Did you want to be a dad?

1 in 4 men in Europe are childless, most of which are not by choice.  However, very few men are talking openly about this.  There's no need to suffer in silence, it's time to start having this conversation.

Dr. Robin Hadley is a world-renowned expert in the field of male childlessness.  His interest in this area stems from his own personal lived experience which led him into years of research.  

He is the author of numerous articles, blogs and studies on the subject, including his book How is a Man Supposed to be a Man? - Male Childlessness, a life course disrupted.

You can find further information about Robin and his work at www.robinhadley.co.uk

If you are affected by this episode and topic and would like to find out more information and seek support from men in a similar situation, I would encourage you to visit the many support groups listed on Dr. Hadley's website - Resources for Childless Men.

Thanks for listening. Follow me on Facebook or Instagram.

My Celebrant website is www.yourmilestonemoment.ie

Transcript

Mairéad  00:00

Hello, listeners, you are very welcome to the being brilliant podcast. This is episode 10. Did you want to be a dad? This episode is very personal for me, because 13 years ago, I walked away from seven years of trying to conceive, miscarriage, multiple fertility treatments, disappointment and loss, to pick up the pieces of my life and try to mend a broken heart and mind. Back then, not many people were talking about this subject, and so a lot of my suffering was done in silence, because I felt a lot of shame and guilt. I also felt very isolated, because what I noticed at the time was that I had no role model for how a happy and successful life without children would look like for someone who had tried to have children but failed. I knew no one who was talking about the impact of childlessness, no one who had gone through what I had gone through but didn't have the Hollywood outcome at the end. And then a few months ago, it dawned on me, I am now the elder woman that my younger self needed to meet and needed to hear it's okay. Life has other plans for you. You will find your purpose. You will feel happy again, and you will heal. So I then had a great conversation with Dee Kelly on her finding space podcast, and we had a lot in common and a lot to talk about. I wanted to offer hope to any couples walking away without a baby and wondering what the future would be like without kids. I knew that if the conversation helped one person, it was worth having. Then, after we recorded the episode, I couldn't stop thinking about the impact of involuntary childlessness on men. There is now a lot of women in this space talking, which is fantastic, but I scoured the internet and I could not find a male equivalent of D Kelly in Irish podcasts or Irish social media discussing the impact of male childlessness from a lived perspective.

02:55

Why is that?

Mairéad 02:58

As Irish people, we love to talk, and in recent years, we've made great strides in the fields of men's mental health. Men like brezzy, blind boy and Jerry Hussey have courageously shared their stories and their struggles, and I know they have helped countless men by talking about important issues like anxiety, depression and what helps them keep their minds healthy. So why are no men in Ireland talking about involuntary childlessness? I know from first hand experience that if you want to be a parent, and for various reasons, of which there can be many, this milestone, if it eludes you, has a huge impact on your mental health. Aren't men just as broody as women? Did you want to be a dad? Well, one man certainly did, and his name is Dr Robin Hadley. He's an associate lecturer in Manchester Metropolitan University, and he has researched and spoken and written about this topic extensively. Dr Robin Hadley always wanted to be a dad, but life had other plans. In this episode, he very kindly shared his story and his research findings with me. If you are listening and these issues impact you, I hope this conversation will help you feel less alone. If you don't know this already, one in four men in Europe are childless, the majority by circumstance, not by choice. I'll pop a link to Dr Hadley's website in the show notes, where you can gain access to lots of information resources and contact details for men's group. Groups dealing with this topic. And finally, if you are a young man listening and you think that you have lots and lots of time to conceive, maybe you do. I hope you do. But it is worth knowing that male infertility and the opportunity to conceive does decline with age. Just because it is possible does not mean it is probable.

Speaker 1  05:31

So I'm absolutely delighted to have you here. Dr Robin Hadley, associate lecturer and author. You're an Associate Lecturer at Manchester Metropolitan University, and today we're talking about the vast and very complex area of childlessness in men. And we're calling it involuntary childlessness in men, because, of course, there are some men out there who are childless because that's the path that they have chosen. But there's a lot of men out there who in the world today, who are childless, not not through any choice of their own, for various reasons, which we will get into ourselves later on. But maybe we could start Robin, if you can tell me a little bit about you, your childhood, your background, because I always think that's a very interesting place to start, because that gives us sometimes clues and indications to how our life goes and the choices we make in life and How we've got where we are now? Great.

Robin  06:42

Yeah, sure. Thanks so much for having me on. It's a delight to meet you and a delight to talk about this fascinating subject. I'm a Mancunian. Was born in Old Trafford, which is a working class area of Manchester, and I come from a very large family, so I'm the seventh of eight children, four boys, four girls. And I was born in 1960 so that makes me 65 at this time, and I always expected to be a dad my parents when I was growing up, they were quite often, were refusing something. Would say you're gonna have to make these hard decisions when you're a parent. So that was always feeding in there. And being the seventh of eight, a lot of my parenting came from my brothers and sisters, really. And, you know, brothers and sisters and family dynamics, sometimes that family parenting wasn't that good, really, getting me to do things that as an innocent I did.

Robin  07:53

They, they, they laughed about that. And so I, I left school with a very few qualifications, and was lucky to get a work placement at university and became a scientific and technical photographer. And in my 20s, I met my first wife, and we got married, and our aim was to have children. We're both working class. That was our aim. And then during the marriage, we changed. We I think we both changed. I was very much still on, I want to have children. And her attitude changed. And we got divorced. And just after we divorced in the UK, there was a an economic crisis, and interest rates went up to 13% from whatever they'd been 7% I think. And I meant that most of my wages went on paying the mortgage. So I kept the house. And so I was really forced to stay in for about two years, two and a half years in my early 30s, which are a prime time for reproduction, a critical time. And then that resolved itself. I started another relationship, deep relation, a deep relationship, with an Irish woman, and at some point she said to me, I want to have your babies. And in my marriage, when we were thinking and trying for a baby, I was very concerned about how I would be as a father. Would I be like my my own father, who is quite authoritarian, is quite distant, but there are any work nights for all his working life. How would I actually be, could I cope? How could I provide? But when my then girlfriend said this, I thought, actually, no, I can do this. You know, we can do different things. I can be a house husband or a stay at home dad and I can manage, you know. So there'd been a. Change in me, in that actually, I thought I could cope with this compared to how I was six years, seven years previously. But then we split up, and then a few years and I met my my wife, she's a few years older, so we're talking mid 30s. For me, she's edging towards just over 40 healthcare professional, and we spent a long time and different discussions around parenting, and she didn't want to become a mother because of her age, but also because of her experience as a healthcare professional, dealing with families, dealing with families, with children with special needs. And said I did want to become a mum, but not now, because of the risk of being an older mom, and I know I don't have the energy to do it. So then there was a choice, really for me and I chose love viewers and but all that puts into context different things that influence Your reproduction, choice of partner, circumstances change during it me and how I change in how I relate to people, and how I performed, because I was quite shy from my background, because there's an anxiety about forming a relationship, because you're in a big family, when you do form a relationship, you're all in very, very deeply, I think, and there was so you can be a bit overwhelming once you cross the threshold. So that's a mixture of reasons of why I didn't become a dad and my job changed in my early 40s. Things changed technology wise. So my wet processing films and all that sort of thing was going out, and digital was coming in. Where I worked, didn't want to invest in the high cost when they could just outsource it and bring it in. So I was on the way out, so I started to train as a counselor, and I I did that because you could do it in nice, short blocks. That didn't mean a lot of money up front. So I wasn't really stretching myself financially. But also, I always expected to fail each one because of that experience of education, not getting qualified. But I didn't fail, or if I did fail, I failed upwards, and I got a postgraduate diploma, and then started a master's. And because it was counseling, it had to be something you'd experience. And I was so broody in my 30s, so broody like an ache inside and a cloud over my head. One of my colleagues when I was about 35 became a dad, and we worked on the same floor in the same building. We used to have brews and lunches together. I couldn't face him. I was so jealous, I cut him off because the emotion was so much there, and also I thought I would explode. I'd either explode or just crumble completely, just by looking at him and being in and his office, and the pictures of babies and the chat around that sort of thing.

Mairéad 13:49

Were you single at that point? Robin, sorry, for interrupting.

Robin  13:52

I think I was single at that particular point, but it happened also when I've been in relationship, well, certainly when the early stages of my own race with my wife, and it was very jealous then as well, and that was part of the debate. So for my M I looked at male broodiness. I wanted to find out if it was just me who felt so broody, who had that ache, emotional ache, but also the thoughts and also the feeling of being out of sync, that there's an ideal arc of life, and my friends and colleagues were on the ideal path, and I wasn't. I was on an unmarked path, an unmarked arc of life, and I all I could see was the gap growing between the ideal and the actual in that case, so I interviewed 10 men, and it would great to find out I wasn't the only one. Yeah, but the other thing is the silence, the lack of material. The lack of narrative, of books, of stories, of articles, of men who wanted to be dads to draw on. There was Yeah. Didn't seem to be anything about male broodiness

15:15

here with that. Sorry.

Mairéad  15:17

So that would be in when did this start? 

Robin That 92,000 that would be in 2007 when I did my 

MA and yeah, the the lack of information, there was a really startling now, how much there was around women and the women's experience. So there's like the medical stuff and the scientific stuff, but there's a lot of the experiential stuff as well. Women's stories, how they felt, and that came into academia, but it was also out there in the broader media terms as well, but very little around men, men's actual experience, and that sort of puzzled me. And there's sort of two myths, men can are fully fertile from puberty until death, and men aren't bothered. Well, it's incredible that a species that we need a male and a female, if either weren't bothered, the species wouldn't be in any way successful, and we are a successful species. So it can't all be just around the women. Is there an egg and a sperm? And why is all the information around the egg, and why is all the narrative around there? And so I then self funded MSC to try and find out if this idea that women are brooding and men aren't bothered was true, because it's vastly out there, thrown out there, but there didn't seem to be any evidence. So I did an online survey, and I find out it wasn't it's round about the same, slightly higher for women, which is sort of logical, really. But I also did a little item, a survey item within the survey looking at broodiness, so yearning, jealousy, joy, all those sort of things. And the non parent men and the non parent women, and the women who were mothers, their emotional response was very, very similar, except the men were more depressed, more angry and more jealous, I think. And this came as a shock to me, because you don't hear about that. And in that graph, the fathers were different from everybody else, and so maybe there's something about fatherhood, changing men's feelings attitudes, but also what's available for them to change their behavior. You become a dad, you can start saying, you know, I'm a father. Now. I've got responsibilities. I not going to go playing sports, going out drinking, having that high life. I've got something else. But also that's sort of encouraged within society, and the narrative you occupy

Robin  18:18

children are a big social bridge. So in the work situation, if your boss has children and you become a parent, then you've got something else to talk about. You've got to share the experience. And what we do know is, if you've got a social connection, you're probably going to get on better, because you've got something to share, as opposed to being just one of the massive people around

18:46

around that. So then I got a funded PhD at Keele University looking at older, childless men. And from that, you get the life course the different routes into childlessness, and one of the major ones that came through was economics. So I think, and when I was going to my first interview, I was taking the taxi to the train, speaking to the taxi driver, and he said, Oh, well, you know, I was in the army, I was in the petrochemical industry. I was always abroad, being married 40 odd years. It was an older fellow, and we decided, I decided that it wouldn't be fair on my wife for us to have children, because I'm always going to be away, and that would leave her to cope by herself. So that's one form of economics. The other thing would be a short term contracts, people, men, moving around to follow the work that there was a manager of quite a big national firm, and he said, Oh, I was always moving around every 18 months, two years. And so it's hard to establish. Establish a relationship when you're up and down the country. But interestingly, everywhere he moved, he bought a three bedroomed house in the hope he would find a partner and have a baby. Getting that established straight away. Other men, working class men, it was just following the work. Just following the work. Working class men tend to do the dirtier, horribly jobs. So then there's a thing about having to meet someone

20:35

and how you present. So

20:39

that was it, and then how those men were seen as older men and childless, and what that means as an older person, when a lot of the care, certainly in the UK, is based around having adult children being there to mitigate, to advocate for you, even if it's just, you know, weekly, doing the shopping, something like that. But the research does show that is if, if you're a childless, older person, and something happens, then you're going to be taken into formal care earlier stage in the illness and staying there for longer, because once you're in the system, they don't want you putting you out to a place where you may have some dangers, where you don't have the support around You, yeah.

Mairéad  21:40

What I'm wondering, Robin is if we could just go back to that time when, let's say you were in your mid 30s, and you might have been in between relationships, so there was still the possibility that you may have become a father, and you were in your mid 30s like that's a time now when it is recognized for women that your fertility will start to decline from mid 30s onwards. But did you still think as a man, you still had hope at that point before you had that final after your conversations with your your partner, your current who's still your current relationship, that you decided for the various reasons that you wouldn't, you know but, but that point in your mid 30s, when you were in between relationship must have still been holding out hope that, and also maybe not thinking about your biological clock the way A woman might be thinking

Robin  22:40

absolutely, absolutely holding out hope. But also in that being out of sync with my peers, like they're becoming fathers and mothers, I'm not that different. Seemed very, very big. But also, how do I, how do I jump that shark? Don't know if that's the right phrase, but how do, how do I get to that ideal place?

Mairéad  23:04

Yeah, how do I join that club? Because, how do I do

Robin  23:08

Yeah, absolutely. At the railway station, I can see the carriage across the tracks. A big party in there. My carriage is empty. How do I do that? And also for me, was who will have me as well. Absolutely was, was, was a thing and how to broach that. Because I was aware of time. Actually, I was aware of time, that it was going on, that there was a clock there. It may not have been a biological clock, but there was a social clock there, so and there is a biological clock for men as well. It's just not well advertised. And I certainly didn't know about it then, and I think quite a few men now don't really realize, still a bit of a shock, that the myth is isn't correct. So yeah, and it was very much, how do I meet someone? And there seemed to be a vast difference between my generation of the 35 year olds and people are maybe even just five years younger, and I'd be looking at somebody who's probably five years younger, or a few years younger,

24:31

Actually, anybody?

24:37

Anybody, just have me please

Robin 24:42

at this point, yeah, there's, there's no standards.

Robin  24:51

But I think in my head, there was somebody a bit younger because of being more fertile and. Around that element. So I was obviously aware of that element, the biological element. And maybe everybody is for the women's biological cop, but not the men's. And actually, because I worked in a university, I I was working with younger people, and they did seem like a different breed, different standards, different attitudes, different music. And I'm a working class beer drinking, pie eating fella, you can't tell from my lovely cheekbones and ripped body, and they were into a different thing. And so there's that jump in, that social thing as well. And I guess there were women around of my age who wanted to be mums, but I don't think we moved in the same circles. The place I worked was very male orientated. 85% men I would say probably 60, 70% students were men, 30% were women. And so it's, where would you find a partner? And I think there's, there's something around where you socialize. And as I say, I'm a beer drinking, or was a beer drinking? Pi eating fella, that was the working class thing. Go to the pub chippy on the way home. It's the he was the 80s. So kebab. Let's see broadened

26:43

from just a chippy to a kebab.

Robin  26:46

But yeah, so it's where you find your partner. I mean, I guess these days online dating and all that sort of thing may have broaden it out a bit, but I think in those days, a lot of people found their partner through work, yeah, and or social events related to work,

Mairéad 27:07

yeah, yeah. And it's very much, you know, if you're not on this ship and the ship has sailed out of the dock, you're still on the dock waving goodbye to that ship, because all your peers are on that ship, yeah, and they're knee deep in early parenthood, absolutely. And you're so, you know, you are not in that club, so that must have been extremely isolating. It?

Robin  27:33

Yeah, absolutely. And if you're a bit shy, like I was, and the still am bit nervous about social interactions. How do you bridge that in a social situation, it takes a lot, if you're in a bar or somewhere, to walk up to someone and start talking and with the aim of getting to know them, to form in a relationship, to having babies that. So it wasn't just about let's hook up.

28:09

Words changed only.

Robin  28:12

I say hook up. I mean, like, just hook up, be together. It's another thing completely now to another generation where he means sex. I didn't know that. But yeah, so it's, how do you do that? How? If you're not skilled, one of the things I found with interviewing, actually, when I've been talking to women, and women are very interested in men and reveal quite a lot about I wasn't really bothered, they'd say, about becoming a mum, but he was, and he made it very clear earlier on, and I'm thinking this is when I was doing my research. So a few years I'm older, but in my third I would have never known how to get that early on into a conversation that actually, you know what I'm looking for is a partner for life, in effect, yeah, yeah, and that, but that's what I was Looking for, yeah.

Mairéad 29:20

So What stopped you making that known? You know, do you is that something you regret that you didn't have those conversations at a younger age?

Robin  29:31

Yeah, fear of failure, fear of failure and fear of being humiliated. And this is key, I think, for men and the way they behave, and sometimes I put on a massive front Okay, of being strong and being able to cope with everything, but inside the driver is I can't be seen to be weak. I can't be seen to be vulnerable. I can't be humiliated. And that's that's brought in from a very early age. So if you're on Facebook or any social medias, look for when a baby or a young child is called my little man, my little soldier. Cos these are adult terms for adult roles, and sometimes it can be 15 months, two years, and if they're saying it, then that's being built in all the time. The child's picking that up. What if you look at a comparable age girl, you know, my little woman, my little soldier, in the same way, my little princess, and quite a lot of women of all ages have said to me, and I'm still his princess now, even though I run a multinational company and have things, but yeah, that's how that is built in. And what that builds in for for men is a way of not being able to express themselves and their emotions without it being an action, so to run away or to fight or and that can mean your head as well. So you fight verbally, you go out and you do things and you resolve things, it's very hard to resolve churning emotions inside. And if you feeling frustrated, and there's a bit of a volcano, there's a concrete block that's being capped there by society, and you're trying to get round, it can be very, very difficult if you don't have words to do that. And that's maybe something in the way women, boys and girls are raised that tends to make that girls are given a more nurturing route. It's expected to talk to expect to support, whether they want to or not, is a different thing, but it's that and but also that's thrust on them as well. Women are supposed to be nurturing, supposed to be available. A lot of men, a lot of studies say this, expect women to be supportive, that they're going to be able to open up to them, whereas they won't expect to be open up to men that actually they're much more guarded, that they're going to get attacked, they're going to reveal themselves as vulnerable. So vulnerable and humiliation. So the woman who wrote handmade tale whose name Margaret Atwood, yeah, yeah. In an earlier book, character said women are scared of murder, men are scared of humiliation, yeah. And I think, well, we're all scared of murder, but absolutely on the humiliation, where does that come from? I don't think it's intrinsic. I think it's, well, it may be slightly intrinsic, but it's built on, yeah, by society. And why is that society needs. All societies, at some point have been war like and they've, they've needed to have people to go out and fight and defend, and men are physically better at doing that, so then it gets reinforced. You don't want to give your enemies psychological advantage, so you have to sort of incorporate into your men. Be strong. Don't be weak. Be stoic. Take it on the chin. Move on. You get knocked down. You get up again, you don't cry, you don't say you're vulnerable. So that's a societal thing that benefits society, maybe not to the benefit to the individual.

Robin  33:53

Yeah, yeah. We want our men to be strong so they fight for us, but not so strong that they will suppress everything, yeah, all the emotions. And then, you know, we know what happens when you depress something, yeah. And I also think of the male psyche as, and obviously this is broad generalization, but men as the doers, you know, if I think of my own father, he was a doer, not a talker, but I think for him, having a he was very successful in his chosen career and but I think the foundation of having a family is what spurred him on to be successful. I think it's for a man to have a family to support that, what gives them purpose and meaning in and then they end up doing very well in their careers as a result, because they're doing it for your family and absolutely and. Improve social role, so you become a father. And there's all these narratives you can take

35:08

that are rewarded as well,

Robin  35:11

you know, he's he's a father, you know? So he can go early. He's got other things to take care of, but also can be a driver. I'm a father, so I'm going to be ambitious. I'm going to push to the head of the queue. Now I'm going to really stake a claim, because I've got to provide, yeah, and that's rewarded as well. Oh, well, you know, he's a and you see it quite often with politicians. They roll out their family, particularly in America, they're always surrounding themselves by their family, and that's absolutely saying. I'm a virile man. So we're measured by our virility in society. I'm validated by my virility, by my biological virility. Look, I'm surrounded by all these kids, by my social economic, virility. I'm a high ranking politician. I'm the leader in my section and the leader of the company. These are all kudos status to build up and to what if you're not that? How does that? And so forth. For men, that validity is outside themselves. It's what they do to provide quite often. So there's, then there's that gap between, actually, this is the my defense shield. This is my this is my shop front. This is what I'm selling, okay? But you're not going to come into the back of the workshop to see how all that's made, okay? And it could well be the reverse for for women, that actually, yeah, your validity is internal through motherhood. And what happens then? If that doesn't happen, how are you treated? How does that? That's another thing to look at. How does it treat people who don't fit the ideal,

Mairéad 37:04

yeah, so what was your experience when you suddenly realized you're not fitting the ideal, when you when it finally dawned on you, oh, I'm never going to have children. Do you remember a moment in time when that really hit you?

37:20

I I think, although we discussed it,

Robin  37:27

I think doing the research during my MA and MSC, I saw that it's not going to happen. I knew it wasn't going to happen. It's like, so this is, this is being human. You're holding contradictory positions, many of them in your head and in your heart. And yeah, so the hues of man, h, u, E, S, man, I think we should have that Hughes man, the hues of man, my different hues of there.

Robin  38:03

So I think with age and experience and knowledge, I know I'm not going to become a dad. And I think it was probably in my late 40s that actually, yeah, although I've been married by for six years, something like that, and me going out 10, and we'd had that conversation, it's actually, yeah, this isn't ever going to happen. Even in even though I knew it wasn't going to happen, there's something about the felt knowing it wasn't going to happen. And yeah, so that may sound a bit vague and cotton woolish, but we're vague and cotton woolish people,

Robin  38:50

and with contradictory internally and externally. As much as societies likes us to be very blocked, you know you're this, you're that. We're a jumble of stuff inside, and I'm a jumble of his stuff inside. So I think, yeah, but actually doing the research helped him in that. It helped him. I'm not the only one. And actually there's, there needs to be something out there, and there isn't.

39:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mairéad  39:22

And not only are you not the only one is the current statistics now that one in every four men worldwide are tied less

Robin  39:33

something like that, yeah, yeah. Round about Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Mairéad  39:37

And male fertility is on the I mean, male and female fertility is on the decline anyway, so, you know, there's going to be more people joining those ranks. And there's so many reasons; can we talk about, maybe some of the reasons why a man doesn't have children, apart from we, I mean, we did cover. Like the social reasons and, you know, relationships and finding somebody late in life, but even just on the physical side of things, yeah,

Robin  40:09

yeah, absolutely. This genetics, we can be genetically infertile. The, I think the thing about male fertility is, we sort of assume it's 100% from puberty until death, and nobody really wants men or women wants to really question their fertility. But male fertility varies. It varies all the time, what you eat, what you do, your attitudes, distress levels, all that sort of thing. So we're complex things, and we're complex biopsychosocial things. So our jobs, I'm sitting down here talking to you that's affecting my fertility. If I'm doing sitting down all day in a sedentary job, it's not doing my fertility any good at all.

41:06

Diet, my beer and pies

Robin  41:12

in the 70s and 80s, smoking was really big. Vaping now, I guess, is the other thing, but anything you put in in your body, you know your your sperm is in production all the time, 24/7, from puberty onwards. And things you put in your body affect your sperm. So if you put your nasties in, it's going to have an effect. Stress affects the quality of sperm as well. So all these chemicals, toxins and class, therefore an education can affect your fertility outcomes. Class, because your tends to be doing the muckier jobs tend to be in short term jobs. Your view is, how do we keep a roof over my head? Those basic things, not long term planning. Some study in Norway, I think, found that was true of the working class. For the middle class, they did plan their reproductive outcomes. It took maybe 18 months of planning or when they're going to have a kid and that sort of thing. So there's that difference as well. Education Level, lower educated man and higher educated women. Less children, yeah, more likely to be childless. Interesting part of that is careers that people men and women, but I think especially women these days, because of the career opportunities are there are delaying having children, and then it comes to 30, in the mid 30s for the women, actually there's a social clock there. People are having kids. But also that tick, tick of the biological clock is there. And how can I do this, and the same should be for men as well, because sperm starts to decline very, very slowly after that.

Mairéad  43:31

Has there been much research Robin on male fertility in terms of their sperm quality? You know, at certain age group? And pretty much

Robin  43:41

research on this, more and more coming through on that, and absolutely, the older the father, the more chance the baby is going to have some conditions or issues related to genetics. The older the egg, the older the sperm, that that's more and more but definitely the older the sperm as well. And so people would say, Well, what about there's a film star just had a baby, hasn't he's in his 70s, one of the big ones for America. Can't remember his name

Mairéad 44:20

Robert De Niro? 

Robin  44:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, well, what about Robert De Niro? You know, he's a very, very rich man. And if you're very, very rich, you can, quite literally, if there's one thing that recent years have shown us, buy anything, and you really don't know what's going on there, but for the normal folk

44:49

having IVF, ar, T treatments, if you having to fund it yourself, it's going to cost you 1000s, 10s of 1000s of whatever your. Local currency is not. Many countries fund completely free, unlimited, IVF, usually there's a limit. Insurance companies in some countries step in, but again, they're going to be saying, Only so many rounds are we going to cover? And one of the things we know about IVF is it's it's very, very physically demanding, emotionally demanding, physically demanding on the woman, but also on the men, because quite often they feel outside of it, and their support is really, really important, and what and what they do, but it's a difficult process.

Mairéad 45:53

It's very difficult for for men, whether they are, let's say, a man in a hetero sexual relationship where the woman is the one having all the tests and the treatments and everything in terms of the IVF procedure, you know, he will have to turn up and give a sperm sample, but then that's it. He won't have to take any other medication, unless things I've moved on now that I'm not aware of, but then it's a bit emasculating, because that's all they can do, and they can't do much. They can support their partner, but very difficult when they're grieving and they're finding the whole thing difficult and it's dawning on them, not to mention, if it's the reason they can't have children in the first place is that the sperm motility and mobility is affected as well. So he's going to have all sorts of insular feelings and feelings of being a failure around that. Yeah, of course, he's not, but he's going to feel like he is. I mean, I I've been down the IVF road and I felt like a failure. We had unexplained fertility, infertility, but I still felt like a failure because we weren't having, you know, children. So it's very difficult for the man, because you might be going through the experience of all the medications, the tests, the pro beams, leave your dignity at the door, yeah? But he wants to help. You know, he wants to be the problem solver, to solve the problem, but he can't, because he's not the medical expert, right?

Robin  47:34

Yeah, absolutely. And during the process, he provides a sample, and that's it. He's out. And as you say, all this material, all the focus is on the woman wants help. I wants care. And men of spirit, they love to be able to take the place. I'd love to, but I can't, and I can't do anything. So they, they throw a lot of confidence into the science. And unfortunately, as as like you found, sometimes the science just goes well, actually, we're not sure,

Mairéad  48:12

yes, and it's not just sometimes I don't I think, when I was when I walked away 13 years ago, the staff score generally. Worldwide, for an IVF procedure, which would result in a live birth, it was only 25% and I don't think it's I think it's gone up to 26% now, like it's only budget by a percent, so it's certainly not the silver bullet that people might think it is,

48:46

oh, as it's advertised and promoted,

48:50

yeah. Billion dollar industry.

Robin  48:53

It is industry, absolutely yeah. And it's a global one, where people cells are flown around the world and different setups, and there's an exploitation element to it of generally poor women in low income countries around that. So yeah, the heifer, the one in the UK, the human fertility and embryology authority, it's their their dashboard says 26% overall as a success rate, very much age dependent, but other physical factors as well.

Mairéad 49:43

Yeah, so this, this problem, is only going to increase as time goes on. Society is getting sicker and sicker and fertility treatment is probably getting more and more expensive, and the barrier to parent to. And are getting greater and greater. There's huge barriers there. 

So is there anything positive to take away from this, for anybody who's listening to us, Robin, and that is, you know, for any men who are listening to this, first of all, I want to say that you're definitely not alone that you, you know there are many men in the same position as you. It's important to know that, and there are support groups out there, and there are resources. And I'd like to invite people to take a look at your website, www.RobinHadley.co.uk, and you have a lot of links to a lot of the research you've done. Have you any links actually on your website to groups, men's groups?

Robin  50:59

Absolutely, yeah, there's a section there on different men's groups around great.

Mairéad 51:07

That's great. That's really helpful. Because, you know, you're definitely not alone, and a problem shared is definitely a problem. Have to take the burden from you. And also, there's a link to your book if anybody wants to purchase your book. It's called, “How is a man supposed to be? A man, male childlessness and a life, a life course disrupted”. So that would be a good starting point. And so I commend you so much on working in the area where you found it was a personal struggle for you, but by delving into it, you, I'm no doubt that you've helped a lot of men. Do you get that sense from the men you talk to and the podcast you go on and the people you talk to, do you get a sense that you feel like you're helping?

Robin  52:05

Yeah, to make a difference is a big thing. And I think I do make a difference. When I was doing my MA and I just thought at the end these men's stories, a lot of the men, in fact, all the men I've interviewed, and quite a few I've just talked to say, you know, there's something missing. And that's a key phrase, because there's something missing inside, but there's something missing out there. And so by doing this sort of thing, writing the book, trying to put some narrative in there for men to grasp hold of, so that if they want to raise it in a conversation, they can say, I saw this bloke, I read this bit. This is what I think. So there's that pathway of using somebody else's words, somebody else's actions, ways of being, of making it normal and absolutely you are not on your own. It's getting from what's inside to what's outside, and feeling safe in in doing that and being safe with yourself.

Mairéad 53:11

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And if anybody's listening the world lucky enough to experience fatherhood, don't naturally assume that any of your childless mate that don't have kids, maybe don't assume that that was their choice, you know, and and to just look around and think about, you know, the people are carrying these things. They're going through life, and they're grieving a life that they thought that they were going to have, and suddenly, you know, realize, Oh, this isn't going to happen. And they're, they're dealing with the consequences of that in a pro would you say the world is quite pro natalist,

Robin  53:53

really, absolutely. If you just look on any advert on the telly, there's usually a baby slips in there somewhere or a family. A car adverts are fantastic for this. Really, suddenly there's a family. It always ends in a happy family, you know?

Mairéad 54:10

Yeah, yeah, of course. We're recording this the 26th of November. We're coming up to Christmas. I'm thinking Christmas can be a particularly isolating time for childless people, yeah, so, so, just for people to be aware, just to think that there are people out there that this time of year for this, for these reasons, it can be quite difficult. Yeah, can you, I hope you can tell me that, Robin, that despite your grief and disappointment by not being a father, did you find happiness and fulfillment anyway in your life?

Robin  54:48

I think so. I think a lot of the men I've spoken to say, you know, having a child would be a cherry on the cake where you've got a cake and you can choose your toppings. So choose, choose your toppings. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I've, I've written a book. I get my working class lad who's written a book, and in my mid 40s, went to university, and I was the first male in our family to go to university, the first one in family to get a PhD. There's lifelong learning. I've met people like you. People are so generous in sharing their their stories. And it's a privilege, you know, an absolute privilege, to to do this and to say, you know, you're not alone. And now this is perfectly normal, and there's lots of other people around in a similar situation. It's just that it's not talked about.

Mairéad 55:46

Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm so pleased to hear you say that. And you know, I don't think, I think real success is the pursuit of something altruistic, where you're helping society. So that makes you, to me, a lot more successful than the likes of Elon Musk or Bezos, Jeff Bezos, you know. So I'm delighted to hear you say that that you get so much out of, you know, and you've had such academic success. And perhaps, as you said, you might have been on this path had you been a father. So you've had other types of success, and you've certainly made an impact, you know, and that is, do you think that's your legacy?

Robin 56:29

Maybe? Yeah, yeah, you know, the ideal path, I had to make another path. But there's something about creating your own way and creating your own path that you can actually, I did this, you know, I just didn't follow but yeah, maybe that is my legacy. You know, I existed. My book exists, and people talk to me and I talk to them, so, yeah, yeah, fantastic.

Mairéad 57:02

Well, you're an absolute outlier in the in this field, and I know that we've helped people with this conversation today, and I know that this has this and you have inspired men in in Ireland. I know I've got listeners from all over the world, but I'm based in Ireland, and I'm particularly thinking of Irish men who may be affected, and maybe they will be able to come forward and have a conversation, whether that's publicly or whether it's privately, to be able to open up to talk about it with their their friends and family. So Robin, thank you so much. I really enjoyed our chat and really appreciate you know, giving your valuable time brilliant podcast.

Robin  57:50

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much for the invitation. It's been a joy.