The Guardian

Making babies is beginning to look as difficult for men as it always has been for women

The sperm count of men in the west has halved in 40 years. Changing lifestyles won’t help. The problem is an environmental one
Woody Allen and Robert Walden in Allen’s 1972 film Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex … Photograph: Rollins-Joffe/Rex/Shutterstock

Men. You had one job. And now look what’s happened! The sperm count of western men has . It is likely to decline further. This is a wake-up call. Human extinction beckons. Twitter, in its full nihilistic embrace, has welcomed this news as good. It is kind of funny. Sperm always is somehow, especially if your job description is harridan, as mine is. For although there are millions of the damn squirmers in every ejaculation, you only ever need the one, the tenacious one that

You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

More from The Guardian

The Guardian8 min read
PinkPantheress: ‘I Don’t Think I’m Very Brandable. I Dress Weird. I’m Shy’
PinkPantheress no longer cares what people think of her. When she released her lo-fi breakout tracks Break it Off and Pain on TikTok in early 2021, aged just 19, she did so anonymously, partly out of fear of being judged. Now, almost three years late
The Guardian4 min read
‘Soul-shattering’ Prophet Song by Paul Lynch wins 2023 Booker prize
Irish author Paul Lynch has won the 2023 Booker prize for his fifth novel Prophet Song, set in an imagined Ireland that is descending into tyranny. It was described as a “soul-shattering and true” novel that “captures the social and political anxieti
The Guardian7 min read
Gwyneth Paltrow: Is Her Life A Work Of Performance Art?
Ripping to shreds Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop gift list has been a media preoccupation for years now, to the point that the website even titles it, “The ridiculous but awesome gift guide”. Still, even those not driven by well-documented animus towards Pal

Related