Live data from Hacker News

Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

nationalgeographic.com

401–410 of 1001 posts

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#401
post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And don't forget, if the IVF works, the costs of the kids will make that look paltry. Source: Have 3 kids

People used to have kids as a source of free labor, not as a money sink. I wonder if it’s still the case in many places.

Kids went from labor source plus retirement plan to an expensive hobby. That's the reason for the demographic transition.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#402
post #156

My wife and I have a beautiful daughter about to turn 2. But she wouldn't have existed if it weren't for IVF (in vitro fertilization). Had to stab her stomach with needles for a while to make hormones to mass produce eggs and then they took my sperm to put into her eggs and see which ones took. Five viable pairings happened. Three were put into her and out came the one kid. Other two are in cryo for future use, and h…

Another lesson from your story (similar to many of my friends’) is to just have kids younger. It sounds like you started at around 35 — if people started at 30, even, fertility is higher.

We have a societal problem when the rational individual choice (to provide your children the best head start) is to wait until your fertility declines to have children.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#403
post #156

My wife and I have a beautiful daughter about to turn 2. But she wouldn't have existed if it weren't for IVF (in vitro fertilization). Had to stab her stomach with needles for a while to make hormones to mass produce eggs and then they took my sperm to put into her eggs and see which ones took. Five viable pairings happened. Three were put into her and out came the one kid. Other two are in cryo for future use, and h…

Glad it worked out! My daughter is 8mo now and we had concerns going into the 'getting pregnant' phase.

If you can't afford IVF or want to do it another way, there are things you can try to do before you start trying to avoid surprises - the main goal is to try to assess your status so you can align expecatations. It's frustrating to 'get started' and think 'it should take about X months' and then not seeing it happen (huh sounds familiar to product work?).

First, we always think it's the women's fault (or at least society defaults to that nowadays for sure). Men can go to a lab and get your sperm tested and check your testosterone levels. There are actionables to improve this in >6 months (not sure if less).

My wife did all sorts of stuff: checked hormone levels, managed her endo with excercise/diet/stress-management, got her period into one of those tracking apps to the point it actually predicted when ovulation happened (corroborated with home test kits).

In summary, I'm not trying to deal out a recipe here - just making a point that having a lower-stress attempt at getting pregnant can take a while but something can be done if you want to avoid cost of IVF or misalignment of expectations when 'trying' (we started ~preping - wife more so than me - 2 years in advance bc my wife had endo).

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#404
post #156

My wife and I have a beautiful daughter about to turn 2. But she wouldn't have existed if it weren't for IVF (in vitro fertilization). Had to stab her stomach with needles for a while to make hormones to mass produce eggs and then they took my sperm to put into her eggs and see which ones took. Five viable pairings happened. Three were put into her and out came the one kid. Other two are in cryo for future use, and h…

I have a medical condition where I have no vas deferens. Sadly, IVF didn't work. I don't say that to ask for sympathy, but to say that my wife went through the same series of needles, etc, without the payoff at the end. (Additionally I had to have a surgery to remove sperm from the testes, which was painful to recover from as you might imagine.) Anyone who embarks on the financial and emotional cost of IVF needs to b…

Note that the CDC collects statistics on assisted reproductive technology success rates. Here is the 2019 report: https://www.cdc.gov/art/reports/2019/pdf/2019-Report-ART-Fer... . See especially Figure 3 on page 29 (Percentage of embryo transfers that resulted in live-birth delivery, by patient age and egg or embryo source). There is more data, including from individual clinics, at https://www.cdc.gov/art/artdata/index.html .

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another lesson from your story (similar to many of my friends’) is to just have kids younger. It sounds like you started at around 35 — if people started at 30, even, fertility is higher.

Yep, I can confirm this based on personal experience with a gynecologist telling my wife that at 35 the pregnancy is considered a "geriatric pregnancy" (apparently some docs now call it "AMA"...advanced maternal age). This shocked both of us, frankly. We were aware of what the actuarial tables will tell you regarding birth defect rates related to maternal age, but hearing the term geriatric in your mid-thirties is qu…

No post body was provided.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#406
post #156

My wife and I have a beautiful daughter about to turn 2. But she wouldn't have existed if it weren't for IVF (in vitro fertilization). Had to stab her stomach with needles for a while to make hormones to mass produce eggs and then they took my sperm to put into her eggs and see which ones took. Five viable pairings happened. Three were put into her and out came the one kid. Other two are in cryo for future use, and h…

We had some fertility issues as well and while IUI and time worked for the two children we have IVF was looked into. Before the whole thing I didn't understand why people didn't just adopt. But once looking into the sky high costs and uncertainty of adoption I understood why IVF is popular. It is expensive and uncertain as well, but much less so.

Adopting is hard. I've tried to convince my wife that we should adopt because I've always wanted to adopt anyway, but she's scared I'm not taking it seriously enough. She says with adoption, you need to emotionally commit more than you would with your own blood because the natural instinct isn't there. She's scared I can't handle the responsibility and she might be scared of it too. She said we can have the talk again after I prove I can be a good dad with our own blood first. She doesn't want to be the mom that loves and handles everything while the dad doesn't care.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#407
post #205
post #115

When it comes to issues that affect one of the genders, the structure of academia tends to basically ignore things unique to men. I think this is because every University researcher has a brigade of gender activists who only care about female issues ready to raise hell. The delta between likelihood of attending college between males and females is higher now than it was before title IX was enforced. It's simply shift…

You are spot on. And it’s getting worse: https://www.profgalloway.com/a-fewer-good-men/ Essentially, women want someone who is their equal or “higher status”. With big inequality, men at the bottom can’t get women, while most women compete for the small group of men at the top.

How on earth is this comment grey. Basic biology is women, with a higher reproductive burden, to be more selective.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#408
post #156

My wife and I have a beautiful daughter about to turn 2. But she wouldn't have existed if it weren't for IVF (in vitro fertilization). Had to stab her stomach with needles for a while to make hormones to mass produce eggs and then they took my sperm to put into her eggs and see which ones took. Five viable pairings happened. Three were put into her and out came the one kid. Other two are in cryo for future use, and h…

Accept for most in the world IVF is a years salary.

Perhaps in the US. We did ours in South Korea. I can't remember how much it was, but it was far less than a year's salary.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#409
post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are spot on. And it’s getting worse: https://www.profgalloway.com/a-fewer-good-men/ Essentially, women want someone who is their equal or “higher status”. With big inequality, men at the bottom can’t get women, while most women compete for the small group of men at the top.

Quoted post unavailable.

No one argues that every women have a right to very high paying top status jobs, yet we try to structure society so that more women achieve that.

Re: Sperm counts worldwide are plummeting faster than we thought

#410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s going to be a real adjustment for a lot of these people to grasp that young American men are in really difficult situations socially, academically, and that it’s a key factor to underemployment, violence, etc… the concept of men’s health or men suffering feels like an attack to these people instead of a separate legitimate issue to other social topics they find important

Curious if you have sources for this. I agree wholeheartedly that there are some difficult issues affecting men, socially and academically, but always struggle to back that opinion up with any meaningful facts/figures. As one of my friends said, "Positions of power are still predominantly held by men, but the average man is lagging behind the average woman". Not sure if this is necessarily true, but sometimes it feel…

Men have no reproductive rights at all. Women can rape underage boys and these boys are then forced to pay child support to their rapists including back pay for the missed years.

Men don't have a single federally funded organization positively helping them compared to 1000s for women.

Men/boys don't have bodily autonomy in US. They are forced to fight in wars and are genitally mutilated at birth against their will.

DV laws are anti male.

Custody laws are anti fathers.

Rape laws are gendered.

All the typical major indicators are favorable to women instead of men. Ex: age expectancy, education, drug addicts, suicides, homeless, police shootings, prison inmates...

Post reply on HN