Fear Of Fatherhood

For while the women do the physical stuff, it's the men who must carry the burden of responsibility. Not economic responsibility, necessarily: I'm not suggesting that all men are, or should be, the sole breadwinners, although many will turn out to be. Nor moral, nor social, nor emotional, nor intellectual, nor political responsibility, come to that: each couple must make their own arrangements for these. No, I'm talking purely about internal responsibility - the weight of the knowledge that such a trivial event (unprotected sex) can have such far-reaching and longlasting consequences. It is an extraordinary imbalance, and almost impossible to come to terms with. Women, luckily for them, am busy suffering the day-to-day misery of pregnancy.
 

Fear Of Fatherhood

They haven't got time to think about any of this. Whereas, for the first few months, we have virtually nothing else to think about. And if you are at all reluctant, the same sentence will be going through your mind over and over and over again. How could I have been so fucking stupid?

You only have to do it once to make a baby. When do you learn the truth of this? Only, I believe, when you actually make someone pregnant. Until that moment you always assume you have a certain leeway. This may have something to do with the endless scare stories in the press about declining sperm counts.

Thanks to stress, pollution, junk food and cheap red wine, British sperm counts are falling off the map. As a nation we are roughly half as fertile as we were during World War Two. By 2030, it has been predicted, a single man in Redhill, Surrey, will have to service the entire female population. All other men will be sitting miserably in pubs or having sex with farm animals. An entire nation will be shooting blanks. 

Eventually, randy Finns and Americans - the most potent nationalities, according to authoritative new research coming out of Finland and the USA will have to be flown in to ease the problem. Resentful though we may be in our hearts, we will welcome these foreign usurpers, for without their assistance, our old age will be everybody's old age.

Bad news for Britain, then, but maybe very good news for British men who don't want to have children. If men's sperm counts have declined overall, chances are that each man's has decline specifically. Many of us, in other words, have been playing Russian roulette without any bullets at all. Who needs condoms? In fact, over-confidence breeds complacency, followed quickly by children. Sperm counts may be falling, but not fast enough to save you. Here are some good words to remember:

• fertile
• potent
• fruitful 
• firing on all cylinders 

Your testicles, which may now develop a psychosomatic ache, forcing you to take several days off work, are doing only what nature intended them to do. Good grief, if you felt like it, you could probably make some more. 

Let's face it: man is genetically programmed to procreate. Centuries of civilization may have eroded his ability to catch fish with his bare teeth, but he still wants to spread his seed on a Friday night. As adults and (we'd like to think) sensible, civilized human beings, we are naturally quite embarrassed by these compulsions and try our utmost to suppress them. Then we have a drink or two and make total fools of ourselves. All we are doing when we leer at girls is following our biological imperative, which is to impregnate as many of them as we can get away with. 

Kingsley Amis, after his sex drive faded away, said it had been like 50 years 'chained to an idiot'. It is this idiot who makes the babies; it is us who must answer for his action. If this doesn't seem a particularly good deal, that's because it isn't.
 
In other words: it isn't your fault. Don't beat yourself up about it. All your instincts - which is to say your penis, and particularly the very tip of the penis when it thinks sex is in the offing - have been telling you to make babies. Your brain cells have been trying to tell you to have a cold bath and an early night with a nice cup of cocoa, but you haven't been listening.

No one ever does, and that's just the way it is. Without men like you, selflessly sacrificing their youth and sanity, Britain would grind to a halt. You never know: it could be you in 2030 in Redhill, Surrey, servicing the entire female population. Then you'd be sorry. Or at least, very very tired. To find out more, you can check out Fear Of Fatherhood.