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Men Need To Think More About Fertility — Even If They’re Not Considering Fatherhood
Sperm counts are plummeting yet infertility is rarely considered a men’s issue. Here’s why that needs to change, and how at-home tests may help.
One in eight couples struggle to conceive, and in about half of these cases, male infertility is the cause. So why do some men drag their feet when it comes to getting tested?
“It’s the big question,” says Dr. Daniel B. Shapiro, medical director at Reproductive Biology Associates, an in-vitro fertilization clinic in Georgia. “The idea that the male has anything to do with fertility was previously rejected for narrow and selfish reasons — namely, sexism.”
This chauvinistic attitude ends up hurting men’s ability to take their fertility into their own hands. While many couples get tested together, others balk. A 2017 study from the UK followed a small group of men experiencing infertility and found that all of them had delayed seeking professional help, even though they wanted to be fathers.
“It’s about their manhood. I have male patients say to me, ‘I didn’t want to get checked because I didn’t want to know.’”
