RFK jr went on a rant about sperm. It’s a national security threat, you know!
Today, the average teenager in this country has 50 percent of the sperm count, 50 percent of the testosterone as a 65-year-old man. Our girls are hitting puberty six years early, and that’s bad, but also our parents aren’t having children.
Parents who want to have children do not have access. I have seven children. I feel that God has blessed me with that and I can’t imagine how different my life would be if I did not have that blessing.Sperm counts are known to decline with age, meaning a teenage boy is likely to have a much higher count than a man in his late sixties, according to experts.
our parents aren’t having children…
think about that one for a moment.
Then consider Parents who want to have children do not have access.
Access to what, you may ask, and also what makes them parents if they don’t have children? My head hurts reading whatever that ratfucker has to say about health.
It’s true that sperm counts have been reported to be declining, although very poor sampling of a variable parameter adds some doubt to the conclusion. We tend not to get sperm counts from teenagers! But I’d agree with him that environmental hazards, especially the ones that big capitalist corporations tend to spew everywhere, are almost certainly damaging the quantity and quality of gametes humans are producing. We should probably do something about that, but Republicans aren’t going to change anything that might affect the bottom line of Dow or Monsanto, so seeing a lackey of corporate interests piously expressing concern about forever chemicals contaminating the environment leaves me unmoved.
Also, making babies is a more complex process than just having a man making sperm (that’s probably the smallest part of the problem). Conception requires a consenting woman, and also requires that the parents have the time and money and interest to invest in raising a child. If you want more healthy babies in America, provide better medical care with low cost first — pumping up male sperm counts accomplishes nothing if no one wants or can afford children.
As for RFK jr himself — he has six children by two mothers (I think he’s counting his current girlfriend’s child as his own, which is fair). All of his marriages ended in divorce, and one was exceptionally acrimonious, and one of his former wives died of suicide. I don’t think he should be talking about “blessings”. He’s an old rich fuck and is not a role model for successful parenting. One of the causes of his divorce was the discovery of a book where he listed all of his extramarital affairs!
Wait…I thought conservatives blamed feminism for declining birth rates, but now it’s all due to those tainted, poisoned men shooting blanks? Cool.
(sarcasm alert) Maybe lower sperm counts among teenagers has a hidden (potential) benefit: Fewer teenaged pregnancies. Fewer sick children from too-young mothers (and too-young parents in general). More young women finishing high school, and even going to college, without the additional burden of pregnancy/parenthood, and then taking STEM courses — even starting STEM careers, facilitating more research like that that made ‘murika great in the 50s (before all of that pesky civil rights stuff in the 60s) — so they can understand the science behind sperm counts…
Oops. Never mind. They’d probably all insist on fluoridated drinking water, too.
I blame Tylenol. It’s the nutjob’s go to target for what ails ya.
Considering that my father’s dead and my mother is 76, I’d be quite surprised to find if they were having more kids.
This is just crypto-great replacement bullshit. Another week and he’ll start babbling about Jews/black men/Asians have higher sperm counts.
It is not even for sure that male sperm counts are declining.
The data from many studies are all over the place.
Changing methodologies over the decades is just one of the problems with these studies.
It is mostly irrelevant any way.
Sperm production isn’t rate limiting for population level reproduction rates.
People aren’t having a lot of children because of a lack of sperm.
They aren’t having children for cultural reasons and quite often, mostly because they can’t afford them.
We are becoming a poorer society rapidly with time for the average American.
The average cost to raise a middle class US child to age 18 is now $330,000.
People struggling to survive don’t have that kind of money.
“Parents who want to have children do not have access.”
Access to what, exactly? Anything Republicans have explicitly said they want to provide? RFKwack can’t even give a vague answer to that.
Also, as raven said (and anyone who’s taken a basic sex-ed class knows), if a guy’s sperm count goes down by 50%, he can still get a woman pregnant. It only takes one sperm cell, not a concerted gang-up.
This is just another “great replacement” dogwhistle.
Access to what? Child care? Time off to care for sick child? Access to medical care to prevent child diseases? Well funded education opportunities? Protection in school from deranged shooters? What?
To be fair, evidence does suggest that if your parents don’t have children, you probably won’t either.
I’d say his parents had at least one kid too many. Sorry, RFK Sr.
PZ, I know you didn’t mean to evoke the memory of Todd Akin, and I know you know this, but yeah, no, conception doesn’t actually require consent. Alas.
our parents aren’t having children… That worm in his head is giving us brain lesions.
“I have seven children. I feel that God has blessed me with that and I can’t imagine how different my life would be if I did not have that blessing.”
I wonder how much his time he gave to his children. I’m thinking the time he used to have one or two of those affairs would have been better spent with his children, well maybe not.
@6 Larry – You seem to have forgotten the Republicans only care about baby making and fetuses. Once you become a full-fledged human, they no longer care about you.
As usual, he has no idea what he is talking about. Puberty is starting earlier in girls — by about 12-18 months, not 6 years.
Since the historically-defined range of onset of puberty is 8-13 years in girls and 9-14 in boys, this means that according to RFK Jr, the current age of onset must be 2-7 in girls and 3-8 in boys.
This just raises the question:
Who the hell is counting the sperm of teenage boys?
Teenage boys are not known for their capacity to exercise delayed gratification. Unless the researchers are collecting samples first thing in the morning, I’m willing to posit a guess for the cause of low sperm counts.
It’s commonly understood that a way to increase the birth rate is to keep young people stupid about reproduction and bury them in ridiculous, easily contradicted statements about the world, other people, social trends and structures, history, and morality. Basically, send them to church.
Its entierly an economic question. Americans aren’t having kids because wages have been flat or declining for 50 years. Meanwhile life goods like houses, healthcare, and education have seen orders of magnitude increases in price. Its also no suprise it has hit white americans the hardest because white men wothout a college education have seem the worst economic performance of any cohort. And again this usnt a suprise because thats the cohort thay benefited most from unions and capital controls that are now gone. But the people in charge dont want to hear this because all they really care about is corporate profits and racial dominance. And they benefit from poor white men being angry and fucjed because our racist sexist ass society means they are more likely to take it out on those socially weaker than them. So I highly doubt the oligarchs that run this authoritarian shit hole will do anything about low birthrates. To be clear its a crime that young couples cant have as many kids as they want, a lot if my friends are either not having any orhaving less than they would like because its just not financially possible. Its really fucked up to hear the regret in their voices when they talk about it. And they are exactly the kind of middle class young white people thes nazi assholes claim they want having kids.
To be clear my friends are not fascists. They are kind liberal people, I just meant in a demographic sense.
crimsonsage, cf. https://ourworldindata.org/global-decline-fertility-rate and https://www.nber.org/digest/202504/economic-growth-cultural-traditions-and-declining-fertility
Basically, these days having children is not needful to ensure one’s future, and they are not generally seen as economic assets. And, of course, despite MAGA shittiness, family planning is also a thing.
[BTW, my wife and I worked very very hard to not issue progeny. We succeeded… but of course, that means we’re not parents and shan’t become grandparents]
Something to note is https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2025/05/05/humanity-is-not-fading-away/
Of course there are cultural changes associated with patters of reproduction, but that change happened in the west almost 100 years ago. The transition of reproduction from quantity to quality with the advent of modern medicine driving down infant mortality and the increasing education requirements of a modern economy. Those patters dont explain why now societies are seeing a sharp decline in child birth. I feel it is appropriate on a biology blog to point out that a population of organisms with sufficient resources and a healthy environment tends to reproduce itself over time, we are not doing this. Additionally the decline in birth rates tends to inversely track with rates of exploitation. This is why you see such extreme declines in countries with high levels of exploitation like those in south east Asia. Of course people should be free to not have children if they do not want to. Freedom for women to control their reproduction is a paramount right in any humane society. But this also means that women should be allowed.and able to have children if they wish as well, and in a world of increasing precarity this is less and less possible.
“But this also means that women should be allowed.and able to have children if they wish as well, and in a world of increasing precarity this is less and less possible.”
Not really. Here in Oz, welfare will ensure every child is supported sufficiently.
Nobody is gonna starve unless they choose to do so, and nobody is gonna stop a woman who wants to have children.
I checked for the USA, the most recent data (2022):
https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2022/demo/fertility/women-fertility.html
Table 1 shows the distribution of births by age and number of children.
Note how women with three or more children (27.6% of the group) account for about 60% of all children born to women aged 40–50. In short, the distribution of breeders is not uniform.
“Those patters dont explain why now societies are seeing a sharp decline in child birth.”
I think they do.
I wonder why men are always screeching about sperm counts and low birth rates when it’s abundantly obvious that humans are not an endangered species. ( ignoring the danger of warming the planet which will eventually destroy everything)
There are studies that show that across all societies, when women control their reproduction, they have 2.5 children.
Pregnancy and childbirth are the #1 cause of death to women without access to modern medical care, but this yahoo is wondering why the birth rate is plummeting while simultaneously gutting healthcare and women’s right to bodily autonomy.
Gee, what a mystery! Why don’t those uppity women want to risk their lives to have babies despite no paid medical leave, prenatal care, or ability to earn a living wage while raising said children.
What a joke.
It isn’t even all men.
Or even all white men.
It is a small subset, white racists who fear that their society will be overrun by nonwhite people, aka the Great Replacement theory.
Here is Exhibit A. Trigger warning. It involves Elon Musk and you might lose your lunch.
FWIW, I’m white and if I was being “conquered, enslaved, raped and genocided” I would know it.
Instead, I get death threats and insults that I can’t repeat here because the spam filter will catch them. From, white male racists like Elon Musk.
I’ve never heard any women fear-mongering over sperm counts. I’m sure there are women who believe the great white replacement conspiracy theory, but it’s only men who whinge about their sperm and falling birth rates.
Humans are so overpopulated that we are destroying the environment, falling birth rates are not problematic in any way.
A noted distinction between “gender critical” transphobes and garden-variety transphobes is that common transphobes know how to say the word “sperm,” whereas their gender critical counterparts can only say “small gametes.”
Spermatozoa swimming in seminal fluid.