Men don’t really think about pregnancy

Men don’t really think about pregnancy very often.

Maybe that's not that shocking to you but it has been to me. In various conversations with men I know, men I love and men who have found themselves talking to me at parties (and probably wondering how we got on to this topic), I have noticed a theme.

Young men don’t seem to really get that no matter what contraceptive methods you use, sometimes intercourse = pregnant. I mean of course, they know the biology of the whole thing but they don’t really think about it. 

They don’t consider the consequences in the way that women do. 

They don’t seem to consider them at all. 

These are the good men, the progressive liberal feminist ones, the ones willing and often interested in this conversation with me. The ones who aren’t shrieking and running away the moment the conversation turns to “women’s things”.

But that is the thing, pregnancy is a “women issue” (or rather a people with uteruses issue) and not only for biological reasons. 

Whether we want to or not, women obsess over pregnancy. We are bombarded with messages around fertility and pregnancy. We are told, “don’t do it too young but don’t wait too long.” Every day of our lives, apparently there is a ticking clock in the background. Men have that clock too but they don’t seem to hear it throughout their 20s like we do. They don’t seem to have mothers, random women at weddings, news articles, and Facebook adverts bombarding them like we do.

Women who have intercourse think about pregnancy. We think about it when we decide what conceptive to take, we think about it when we may sure to take our pill, we think about when we forget to take our pill, we think about when we have our period, we think about we are late, we think about when we feel a bit sick one morning, we think about it on birthdays, at weddings, on dates. We may worry, or hope, or dread, or be unsure but either way we think about it.

The men I have spoken to only seem to think about when they have to, when they decide they want to be fathers; when a pregnancy happens (planned or unplanned); when a pregnancy doesn’t happen. The pain of infertile or the joy of parenthood is felt keenly by men but it doesn’t preoccupy them from an early age the way it does with women.

For women, it is not only because society repeatedly forces the topic on us, but it is also because at the end of the day pregnancy is our burden alone to carry.  

Men don’t think about it because they don’t have to. 

If a test comes back positive, it is the people with the uterus that has to deal with the consequences. However, you feel about that pregnancy, whatever you choose to do with that pregnancy, it will always be our pregnancy.

This aside, I would love men to consider this issue a little more, to look at the person they are with and think “she could get pregnant” a little more often. To consider that outcome a little closer. This is why I discuss this topic, along with periods, and childbirth and child-raising in the open with my friends of all genders because at the end of the day (if and when it happens), it might be my pregnancy but it takes two to tango.