This has been a year of debate on women’s health and Planned Parenthood, both of which I wholeheartedly support and advocate. But there is also the issue of Planned Parenthood and men’s health, something perhaps overlooked in the shortsighted and aggressive push to defund that amazing and important organization.
Many men out there in America are celebrating today with new tools from Sears or a new pair of running shoes or perhaps a gift card to Cabela’s. Or maybe they have received something simpler or less expensive like a photo of their kids or a new baseball mitt or a dinner out with the family. Dads are playing catch with Billy and hugging Sally as she holds the drawing she made that says, “I love you, Daddy!” That annual event called Fathers’ Day is really great. A good father is a wonderful thing, something that indeed needs to be celebrated.
But, none of those lovely events or gifts is happing in our home. It’s not that my kids hate my guts or that thanks to divorce they are living on the other coast with my ex’s new husband. It’s only because I – or perhaps better put, my wife and I - don’t have any children. Zero. Zilch. Nada. Nothing in our “quiver.” This Fathers’ Day marks – within a couple of days – the 35th year since I drove to the Denver Planned Parenthood Office and got The Big Snip, a vasectomy.
Some might find it appalling that I had this procedure at age 28, somewhere near the height of an average male’s procreation years. In truth, I had almost done the deed two years earlier at 26. I was scheduled to get a vasectomy in 1975. While I wanted the procedure I was in the process of breaking up with my then-girlfriend and decided that a trip to the Planned Parenthood clinic was not a good idea at that time. I wanted to make damn sure that I was getting a vasectomy for the right reason, not just because I was suddenly sleeping alone. I waited another two years to think about it.
But in June of 1977 it was the right time. I knew it then and as I look back at it today I have no regrets about my decision, a decision that should I get my H. G. Wells Time Machine working (the parts are still on back order) and could go back to those weird and wonderful times of my mid-20s in the late 70s I would without question make exactly the same decision again.
This year I turn 63 years old. I have no offspring, but I’ve been a surrogate uncle – or at least a good friend – to more kids (many now incredible adults) than I count and I play with our “children,” Ms. Mo and Mr. B (and the late, great Edward Tabby), kittens (well…cats) that my wife and I have rescued from under porches or dumped in city parks. Life is good. I can putter in my shop. We can travel. We have no debt except the house payment. We’ve never had to bail a child out of jail, tried to figure out college tuition – the annual cost of buying a new Lexis - on my community college instructor’s salary, paid for tutoring to get a child into just-the-right school or schlepped kids around to ballet, tennis, cello, soccer, choir or Little League. Don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against those who do all of the above and raise really sharp, skilled, well-educated and interesting young adults. I could have done all that but I didn’t.
My decision was not made overnight. I was raised by a geologist father who gave me and appreciation of the earth and a zoologist mother who gave me the appreciation of the plants and critters that lived on it. In college in the late 60s I became aware with the writings of Edward Abbey, Colin Fletcher, John Muir and others who wrote about America’s wild places. I read and digested The Population Bomb and The Limits of Growth. When all my compatriots were busking on the streets of Paris and riding the Marrakesh Express I was exploring the wild country of Canyonlands, the Uintah Mountains and the High Rockies, a pack on my back. When my friends came home, found mates and begin to reproduce I went to graduate school and, in my spare time, continued to explore the wilderness of the West.
Along the way I came to the conclusion that I didn’t want to bring children into the kind of world that I thought would exist in the future, a world without wilderness to explore and cities choked with cars and pollution. And I looked at the charts and graphs of world population growth and said to myself, “Self, this ain’t gonna get any better.”
True, my doomsday predictions of 40 years ago have not (quite) come to pass; there are still wild places in America, although they are getting smaller; there are cities that are still vaguely habitable; and there are still wonderful people doing wonderful things that help us survive and thrive in this world for another generation. But another kind of world has emerged – a world of crazy – one that I am just as glad not to have forced upon those who might have emerged from me and whatever partner I had selected to share my DNA. I would not want to be a 22 year old today, looking at the future that awaits.
The concept of having no children hasn’t always set well with people. Only my closest friends and lovers have known about my vasectomy decision. To that end I’ve occasionally been accused, not by these friends and lovers but by others to whom I intimated that I thought having a vasectomy was a good idea, of being selfish, over-sexed, not contributing to the gene pool or somehow something less than a whole man because I didn’t want to reproduce.
Selfish? No, I willingly gave up my two children that others might have that ability without undo impact on the earth. Having grown up in Utah and returned there for graduate school I knew Mormon families (we were not one of them) that had my two kids, their two kids, your two kids, plus two (or three) more for good measure, a child every nine months and twenty minutes. My contribution – or lack thereof – made room for two of this onslaught without increasing the load on the planet. I don’t consider that selfish at all. Alas, I couldn’t make room for the rest but at least I tried.
Over-sexed? I have never been a stud, nor have I tried to be. My decision was one of concern for our planet and concern for those who would live in it. Yes, I had my share of lovers in my younger, pre- and post-vasectomy years but it was never a driving force. My vasectomy decision was a matter of safety for those lovers I would have had anyway and safety for future generations who would otherwise have to live with my misadventures.
You're not contributing to the quality of the gene pool was one of the odder admonitions I heard from several people who were genuinely angry when I told them that I thought getting a vasectomy was a good idea (though I didn’t tell them that I’d had one years earlier). I was somehow destroying the health of humanity because I wasn’t creating intelligent offspring for the future to counter the children of the unenlightened.
You’ll never find a wife who doesn’t want children! Well, yes I did and a whispered “Thank you,” and a secret sign of making a snippy-snippy scissors-like gesture when screaming children are sitting behind us at a restaurant is part of our married vocabulary. We’re coming up on our 25th year of being happily childless. When someone asks if we have kids we say, “No, we stopped with cats.”
You’re not a man unless you make babies. Hey guys; Men don’t make babies, women do. Men just plant the seed and leave the rest to the woman. You want to talk “selfish?” To me, that’s more selfish than a vasectomy. Of course, many men want children and take joy in raising them to adulthood and that’s fine. But don’t consider me any less of a man because I choose not to.
You are incomplete unless you have children. I feel very complete, thank you. I own a house in New Mexico that we designed ourselves. I write stuff. I play music. I’ve made two music CDs and a documentary film. I’m writing a book. I have had a satisfying career in education. I putter in my shop where I build and fix things. I take great photographs. I love my wife and she loves me. That all feels pretty “complete” to me. Am I missing something?
You won’t have children who take care of you when you are old Guess what: If the statistics are correct, neither will you. Chances are they will be living far away from you and frequently have to travel great, perhaps annoying, distances to take care of you or, should they live nearby, it will still be someone else other than your kids who will be doing your caretaking at the assisted living center.
My overall point on my 35th Annual I’m Not-a-Father’s Day is this: Someone certainly has to propel our species into the future, though I’m not sure if it’s a future that is necessarily worth propelling toward. Yes, I’m cynical about the future but I have faith that humanity will do the best it can under the circumstances. But 35 years ago I made a decision to forego the process of reproduction. And I give thanks to the folks at Planned Parenthood who made that possible in an easy, affordable and compassionate way. To the rest of you who are celebrating Father’s Day today I offer my congratulations.
And to those of you, like me – male and female – who decided to pass altogether on the expectation of childbearing and rearing I say:
The planet thanks you.
Happy Vasectomy Day!