Yesterday’s discussion of future biological advances that will piss off the religious right had me thinking about other innovations that I expect will happen within a few decades that might just cause wingnuts to freak out. First thing to come to mind is that it will be something to do with reproduction, of course, and it will scramble gender roles and expectations…so, how about modifying men to bear children? It sounds feasible to me. Zygotes are aggressive little parasites that will implant just about anywhere in the coelom — it’s why ectopic pregnancies are a serious problem — so all we need to do there is culture a bit of highly vascularized tissue in the male abdomen that will serve as a secure home for a few months. We’ll have to play some endocrine games, too, which may effect his love life but will also prepare him to lactate post-partum. There’s the minor anatomical problem that the vagina is a unique tissue, and no, the urethra is not homologous or analogous (fortunately; we wouldn’t want to have to push an 8 pound baby through the penis, even if female hyenas can manage it) — but that’s what c-sections are for. Given money, time, and a few weird volunteers, it could be done.
The next question is, has it been done? Are there any other vertebrates that have males doing the hard work of pregnancy? There were the gastric brooding frogs, which one would think could have made the leap easily — the eggs were just swallowed and developed in the stomach — but only the mothers seemed to have done the job. They’re all extinct, anyway. Male frogs of the genus Rhinoderma brood their young in their mouths, but this is after external fertilization and development, so they’re actually simply holding larvae in a safe place — and they’re also endangered. The precedents aren’t promising.
There is an extremely interesting and successful example, though: the syngnathid fishes, sea horses and pipefish. In all 232 species, the female lays her eggs in a specialized male structure called the brood pouch, where they are fertilized and develop. It’s a true male pregnancy!
Now this is interesting stuff. Despite the fact that this is a rather unusual vertebrate group and following a unique pattern of reproduction, we can see the pattern of evolutionary history fairly clearly in its lineage. There is a great deal of reproductive diversity in the syngnathids, but there is also a detectable pattern of increasing male investment in the care of embryos. There is a clear, early split in the group by the location of the brood pouch, either abdominal or under the tail, but both groups show increasing elaboration of the structures involved in protecting the embryos.
Phylogenetic relationships of syngnathid fishes. Pouch morphology is depicted by schematic pouch cross sections;
coloured triangles indicate increasing complexity. Phylogenetic analyses suggests that independent increases in pouch complexity have
occurred in both major pouch lineages. Morphological and molecular phylogenetic analyses indicate that Solenostomus spp. are the
closest living relatives of syngnathid fishes. Note: Only one genus per pouch type is shown here. Gastrophori = Abdominal brooder; Urophori = tail brooder.
The other mark of specialization is dedicating new tissues to the job. These brood pouches aren’t just passive pockets to shelter the young — there are layers of epithelia that regulate the environment, and they show patterns of growth in response to pregnancy. It’s nowhere near as elaborate as the placental-uterine interface in mammals, but there are dense layers of vascularized supportive tissues into which the embryos nestle, and a specific chemical environment is maintained around them. These cross sections of a between terms (left) and pregnant (right) seahorse are pretty darned cool — that’s not just a bag for holding eggs, it’s a whole uterus-like environment.
Major morphological and histological changes occur during seahorse pregnancy: A: Cross-section of a seahorse brood pouch
prior to incubation; B: Cross-section of an incubating seahorse brood pouch; C: Haematoxylin/eosin (HE)-stained section of a non-
incubating male brood pouch; D: HE-stained section of incubating male pouch. A folded inner epithelial layer and smooth outer epithelial
layer cover the brood-pouch tissues. Inner tissue layer, middle tissue layer with smooth muscle fibres and outer tissue layer indicated;
muscle fibres are likely involved in the process of parturition. Note increased density of large blood vessels around the embedded embryo
during incubation.
This more detailed diagram of the brood pouch shows the degree of investment. The male makes these epithelial bilayers that partially surround the embryos, with a convoluted surface to increase the area of contact and secretory cells. They pump out lectins that play an immunoprotective role, and they may also be releasing amino acids and proteins into the protein-rich fluid surrounding the embryos, which are capable of taking up amino acids from their environment. Whether the father is actually making a significant nutritional contribution to the embryo is unclear so far. It’s definitely the case that the father is providing protection and a more consistent environment for growth, but whether he is actually enhancing the growth of the embryos by input of energy beyond the yolk of the egg has not been determined.
Brood pouch cellular specialization and differentiation occurs during male pregnancy of seahorses. Note stratification of
the pseudo-columnar inner epithelium into a bi-layered epithelium during incubation, accompanied with changes in inner layer thickness
and increased vascularisation of pouch tissue surrounding the embryo.
This situation has some interesting reversals of consequences. Since the female lays unfertilized eggs in the brood pouch, which are fertilized on the spot, paternity is not in question, and males can reduce investment in sperm production. Seahorse testes only contain about 150 sperm, total, at any one time! There is no concern about sperm competition, either. Males of other species face selection for greater quantities or motility or other qualities of sperm to maximize the chance that it is their payload that actually fertilizes the egg, rather than the deposit some other male left in the oviduct. Syngnathid males, however, have sole access to the eggs and can be a little more lackadaisical at fertilization, although, of course, the tradeoff is that they have to make a much larger investment in the pregnancy itself.
Female syngnathids have no such security, though. Males can mate multiple times, and contain multiple clutches of eggs. Furthermore, about half the eggs do not develop, and are broken down or resorbed. This raises the interesting possibility of egg competition — females might be under selective pressure to increase clutch sizes to both exclude other females’ eggs and to increase the probability that it is their eggs that make it to term. Another speculative twist is that eggs represent a much greater potential nutritive contribution than a small quantity of semen, and the breakdown of eggs could provide fats and proteins that other eggs could absorb. A male could ‘feed’ his babies by breeding with females who would deliver some eggs for breakfast.
Hmmm. I started this by speculating that it would be possible for human males to play a much greater role in childrearing, with just a few technical breakthroughs and some extensive experimentation, of course. Now I’m beginning to think this could actually have some dramatic effects on human society and human biology. Science should frighten the conservatives!
Stölting KN, Wilson AB (2007) Male pregnancy in seahorses and pipefish: beyond the mammalian model. BioEssays 29:884-896.
I was interesting in reading more about the hyena so I read that blog post, too. One of the comments made me spit my soda all over my screen:
Wow.
There was an article in The Stranger last month about a woman’s quest to get her husband pregnant. Her to him:
Of course it’s possible……..
http://www.malepregnancy.com/
“Affect” not “effect”
I would rather we not go there. As a man who has watched his wife go through two births, I would much rather delegate this painful procedure to the “weaker” sex.
Richard
http://lifewithoutfaith.com
LOL, the website of the male pregnancy case is a long running joke.
But more serious. Doctors are busy to do womb transplants, one case in Saudi Arabia was successful and lasted a few months including periods before getting rejected by the body. In the US, they are busy with animal experiments. It seems that the anti-rejection medication is not harmful for the fetus, and that implies that you can implant a womb in a man and make him pregnant. Or for the matter, any individual that lacks a womb. It will just take time to develop the techniques…..
Have you spoken to Arnold Schwarzenegger about this?
I’m with you, Richard. Can’t imagine wanting to be pregnant, even if I were the family-man type.
You mentioned inducing lactation by manipulating endocrines. Aside from the idea of pregnancy, has this (lactation) already been shown to work – i.e can one induce lactation in males by administering hormones? Along those lines, are there actually inducible mammary glands in males in addition to the nipple?
shaggy google it. there are lots of folks out there claiming that men can breastfeed. i dunno.
when my wife was pregnant i messed with my fundie relatives by telling them that i was going to breastfeed and citing those web sources. it was hilarious. i was too chickenshit to do it. but hey bats and goats can do it, why not?
no thanks on male pregnancy though. i’ll keep it like Gawd intended.
I was thinking about that movie too, Fragano. What was it called…oh yeah, “Junior”:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110216/
Frighten is right!!!
In high school I had a (male) biology teacher who was fairly liberal in general, but he openly admitted that seahorses were a taboo subject for him because he couldn’t stand the idea of feminism going that far…
Wonderful. More people pregnant. That’s just what the world needs.
I’ll tell you what I’d like to see: men genetically modified to pay their court ordered child support.
Richard – and just think, there’s probably an entire legion of women anxious for their male counterparts to have to go through such a procedure for precisely the same reasons :)
In all honesty, though, I feel that giving birth is a pretty amazing, if painful, experience. Who is to say some men wouldn’t be interested in finding out what that’s like, or that they shouldn’t be able to do so?
I don’t particularly want to see male pregancies, because regardless of who gets pregnant, somebody essentially has to get tortured for an extended period. I’d much prefer “in vitro pregnancies”, where the whole operation is done in either an artificial uterus, or in a natural uterus on life support. This whole business of having to either squeeze a kid out of somebody’s pelvis, or carry out major abdominal surgery, is for the birds.
I’m all for male pregnancy. But make it a pregnancy sired by his male lover for the fundie shocker double whammy.
tceisele,
I don’t know about that. My wife loved being pregnant. (All but the last 2 weeks, and that bit about childbirth). But she says that she would do it again in a heartbeat. She also says occasionally that she misses it. Go figure.
Given that surgery is expensive and risky, why not settle for imitating phalaropes? Cheaper, easier to accomplish, and entirely doable today.
See, you can deliver fascinating science and offend the religious right at the same time, if you work at it.
Walter John William’s sf novel _Aristoi_ begins with the (male) protagonist inserting their embryo into the abdomen of his lover. Very touching and elegant in a posthuman kind of way.
Males do have mammary glands, they’re just usually much smaller than in women (obviously). Sometimes they can overdevelop and start lactating. There often isn’t a known cause. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gynecomastia
Male pregnancy also might show us whether the old argument is true – that if men were the ones who got pregnant, the legality/availability of abortion and contraception would be widespread and unquestioned. Although probably not very applicable at first – I doubt men could accidentally get pregnant under this model! But what would happen if a man changed his mind after zygote implantation? It’d be interesting to find out.
Surely the first major religious-right-pissing-off advance will be female-female reproduction. The technology for this is already in sight.
I await the outraged howling with glee…
“I would rather we not go there. As a man who has watched his wife go through two births, I would much rather delegate this painful procedure to the “weaker” sex.
Richard”
I’m with you on that one Richard, having sen my wife go thorugh 3 pregnancies. Absolutely no, thanks! But perhaps PZ would volunteer the experiment?
How long have the syngnathids been at this? I’d expect that given long enough, the eggs would become increasingly like sperm, and visa-versa. How long would a sex reversal take? That should give the bounds on conservative, internally-limited evolution.
PZ: Relationships Among Scientific Paradigms. A pretty graphic showing how the different branches of biology interlink, and link up to the soft & hard sciences.
As I said a while ago, too much of biology has a greater distance from math than sociology. Ecology and evolutionary biology are at the hard science end, while neuroscience sits close to sociology and (probably) English Lit.
One issue with uterine implantation in men (followed by pregnancy) is that people (women, usually) are told not to become pregnant after having major abdominal surgery due to the stretching involved later on.
Maybe we could implant some uterine tissue laproscopically, allowing a uterus to fully form before implanting an embryo? Or, possibly implanting stem cells (again, non-invasively) and tricking them into becoming uterine tissue?
Jeebus: On the other hand, women who’ve had c-sections (I’d describe that as pretty invasive) can become pregnant again, and even go through vaginal birth afterward (and I’d imagine contractions are more of a stress than simply stretching). I guess it would depend on the amount of tampering with the other organs – would they anchor the uterus to something? If so, what? And could it tear off the anchor during pregnancy?
It should be doable to engineer an animal as an artificial uterus. The fetus is immunologically privileged otherwise the mother would notice 8 lbs of foreign tissue growing and reject it. The placenta and membranes are coded for by the zygote, these are fetal tissues, not maternal.
There are barriers to cross species pregnancy but they aren’t all that absolute. Donkeys can carry horse or zebra hybrid fetuses and they aren’t even all that closely related. No idea what the barriers are and am too busy right now to look it up.
Alternatively, one could engineer an artificial organ type uterus. At present this is probably beyond our technology but who has put any work into it anyway. I’ve seen some artificial bladders, livers, and bones but don’t know how well they work in vivo. The history of science is that once someone decides to do something it happens sooner or later.
I was waiting for immortality breakthroughs but that one looks like a long wait.
Hey, if their god didn’t want these things born, he wouldn’t allow it to happen. After all, to them life is a miracle, be it healthy, diseased, retarded, deformed, or otherwise.
are there any geo chronologists at scienceblogs?
One of my more traumatic experiences I remember from grade school was a science fair project where the anonymous judge(s) gave me a bad grade on my seahorse project. S/he circled in red all the references to ‘a “pregnant” male seahorse’ (I even included the double quotes to indicate I knew this was atypical) on the poster part, and apparently were too freaked out to even read the written part of the report. I suspect it was some close-minded nut who couldn’t even make him/herself read the actual written report because the biology of seahorses was too much of a clash with his/her worldview.
I could understand ignorance and bullying from other kids, but when the teachers reject what I knew was scientific fact, and penalize the students for it, it really shattered my illusions that the world is a rational or fair place.
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve assumed that this judge just thought “that’s impossible, this kid must be really confused and messed up and ignorant of what everyone knows about biology” and didn’t bother to check if this might actually be true. Bleh, squeamish ignoramuses deserve to be eaten by squids if they insist on pushing their close-mindedness on innocent kids. Bloody seahorse-deniers. They probably don’t believe there are 500kg cephalopods lurking in the antarctic waters, either. Fools, they’ll be sorry next time they’re swimming in the Ross Sea! But I digress….
Damn! I had my hand up, saying ‘ask me, ask me!’ right up to the last paragraph….
I *knew* about the seahorses, dammit! I’m not a biologist, so do I get *some* credit?
And re: male *human* pregnancy… as my wife says: “if men had to give birth, it would be done under general anaesthetic, would include post operative plastic surgery, and six months of post-birth recovery would be a normal part of health insurance coverage”
for my part – I agree. I’m a wimp!
What are the criteria for choosing one type of seahorse to be labeled “female” and one “male?” Size and robustness of egg vs. sperm?
Sad about the extinct Australian frogs. :-(
Next stop lungfish?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queensland_Lungfish
Olive, I should think that those producing the eggs would be designated female, while those producing the sperm would be designated male. Am I missing something here?
Why have the man or the woman pregnant and get them inconvenienced for 9months. Why not create a machine that acts like a uterus and grows babies. I can see the call to the insurance company…
“Mr xxx your policy doesn’t cover natural pregancies due to medical costs incured for the mother. You will have to go to one of the network hospitals to grow your baby… Besides natural pregnancies can be dangerous to the mother.”
I understand that fetuses tap into their mother’s blood vessels and suck nutrients out of her rather aggressively.
I’m sure women have evolved defenses against being overwhelmed by that, but I doubt if men have; it could be fairly life-threating. Better try it on rats first.
Frog wrote: “Ecology and evolutionary biology are at the hard science end, while neuroscience sits close to sociology and (probably) English Lit.”
That is a bit unfair, Neuroscience is a big tent with people sticking recording needles in individual neurons at one end. Neuroanatomists doing tracing over here, developmental biologist of the nervous system etc, etc, all good hard science long before you get to guys doing top down consciousness research.
My dept address during my PhD was dept of physiology, centre for neuroscience. My thesis has graphs, t-tests and Chi-squares. Don’t get me started on those chi-squares…
Uterine replicators are commonplace on Beta Colony. Perhaps we should import a few, and try them out here? Just a thought.
PZ, I love you, and I’m looking forward with anticipation to the day when I can have the anatomy to bear your next child.
Women do have defenses against over-aggressive embryos. However, since men and women coevolved and share much the same genome, it should be possible to activate those same defenses in males.
spud raises a good point – the hormone controls over fetal competion and maternal changes are incredibly complex. Hence risks of eclampsia, diabetes etc. when things get a bit out of control.
And boys, what about the standard response when our partners complain about our ability to still sleep, consume alcohol etc. when they swell up like dirigibles?
“You are so lucky being able to do that. We would have them if we could….” (yeah, right).
Peter Ashby:
Did you check the image? It isn’t just my anecdotal impression, and the far side of the world isn’t the “softy softy” consciousness stuff, but the physiology stuff that at first glance looks like hard-science. It’s not what’s being done, but how it’s being done.
You can rigorously study mental phenomena, while shoddily investigating ion channels.
Hey PZ, think they’ll be able to make sperm out of women’s stem cells, so lesbians can have their very own children? I heard they were working on that.
Uhg. Can you imagine being in a bar with your buds pulling up your shirt and sayin’.
“You call that a stretch mark?!” ‘Dude check this one out.”
“Big deal man. I was in labor for 18 hours. No epidural either, ya big wuss.”
Off-topic: the second episode of The Enemies of Reason is now available. (I didn’t upload it, and I don’t know who did!)
I have a tranny friend who would be thrilled, were it possible. Me, I’m fat enough. And currently living through my partner’s second pregnancy tends to make me think that it wouldn’t be for me. Especially after her recent discussion about my upcoming vasectomy. The other night, she became awfully keen on the notion of just going ahead and taking care of it, right then and there.
Jen (and others),
I still would rather pass. I don’t think men could handle it. Ladies, I ask you, how are we when we get a cold????
Would you really want to put up with us for nine months?
And… if men could get pregnant, how long would it take before abortion would be an automatic right.
Richard
http://lifewithoutfaith.com
raven:
PZ already wrote about that.
“Male pregnancy also might show us whether the old argument is true – that if men were the ones who got pregnant, the legality/availability of abortion and contraception would be widespread and unquestioned. Although probably not very applicable at first – I doubt men could accidentally get pregnant under this model! But what would happen if a man changed his mind after zygote implantation? It’d be interesting to find out.”
Naw. Rather than abortions, there would be an unquestioned right to remove the embryo and force it back into the mother, where it belongs. After all, it would be clear to all involved that she tricked him.
I was reminded of what I hear sometimes from men forced to pay child support… going from “we have wonderful children” to “the damn bitch got knocked up and now I have to pay…” as if it were entirely her fault and she had done it to manipulate him out of spite. In a country where women are told they may not have the final choice in whether to become pregnant, it only makes sense that if the privilege were to be voluntarily extended to men, it would backfire in our faces somehow as other men rallied to the rescue of the “victims” who changed their minds.
Oops. I was trying not to get depressed…
Kseniya- I was wondering whether it’s always obvious which gamete counts as the sperm and which as the egg.
But I guess wikipedia, as usual, has my back. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamete
Yep we tranies would love to volunteer for this. Well a lot of us would anyway. Hell it would almost be worth the pain just to piss of the fundies. Hmm, I know at least one trans-man who would donate the eggs to. This is starting to get really fun.
Regarding the two mommies bit, it has just been shown in mice. To quote the News@Nature article:
“Sharks and some reptiles do it, but no mammal has ever been successfully replicated through parthenogenesis: birth from an egg that has not been fertilized by sperm. Now, a Japanese team has figured out how to overcome nature’s obstacles and has generated apparently normal mice by combining the genomes of two mouse eggs. The trick is in reprogramming one of the eggs to make it act more like sperm.”
The same group did something similar before but in this paper they have increased the efficiency to that of in vitro fertilization.
So, there are your bi-maternal offspring right there. As a male I’m starting to feel quite redundant. Maybe we should start volunteering for pregnancy just so they’ll keep us around…
frog the point is that voltage gated ion channels are neuroscience. Neuroscience at base is just the study of excitable tissues. You have to do some pretty dodgy classifying of a lot of people doing good hard science out of neuroscience to make that one stick. Not everyone who records from neurons is into inflating from there to consciousness either but it is still neuroscience. You have been had.
A male could ‘feed’ his babies by breeding with females who would deliver some eggs for breakfast.
Or, indeed, “feed” himself.
Olive – if you’re interested, the evolution of eggs and sperm from isogamy is a fascinating topic. The size difference is important, but it’s also tied to the functionality of each, and the advantages almost guarantee that once a species has egg and sperm it won’t go back to equal sizes. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a good summary of it anywhere; when I teach about it I have to cobble together from primary sources (which is of course the best way to get the real data, but difficult for non-majors to deal with).
My childrearing days are over, so I can only speculate and sit back and let someone else worry about this, but I want to address the flip remark by Dorid regarding child support. The system in most states is broken, and with the formula that is often used, non-custodial parents (which, yes, includes women as well as men) find themselves completely driven into the ground financially, while the person who is getting support has no obligation to spend the money on the kids.
Most states determine support based on a percentage of gross income, and can decide that if the NCP’s income has gone down it is due to “wilfull underemployment” which may have nothing to do with the actual job marketplace. Judges are left with no option to consider how much time is shared between the CP and the NCP, and so NCP’s that have shared physical custody close to 50% are left without the ability to support the kids when they are in charge.
I may never be able to get out of debt and save for any kind of retirement because of the way that the laws are written. I have friends who were laid off and then had their drivers’ licenses suspended because they fell behind on getting caught up on obligations. One friend got laid off from an $84000/yr job, and this salary is still, 5 years later, the basis for calculating his child support even though he has never been able to approach that level of salary. The county has decided that he did it before, he can do it again, even though he is in his 50’s and has no formal education in the field which earned him that salary.
So, before you go joking about men failing to pay their child support, you should recognize how sexist it is. You should also be aware of how many NCP’s are paying their child support even at the expense of other obligations. You should also recognize that legislators who are trying to fix things are consistently shot down by the attitude that it is all about men trying to shirk their responsibilities.
Wasn’t there a french feminist who proposed this in the 90’s? Still, as raven says, it could be closer to reality than some of the life extension proposals banded around.
Which ‘seamlessly’ leads to my questions. :-P
Since this technology won’t be around anytime soon, to put a female (but perhaps soon gender neutral) perspective on this, will it be “too late” for us having the discussion to consider that option?
Or will such a technology lift the age perspective on both todays pregnancies and these possible options? It seems it would, if it is relying on artificial hormone delivery. If so, what would the social consequences be of extending fertile age?
FWIW, my own possible pros:
– More children possible.
– Less pressure.
– Better planning.
– …, and so fertility more valued.
and possible cons:
– More children possible.
– …, and so children (and “naturally” fertile bodies) less valued. (Or not; these options are costlier.)
Wasn’t there a french feminist who proposed this in the 90’s? Still, as raven says, it could be closer to reality than some of the life extension proposals banded around.
Which ‘seamlessly’ leads to my questions. :-P
Since this technology won’t be around anytime soon, to put a female (but perhaps soon gender neutral) perspective on this, will it be “too late” for us having the discussion to consider that option?
Or will such a technology lift the age perspective on both todays pregnancies and these possible options? It seems it would, if it is relying on artificial hormone delivery. If so, what would the social consequences be of extending fertile age?
FWIW, my own possible pros:
– More children possible.
– Less pressure.
– Better planning.
– …, and so fertility more valued.
and possible cons:
– More children possible.
– …, and so children (and “naturally” fertile bodies) less valued. (Or not; these options are costlier.)
Interesting idea about egg competition. This is a well described phenomenon in the pig where estrogen production by faster developing embryos changes the uterine environment thereby in essence killing embryos lagging behind. There have been some suggestions that there is something like actual sperm wars in some mammals (described in the book Sperm Wars whose author escapes me at the moment) but the evidence for that is not really very good. Re. the comment about nutrients in eggs, I do wonder if eggs/early embryos from sea vertebrates do absorb nutrients from their environment, I would think that rahter unlikely because it to would have to be a pretty unreliable supply. But then again I am not a marine biologist.
No comment about male pregnancy in mammals – PZ covered that quite well, methinks.
But that phylogeny pisses me off.
YOU CANNOT DRAW A TREND ACROSS THE TIPS OF A PHYLOGENY
No, not allowed, don’t do that, stop doing it, please.
Look at the lower third of the figure, with the label on the far right “Gastrophori”. Notice the coloured triangle supposedly correlating with increasing complexity (i.e. showing a trend). The vertical axis in this graph has absolutely zero value, because any node on the phylogeny can be rotated such that the tips of the tree on the far right can be arranged in a large number of equally-correct relative positions. To continue the example of the bottom third, switch the positions of Dunkerocampus and Doryrhamphus. The three Gastrophori still show the same phylogenetic relationship, where Dunkerocampus and Doryrhamphus are sisters, and together are sister to Nerophis. Does that coloured triangle still make sense?
And don’t get me started on “complexity”.
“Naw. Rather than abortions, there would be an unquestioned right to remove the embryo and force it back into the mother, where it belongs.”
Hmm, interesting thought. I hadn’t considered that. Although it seems like fetal transplant is almost further away than male pregnancy. From what I understand about how the placenta works, it seems like it would be rather difficult to surgically remove and re-attach elsewhere (but I’m not a surgeon, so who knows?). And this could go both ways too. For instance, if a woman wanted an abortion, and the father made a fuss (eg like paternal consent bills that have been bandied about), she could just say, “You want the baby? Then YOU gestate it!”
It’s a shame Loretta of the People’s Front of Judea never lived to see such days ;)
Male pregnancy, whether in vivo or in vitro, is an extremely important political issue. Female reproductive power results in complex and asymmetric power relationships between men and women. Suffice it to say that the men suffer too (see Mike Haubrich’s comment above). Both men and women would be better off if the decision to reproduce were fundamentally an INDIVIDUAL decision. Let’s separate reproduction from sexuality altogether.
By the way, I am not joking. I think it is technologically and politically inevitable that, in the face of mortality, any man OR woman will be able to replace themselves without giving the control over that decision to any other person. This will effectively unburden the communication between men and women.
Consider the other pleasant possibility: if a father opposes an abortion by the mother, she’ll be able to instead suggest transferring the unwanted little parasite to his abdominal cavity. Fair’s fair.
Being pregnant is awesome. It’s childcare that’s hard!
Peter Ashby:
Peter, the point is that groups that are cited together whose keywords fall under “Neuroscience” are rarely cited together with papers from mathematics or “Physics” in the grand. That implies that these folks are probably doing beautiful experiments, but are neglecting to use the analytic tools that have been developed, which then leads to less than rigorous understanding of what the experiments mean.
Since this data is statistically summarized, of course there are outliers who don’t make this mistake. But the data is the data: in mass, neuroscience papers are metrically closer to sociology (even neurophysiology).
Voting Present:
I gotta say that’s nuts. Reproduction is not an individual affair – there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, that we do that is more a community issue than reproduction. If you can’t integrate asymmetries and conflicting interests in that kind of decision, then you have no business propagating. And it’s not a hetero/homo/… issue, it’s a family issue. Children should not be brought into the world without a family, if at all possible, as extended an extensive as possible. A human being is a social beast, and in reproduction this is exposed the most obviously and intrinsically.
Voting President:
I have to agree with Frog on this one. Not to mention:
“This will effectively unburden the communication between men and women.”
I don’t know about you, but the overwhelming majority of the communication I participate in with the opposite sex has nothing to do with sex or procreation. And if you mean this in the general sense that ‘all communication is shaded by gender roles & inequality’ well, as has been noted in previous posts, males suddenly being able to give birth is going to confuse gender roles and equality even more, it’s not going to make the issue disappear.
Besides, you’d have to overcome the current need for two gametes to make a baby (even the female-only experiments require 2 eggs). And while parthenogenesis has its perks, we’d lose the advantage of being able to recombine our DNA.
As well as annoying the religious right, I’m sure this will annoy feminists who look forward to a future in which men have been rendered unnecessary by reverse engineering on female gametes to make them viable as “sperm”. Now men and women are equally unnecessary for the continuation of the human race. Vive equality.
Individual male reproduction will clearly require more knowledge of genetic information and cellular mechanics than we possess right now. I believe we will gain that knowledge.
I did not mean to exclude families or “the village” from the job of raising children. I meant to focus on the control of the reproductive choice. Men will be able to choose if, how, and when they have an offspring. How is that different from saying that women should be able to choose if, how, and when they have an offspring?
.
Please stop f@@@ing with nature!!!!! It works fine already.
Going back to the caves today, are we? Would you mind leaving your agriculture at the door – that’s technology, too.
Sorry. Nature does not work fine for me. That was kinda the point of what I said.
Don’t forget the mouth-brooding Cichlids. I never do!
“Men will be able to choose if, how, and when they have an offspring. How is that different from saying that women should be able to choose if, how, and when they have an offspring?”
Men can do that now, even if they don’t have a co-parent. Egg donation and surrogate mothers exist, you know (not to mention adoption). Besides, are you arguing that women already have the ability to choose if, how, and when they have offspring? Because that doesn’t seem like a particularly sound argument to me.
“I’m sure this will annoy feminists who look forward to a future in which men have been rendered unnecessary”
In the interest of avoiding the “no true scotsman” fallacy, I will not say that TRUE feminists believe in equality of the sexes, not female superiority. However, I will say that most feminists define feminism as a striving toward equality of the sexes and have no desire or intention to form a matriarchy.
In other words, most feminists are not man-hating feminazi bitches who find men unnecessary, so it kinda sucks when people label them as such. Please don’t.
If it’s possible to have stronger, healthier babies with artificial wombs, I suspect, in the long run, humans will do that.
We will essentially stop being live-bearing mammals and go back to being egg-layers, albeit high tech eggs.
I want to get pregnant..a whole bunch of times..so I can rake in welfare and leave freshly aborted feti on Neo-con porches across the nation!!!!!!!!!!!!
my boyfriend and I love each other so much. I can’t bring the topic of children because more than anything I don’t want to say what he could not give me, but, I know sooner or late it will surface. we decided to be together and face the consequences but i’m still open for the hope of male pregnancy.
I haven’t looked at mate choice in sygnathids, but in pomacentrids, females often choose males with eggs already in their nest (it’s the highest correlatable factor); a possible indicator of “male quality” in nest construction or protection.
I wonder if sygnathid female choice might also actually look at whether a male already is carrying a clutch of eggs in similar fashion. He’s just a mobile nest, after all.
sounds like an excellent graduate student project.
I await for the day to see a man give birth. For me it will be very fasinating. :3 And the “transfering the fetus to the male” thing is questionable too. It goes against religion and the Bible, and what God intended ‘women’ should only give birth. But hey, we screw with the natural order as we speak, and the world’s going to end sooner or later so why not have some fun. If I was a guy I’d so voluntier to get pregnant! X3 Then I’d run around like the total fruit loop I am with a dream come true. :D (I’m a high school freshmen with ADHD and short term memory loss, don’t blame me for my ignorance of science! DX )
i want my organs become more big size what the way to make that happen so please send me ,some medicen or gelly
I recall that a woman who had had a hysterectomy was found to be pregnant. The placenta was attached to her large intestine. Delivery was cesarean. Really the same as a male pregnancy