When the traditional method of conception failed to produce a pregnancy, Liberty Walther Barnes and her husband, Levi, sought professional help from a fertility specialist. It was understood her irregular menstrual cycle could make pregnancy difficult but preliminary steps toward artificial insemination revealed a new hurdle: “All your sperm is dead,” the specialist told her husband.
The specialist proceeded to work with Barnes herself but never said her husband was infertile. She knew any treatment methods she chose to undergo would be of limited success as long as her hubby wasn’t producing viable sperm. He, however, wasn’t being treated.
The experience led Barnes, a medical sociologist at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, to research male infertility in more depth. She discovered an “invisible” epidemic of male infertility that is rarely described as such. In about 40% of couples seeking fertility treatments, male infertility is the roadblock. She describes her study in detail in her new book, Conceiving Masculinity: Male Infertility, Medicine, and Identity.
Problems and Challenges
Six years of study took Barnes to five male fertility clinics in the United States, where more than 50% of the men seeking answers to their “problem” with infertility did not consider themselves infertile. Two of the most telling symptoms of male infertility are:
- Trying to conceive naturally for more than a year without success
- Low or zero sperm count
Barnes discovered that, even when a man’s sperm count is zero, he describes the issue as a “problem” or “challenge,” never that he’s sterile.
Not Simple Denial
Society equates masculinity with virility. This association is so deeply ingrained that men, women, and their physicians dance around the issue of male infertility rather than jeopardize his manhood. The common belief that babies are women’s work and women will do anything to have a baby all too often results in failed fertility treatments focused on the female, even when it is medically proven “he’s shooting blanks,” according to Barnes. Denial of his infertility isn’t the man’s alone; society and the medical profession are also reluctant to call it like it is.
Treating the Woman for the Man’s Infertility
As a rule, the medical community has left matters of reproduction up to women. Most birth control methods are used by women and women get the most attention when babies don’t happen as planned. The most frequently used methods of assisted reproductive technologies are in vitro fertilization (IVF), which requires a man’s healthy sperm, and drug-based hyper-stimulated ovulation. All too often, women undergo hyper-stimulation treatments with the hope of creating more eggs so there will be more chances of conception. It takes just one sperm so when there are more eggs to target, conception just might happen in spite of a low sperm count. Barnes suggests a more effective approach would be developing ways to raise a man’s sperm count when he is proven to be infertile.
Something eventually worked for Barnes, in spite of her husband’s infertility. At 38, she’s now the happy mother of four.
Sources: Urist, Jacoba. “Researcher explores the invisible, ignored epidemic of male infertility.” TODAY Parents. NBCNEWS.com. May 5, 2014. Web. Jun 10, 2014.