Male Infertility - Men Talking [Paperback]

Mary-Claire Mason (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 17, 1993 | ISBN-10: 0415072905 | ISBN-13: 978-0415072908 | Edition: 1

How do men react to diagnosis of male infertility and how, if at all, are all their lives affected by it? Male infertility is commonplace yet the male experience of it has been woefully neglected. Male Infertility - Men Talking explores these issues by gathering together men's stories and seeing what common strands, if any, exist between them. Mary-Claire Mason explores the past and present medical management of male infertility as this forms an essential backdrop to the men's stories but the main emphasis is on how men's lives are affected. In the first half of this book the discovery of sperm and the man's role in reproduction is considered together with a review of how the past affects the present medical management of male infertility and the problems that bedevil it. The male voice predominates in the second painful events and relationships with families and friends, their feeling of isolation, their medical experiences, the importance of biological fatherhood, and their hopes for the future.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'One of the few books to truly address the emotional and psychological implications of male sub/infertility'

`Everyone, specialist to patient will benefit from reading this highly readable and enlightening masterpiece. Don't just sit there - READ IT.'

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (November 17, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415072905
• ISBN-13: 978-0415072908
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,634,704 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars first steps, May 11, 2006

By 

A. G. Plumb "Greg Plumb" (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Male Infertility - Men Talking (Paperback)

This is such a tragic, moving story - hearing the voices of men discussing the almost undiscussable. But for me the most amazing aspect is their ability to cope - their ability to 'go with the flow' and get on with things. Of course, this book is a very tiny sample (and even the author recognises that the sample is biassed - too many sterile rather than infertile respondents compared to population statistics - perhaps that tells us something about sterile men) and necessarily the author could not interview any man with fertility problems who had made the ultimate withdrawal from an unsatisfactory world.

I know a man who is sterile and I can see synergies between him and the responses reported here, even though his cicumstance is different from all of them. Unlike the respondents here he knew before he was in a relationship - so he did not have a partner to provide support - neither did he have a partner with whom he could bury his own responses by providing her support. It affected him in different ways, but then his life did change. But, for all of these afflicted men, the continual ache in the background does remain even when parenting softens the blow to a degree.

None of the men with infertility problems in this book makes the demand on their partner that they should just accept what fate has dealt them. These men - despite qualms and uncertainties - go along with their partners and fufill their own desires as much as is possible, by following the routes of adoption and assisted fertility processes such as donor insemination (DI).

Perhaps there is another book to be written - one with a broader perspective. How do men cope, for whatever reason, with a failure to become a parent? Is it important to them? Does it have an impact on their life's 'achievement' (think about Beethoven for example)? Are men different in this to women?

Be prepared to confront uncomfortable ideas when you read this book - other people's sadness. One of the men saw that he had an 'invisible disability'. For me this might have been the most telling comment of all - perhaps everyone has invisible disabilities of one sort or another and we should respond to people with understanding and acceptance of that.

But then there was the anguish too. As one of the men said - It's terrible to have a problem, and your wife is the one who gets all the treatment and suffering for it.

2.0 out of 5 stars I would have prefered narrative., February 22, 2010

By 

Jeffery Mingo (Homewood, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Male Infertility - Men Talking (Paperback)

I am fascinated by actual and perceived gender-atypical phenomena. There are men who have lupus and women who are colorblind, for example. Although many reports now say the man is equally likely to cause a couple's barenness as a woman, there's still a perception that women are to blame. In this book, the author speaks to infertile man.

This book will definitely make you sympathize for the group. From a scientific perspective, researchers are not as interested in male infertility as much as its female counterpart. Fertile men have said to them within earshot, "At least I'm not shooting blanks!" The book does mention instances of couple's divorcing due to the problem. One man said, "I'm masculine and hairy, how can I be infertile!?"

Still, I wish this was not reporting by the author; I would have prefered for each man, or couple, to have had a chapter all too themselves. The author is always giving her two cents and summarizing things that are obvious. I really think those readers with this difficulty would have related more to men just speaking about themselves without a journalist's filter.

This is a British book and I think things may be different in the US. First, I imagine that the British health system would pay for infertility treatments that stingy US medical companies would not. Several times men said, "I'd be ruled too old to adopt." In the US, with our large number of parent-less children, I highly doubt that would be a problem. These men seemed reluctant to have donor insemination and in the US, they keep things so private with donor substance that it would be easy for a couple to get help and just pretend it's the husband's child.

This book left two occurences out that I imagine are major. First, I bet that many men don't know they are infertile until they are on a second or third wife who doesn't get pregnant. I'm guessing that many men blame their wives for childlessness without digging further. Second, something tells me that many an infertile man has his brother or male cousin do the goop-supplying if they cannot. The author only mentions a fertile man telling an infertile one, "You want me to set you up?" once.

The (female) author stated that she became interested in this subject because her husband is infertile. She never reveals whether he was accepting of her putting his business all out on Front Street. She never says how she and her husband addressed the problem. She could have let him speak for a few pages to clear up these matters.

There are very few books out there about male infertility. The ones that exist are mostly boring, scientific tomes about curing the problem. This is one of the few books that I found that allowed men to talk on this matter. I thank the author for her effort, but I would have done this book much differently.