pregnancy risk than 100 males and one female not under birth control.
It's nice to have the option to do both. Hormonal contraceptives aren't 100% reliable. Having a bout of diarrhea can render them ineffective. It's easy to miss a pill.
Obviously the comparison is not symmetrical. So it‘s nonsense. Maybe a „not“ was added accidentally.
In any case, it‘s also factually wrong. The majority of men do not have sex with a very large number of women. And those who do would be well advised to use a condom to prevent STDs.
In fact the opposite is the case: Since the number of men who have sex with a very large number of women is known to be small, the few men taking the pill could replace a large number of women having to take it, therefore the pill for men would be more efficient.
That logic doesn't make any sense unless you assume there are 100 men to every woman on earth, or alternatively, that women have 100 times more sexual partners than men. Evidence suggests otherwise.
Or put another way: you're comparing one group where 1/200 is on birth control to another group where 99/200 is on birth control. Obviously the group that has almost 100 times more people on birth control is more "efficient". That has nothing to do with sex.
But to address the issue of efficiency, I would expect male birth control is more "efficient", as women can only carry a few children at a time while men can theoretically impregnate dozens or even hundreds of women in the same period.
But I find the quibbling over efficiency to be missing the point. Male contraception offers peace of mind to some. It has nothing to do with efficiency.
> That logic doesn't make any sense unless you assume there are 100 men to every woman on earth, or alternatively, that women have 100 times more sexual partners than men. Evidence suggests otherwise.
Even if men and women have the same number of sexual partners female birth control will be more efficient if that number is more than one.
Consider a hypothetical group of 1000 men and 1000 women that consists of 500 monogamous couples, using no birth control and frequently having sex. If you randomly pick half the men and give them male birth control or randomly pick half the women and give them female birth control then you'll but the number of births approximately in half.
For that group then male and female birth control are equally efficient.
Consider a similar group, 1000 men and 1000 women, but without monogamous couples. Each person has a dozen partners they regularly have sex with. In that group giving 500 women birth control will cut the number of births in half. Giving 500 men birth control will lower the number of births some but not much.
For that group female birth control is more efficient.
I am a nutcase on personal freedom and would never vote for limitations on reproductive rights. But this may be a case where my ideology is in conflict with the thriving of our species. A big fraction of our nosedive in fertility is due to reproductive control. Accidental births are more feature than bug for those of us who believe that human action is a net positive and that improved living standards and economic growth are good.
I don't really know how to reconcile this with support for individual rights. Except where authoritarianism is even worse, and I'm not sure that's a given.
We'll still be fine for a century or two, and then we'll figure out how to grow ready-made, superhuman, sexless adults in pods, which is the new meta anyway. Our biology is reaching EOL.
TFR is already way below replacement all over the world. In some countries (e.g. Chile, S.Korea,) it's under 1.0. In others (e.g. Germany, Italy,) TFR has been consistently sub-replacement for over 50 years. This should give us all pause.
The very last thing the world needs is another way to reduce fertility. This invention is worse than that "powdered alcohol" thing from a few years ago.
If anything, given declining sperm fitness in men worldwide, governments ought to consider finding the reverse of this molecule -- a STK33 activator -- and adding it to the water supply.
This is a viewpoint that always comes up in these discussions, and I find it to be one entirely lacking in nuance.
Society is not comprised of entirely free individuals that evaluate every decision rationally and carefully before making any action.
It is full of powerful forces (corporate, religious, ideological, political, etc.) that seek to influence people and push them toward one thing or another - or merely to make everything more chaotic. This state of affairs has gotten even more complicated in the last ~half century, where we now have billion dollar corporations entirely focused on influencing your behavior.
It’s perfectly reasonable to suggest that society could be more conducive to having children, promote ideas that encourage having children, not fund things that discourage having children, and so forth - without that somehow being equivalent to “forcing people to have children.”
This comment scares me a little, having recently re-watched The Handmaid's Tale...
I don't really understand the premise. We're already pushing several limits for global sustainability due to the human (over-)population (climate change, food supply, loss of fauna diversity).
Why is it not a good thing to reduce the population size?
Why should we not work towards a sub-2 TFR for a few generations, to reduce human impact on our planet a little?
Why should governments actively work against people's right to choose whether to have a child or not, by increasing fertility through additives to the drinking water?
> I don't really understand the premise. We're already pushing several limits for global sustainability due to the human (over-)population (climate change, food supply, loss of fauna diversity).
> Why is it not a good thing to reduce the population size?
Because the shareholders expect constant growth (of their investments)
Once fertility declines, it's extremely hard to reverse the decline without a massive cultural shift. Countries like S.Korea and Hungary have made heroic efforts -- without much success. People raised in a generational culture of small families tend to have small families themselves. So either your culture shifts, or your culture is quickly replaced by high-fertility subcultures such as the Amish, Quiverfull, and Haredim. ("Quickly" in generational terms, of course.)
My thinking is that if you value your culture and its values, you should want to see it persist. The only way for it to persist in meaningful terms is for it to reproduce to at least a replacement level. The alternative -- which might be better for the environment in the short term, but not on very long timescales -- represents not a temporary lull but probably a permanent cultural decline.
Low birth rates are not caused by reduced sperm quality. They are caused by economic issues. Wealthier populations typically have fewer offspring. The negative trends in places like Japan (and presumably Korea) are caused by the high cost of living, the lack of support for parents (lacking or overly expensive childcare etc).
No one is suggesting turning off sperm production in every male.
To an extent it tracks. No one wants their children to have fewer opportunities than they did, so a ‘rich’ person will probably have to plan on expensive tuitions and other activities. Obviously once you hit the ultra rich this is a rounding error, but for the middle class I see this dynamic at play.
I can afford one private school tuition, I can’t afford 3. Obviously that’s not a requirement for life, but I went to an expensive private school, do I not want my kids to have similar opportunities? Etc.
Who's talking about the rich? Wealtht countries have uneven wealth distributions. The rich certainly can afford housekeepers and nannies and private tutors. A couple of middle school teachers cannot.
Is that a philosophical question? I would argue that most countries with <1 birthrates are objectively wealthy. Doesn't mean the wealth is necessarily spread equitably, or even that the countries have their priorities right...
This is a big problem, but not allowing a new invention or regulating it won't fix the issue. Decreasing freedom doesn't fix anything.
I have four kids. Without a Christian worldview it's tough to justify having kids. Kids are an incredible amount of work and require being willing to live for others, and not yourself, which only really makes sense with a Christian worldview (at least, to my knowledge; would love to understand where and how I am wrong here). Sure, kids have some natural benefits and bring joy, but you get most of that with a single kid.
Why have more than a single kid if your primary goal is optimizing for happiness here on earth?
Christians, by the data, are middle of the road re: large families by religion:
Pew Research Center analyzed data on six religious groups – Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and people with no religious affiliation.
Globally, the average Muslim lives in the biggest household (6.4 people), followed by the average Hindu (5.7), Christian (4.5), Buddhist (3.9), “none” (3.7) and Jew (3.7)
I don't understand the Muslim, Hindu, and Buddist worldview/culture. I'd love to. What causes them to have large families? Why is it baked into the culture?
Additionally, I'd be curiuous how they tested for religious affiliation. i.e. just asking someone if they are Christian, Hindu, etc isn't a great test of if they are a "true believer". Lots of folks have a cultural affiliation to a religion that doesn't impact their decision making.
For instance, Catholics do not allow any birth control: most Catholics ignore this and therefore are not truly Catholic. I'm sure there is a similar filter you could apply to other religions. My argument here would be that those are are "true believers" in a religion that has a strong articulation of an afterlife or valuing self-sacrifice as an important element of life have much bigger families.
I'd agree that many of the public/popular/rich pronatalist are not religious. However, if you remove the the public/popular/rich flag there are many more which are not rich in any way (the folks with the biggest families—8, 9, 10 kids—are very much not wealthy and don't care to be, in my experience). In other words, the fact that some popular folks are pronatalist and not religious doesn't change my thinking here: there will be exceptions.
You've changed my mind here: a Christian worldview isn't required, but a religious/supernatural worldview is. i.e. why put all of the effort required into having kids without believing that (a) self-sacrifice is valuable in and of itself and (b) a strong theology or belief in an afterlife? I'm sure there are some rationalists that would choose to have more kids because of the future of humanity (i.e. Elon, etc) but my argument would be these would be extremely rare as it conflicts with the hedonistic worldview (why care about the future of humanity if nothing happens when you die?).
In any case, it's really interesting to think about this stuff and I'd love to refine my thinking here and understand where I am wrong. Feel free to DM me to chat more!
I don't agree with the GP at all, but I think it was pretty much established that money is not the primary reason people have less children. Perhaps obvious example, in general it's the rich countries that have problems with replacement rate and the poor countries pick up the slack (and not the other way around). For a more direct example, the populist government in my country started giving out money, no strings attached, to people with children, and the fertility didn't change at all (even declined a bit). So I think it's pretty clear we need other solution if we want to fix that.
> the populist government in my country started giving out money, no strings attached, to people with children, and the fertility didn't change at all (even declined a bit)
That doesn't say much on its own. We don't know how the birth rate would have behaved without that money. And even if that supposed stimulus did have no effect, it could also mean that it's simply not enough money to offset whatever factors cause people to have fewer children.
I think the conclusion to draw is that wealth and economics likely play a role, but it's more complicated than can be sufficiently addressed with these kinds of cash handouts.
Throwing cash at a lack of babby has consistently failed to increase babby time and time again, regardless which country. There is quite literally not a single success story to cite.
Whatever the factors are, throwing cash at the issue at best does nothing and at worst exacerbates it.
It’s unfortunate that you’re being mindlessly downvoted, as this is a complex topic that is worth discussing.
The actual reality, though, is that the future is comprised of people that don’t engage with these kinds of reproductive-limiting technologies and worldviews. So in an ironic sense, it almost doesn’t matter - evolution will march on and doesn’t have much use for ideologies. It’s a sort of filter for the future, not an abstract evaluation of freedom and rights.
I downvoted him because what he said doesn't make sense. Namely, his argument that rich people can't afford costs of living. That is straight up hypocrisy.
Otherwise I agree that richer people have less children. Money is a problem factor, but it's not because someone doesn't have enough of it.
>They are caused by economic issues. Wealthier populations typically have fewer offspring. The negative trends in places like Japan (and presumably Korea) are caused by the high cost of living, the lack of support for parents (lacking or overly expensive childcare etc).
>Of course, it remains to be seen if this target molecule could have the same impact on human sperm.