"The trouble is with men's sperm" - NYTimes headline

[Anonymous]

Honestly, I feel like everyone is trying a little too hard to avoid the true answer to the infertility issues. Have children when you are younger. Even the issues highlighted in this article, and thank you to the author for highlighting the misogynistic tenor of infertility (it's NOT always the woman's fault!), many of which can be avoided by not waiting until your junk is ancient.

I get it, it's hugely inconvenient, you aren't as rich as you imagine you may be in your 30s/40s, you want to party and travel, etc.

I fully respect the choice to be child-free. But if you think you want kids, find a spouse and get on it. Don't spend another twenty years dancing around the reasons for infertility or fertility challenges, we know the answer. Have kids when you are younger!


Link for those of you with accounts, I don't know how to gift an article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/opinion/freeze-sperm-infertility-chemicals.html

[Anonymous]

I mean, some men are infertile at any age. My BIL was and they found out when he was 27.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I mean, some men are infertile at any age. My BIL was and they found out when he was 27.

Discovering infertility early can be a huge benefit though. Your BIL would have been infertile if they'd waited until their 30s too, but by then his wife may also have had fertility issues, or his issue may have been worse. Discovering infertility at 27 gives you time to try less expensive options to deal with them, or time to get used to the idea of using a sperm donor, which some people have some resistance to.

[Anonymous]

DH and I started trying at 27, and the issue was mostly him (somewhat me with pcos). No one has any idea because we did IVF eventually and had 3 kids in our 30s.

I'm very glad for the way it turned out. I loved having a child free 20s. My 30s were.... hard. But at least in my 30s I had more money to throw at the problems and more money for vacations. Our parents were retired by the time we were in our 30s too and they could help us in ways they couldn't when we were in our 20s.

[Anonymous]

If you want people to have babies in their twenties, make college and daycare free and get the housing market sorted out so that most young people can spend less than 50% of their income just on shelter within commuting distance. Until then, having a baby while young is something for the very poor and very wealthy outside of very conservative religious backgrounds.

[Anonymous]

There is also the general drop in testosterone in men at younger ages. Agree that starting earlier would be helpful but men’s fertility health has declined at all ages.

[Anonymous]

Eh, I think it is a combo of people delaying having kids until older and people being overweight. So many women have pcos now, which makes having children a lot more challenging. Pcos is correlated with being overweight. It is a bit of a which came first, chicken or the egg- but never the less, most women are not at a heathy weight which impacts fertility.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Eh, I think it is a combo of people delaying having kids until older and people being overweight. So many women have pcos now, which makes having children a lot more challenging. Pcos is correlated with being overweight. It is a bit of a which came first, chicken or the egg- but never the less, most women are not at a heathy weight which impacts fertility.

Exactly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you want people to have babies in their twenties, make college and daycare free and get the housing market sorted out so that most young people can spend less than 50% of their income just on shelter within commuting distance. Until then, having a baby while young is something for the very poor and very wealthy outside of very conservative religious backgrounds.

Social media isn’t helping this. 28 year olds think they are owed a farm kitchen and a pool, not a 30 year old townhouse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you want people to have babies in their twenties, make college and daycare free and get the housing market sorted out so that most young people can spend less than 50% of their income just on shelter within commuting distance. Until then, having a baby while young is something for the very poor and very wealthy outside of very conservative religious backgrounds.

Yeah daycare is the real killer. Most are now $2000 a month/24k a year, which is on par for college. Except those 40-50 year olds are making their college kids take out loans for college and they had 18 years to save up for it. Daycare is also for 5 years until Kindergarten too whereas college is just 4 years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you want people to have babies in their twenties, make college and daycare free and get the housing market sorted out so that most young people can spend less than 50% of their income just on shelter within commuting distance. Until then, having a baby while young is something for the very poor and very wealthy outside of very conservative religious backgrounds.

+1, right now only three groups of people have kids early:

1) Poor people who don't know better or don't feel like they have anything better to look forward to so they have kids as teens or in their early 20s, and then those kids are also poor because they have poor parents who lack education and therefore can't get out of poverty. We should be actively discouraging this to give these folks a chance to at least finish high school and enter job training programs so that when they have kids, they can create stable homes and offer those kids something other than a repeat of their own childhoods.

2) People with a lot of family support and financial resources. I wouldn't say all of these people are wealthy, and not all wealthy people offer this to their kids. But basically having a kid in your early or mid 20s is a lot more feasible if you feel like you have a community around you who can help, and you feel that community is supportive of you marrying and having kids. But a lot of MC and UMC families actually discourage early marriage or kids, and can withhold support if it happens because they think it's a mistake. It's also common for people in the MC and above to move far from parents and childhood communities for college or work, which makes it harder to create this kind of community support. Once someone has moved hundreds of miles from their support system, it immediately becomes more sensible to wait to have kids until you can afford to create your own support system where you are. And yes, that takes a lot of money. Childcare is expensive, housing is expensive, the services that can take the place of community support (therapists, doulas, paid sitters, cleaners to help during pregnancy or just after childbirth) all cost money. Can you have kids without all that? Sure. But it's more stressful and less pleasant, can be hard on marriages, and can be hard on mental health. Parents of all ages do better with support networks. Sensible people will delay parenthood until they have that support network, which often means waiting until they can buy it.

3) Really religious people, who are a combination of #1 and #2 -- they often don't value education, especially for women, and do value having kids, so they make the same choice a lot of poor people do in opting for early parenthood ever setting themselves up for careers. But also they tend to have strong support networks through their religious groups, so that obstacle to parenthood doesn't exist for them. Even if they move to new cities, if they are active in their church, temple, or mosque, and the community is very conservative and pro-procreation, they will have a lot of community support when they have kids.

This is just how it is. If you don't like it, you have to change the circumstances. You can't just yell at people to have kids earlier, it doesn't make sense within the parameters of our culture most of the time.

[Anonymous]

Daycare is optional if one parent makes a good (enough) salary and has health insurance. The other parent can stay home.

Buying a house is optional. Rent an apartment (we lived in a one-bedroom until our first was one) instead of buying a house. Only have one car. Don't buy all the fancy baby stuff.

If you don't want to do this, don't. Roll the dice and wait until you are older.

But don't complain that you can't afford to have a child. You just don't want to live cheaply or slightly uncomfortably.

[Anonymous]

Above poster is correct.
I'll give an example: I have a friend who is Mexican. Her sister got pregnant at 20 and just had the baby. She moved in with the father and his parents in a small apartment. The grandma watches the baby while the two 20 year olds attend trade school.
My friend also got pregnant early. Her mother and MIL gave them a ton of support when they had an infant. Now they are married and the husband owns two successful businesses.
I told her that if I had gotten pregnant at 20, my mother and boyfriends mother both would have encouraged ending the pregnancy. They would NOT have offered us to move in with them and they certainly would not have offered full time babysitting. That would have been looked at as rewarding our failure. She thought that was such a strange cultural difference. A baby is always celebrated in her culture even if the circumstances aren't perfect.
Is it the end of the world for a woman to get pregnant young? With family help, no. When the couple is left to sink or swim, yes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, I feel like everyone is trying a little too hard to avoid the true answer to the infertility issues. Have children when you are younger. Even the issues highlighted in this article, and thank you to the author for highlighting the misogynistic tenor of infertility (it's NOT always the woman's fault!), many of which can be avoided by not waiting until your junk is ancient.

I get it, it's hugely inconvenient, you aren't as rich as you imagine you may be in your 30s/40s, you want to party and travel, etc.

I fully respect the choice to be child-free. But if you think you want kids, find a spouse and get on it. Don't spend another twenty years dancing around the reasons for infertility or fertility challenges, we know the answer. Have kids when you are younger!


Link for those of you with accounts, I don't know how to gift an article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/12/opinion/freeze-sperm-infertility-chemicals.html

I had a baby at 32. Sorry I didn’t live a dcum perfect life where I met my soul mate in college, got engaged at 25-26 and then had a baby before 30. I had no issues getting pregnant and I have a healthy child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Daycare is optional if one parent makes a good (enough) salary and has health insurance. The other parent can stay home.

Buying a house is optional. Rent an apartment (we lived in a one-bedroom until our first was one) instead of buying a house. Only have one car. Don't buy all the fancy baby stuff.

If you don't want to do this, don't. Roll the dice and wait until you are older.

But don't complain that you can't afford to have a child. You just don't want to live cheaply or slightly uncomfortably.

I don't know any men in their 20s that make enough money to provide for a sahm and kids, plus saving to buy a house. DH and I made great salaries by our 30s, but in our 20s we both made like 75k. It was good when combined at 150k, but we couldn't have lived off of 75k total.