Fertility clock hardly haunts men

"Why Can't a Woman be More Like a Man?" Was one of Rex Harrison's signature solos in "My Fair Lady" in 1964. But ever since then, it seems, the sisterhood has been trying to reverse that question.

"It Seems the Fertility Clock Ticks for Men Too" glared the headline in the New York Times piece in my e-mail inbox earlier this week. It was sent to me by a friend whose point was "ha, now the guys have to start paying attention to age and fertility too."

We've long known that women's fertility drops precipitously before it ends altogether with menopause, and along the way health risks for the baby and mom dramatically increase with a mother's age. Thirty-five is, medically speaking for a pregnant woman, "advanced maternal age."

Now there's research that, contrary to popular wisdom, not only does a man's fertility drop with age as well, but that his risk for fathering children with birth defects and mental illness increases as he grows older.

This news first made a splash a few years ago. Another step in the long march of feminizing men, right?

So, as I scanned the headline of the NYT's piece, I knew one of my "sisters" would be triumphantly proclaiming that men can't have it all. That this might even "level the premarital dating game" as the Times put it, presumably referring to single women in their 30s and older, who are carefully checking their biological clocks every ten seconds.

Sure enough, "The message to men is: 'Wake up and smell the java,"' Pamela Madsen, executive director of the American Fertility Association, a national education and advocacy group told the Times. "It's not just about women anymore, it's about you too."

Or as TIME magazine put it in a piece on declining male fertility and age last year, "Perhaps now, men in their mid-30s will start sharing the same 'now or never' pressure to conceive that women have long endured."

Uh yeah, good luck with that.

So since such news (including this particular Times piece) came out in full force two years ago, have men been rushing to get married and start families in response? Um, no.

This in contrast to how women have always operated. Most of us do "girl math."

"If I want to have kids by 30, that means getting married by around 28. If I want to do that I'd better start seriously looking to get married by 25."

Girls start such equations sometimes along with learning their multiplication tables -- and there is nothing in the world wrong with it. Some might argue it's how smart women have always operated.

But, there is no such thing as "guy math" and there is not going to be. All the social and even biological engineering in the world won't make them start obsessing about babies like women typically do. My own theory is that when a man is ready to get married, he looks around and essentially hails a cab.

Sometimes, the right good-looking cab makes it clear to him that he is ready. That's about it.

I read once years ago that it takes men three dates to fall in love, it takes women about 20. In that sense, men really are the more emotional creatures. Or rather, the more physical creatures.

"Is she cute?" being on the top of their list.

Individual results may vary, but in the main while information on men, age, and fertility is good to have, "baby math" will never figure into men's brains like it does women's.

And so what? Except for professor Henry Higgins, I've never noticed men trying to make women more like them.

-- Hart hosts the "It Takes a Parent" radio show in Chicago.