Letters to the Editor, December 2024

I’ve belonged to ZPG/Population Connection since the 1970s and always look forward to your quarterly magazine. I’ve written in recent years to take you to task for ignoring males in your issues and projects, but there is no change. What is obvious to me is evidently of little consequence to others, and that is, that it is men who cause pregnancies. Yet men escape responsibility, increasing the population and leaving women with a challenge that can keep them from their potential for a lifetime. Is that equity?

In the September issue, a quick scan finds the word “men” exactly once, in contrast with more references to women and girls than one can count. Articles focus on women’s issues: contraception, abortion, education, employment, single parenthood, disease, number of children, #Fight4HER, etc. Yes! We know! Women struggle!

BUT … Women wouldn’t be in such troubling situations if men faced up to their responsibility to avoid pregnancy through restraint and male contraception, or, when children appear, to provide commitment and financial and emotional support. As it is, society gives men license to impregnate at will. Indeed, some cultures expect and honor a large number of offspring. The mothers of unplanned children survive as best they can, with few prospects for their own development. That is not equity!

I hope soon to see an article about efforts to change male attitudes, as we look toward a culture that supports male accountability, shared care for offspring, and respect for the human potential of both sexes. Allow women more opportunity for professional development while getting men more involved in rearing children. Promoting a change of attitude may take courage, as there is resistance, but it is time to stop blaming and shaming women only. It’s time to move everyone along.

Elizabeth Kidder Michael

Editor’s response:

Changing men’s attitudes toward family planning is crucial in many settings to solving our population crisis and to improving the lives of women and children. Most of the international family planning programs I’m familiar with have community education components targeted toward men (including the one in Indonesia that’s profiled in this issue).

Such outreach can clear up myths around contraception and can persuade men to “allow” their wives to use birth control. Sometimes men’s opposition to family planning is enough of a threat that women covertly use contraception, preferring methods that are undetectable, such as the IUD or injection.

As long as I’ve worked in this field (and for decades before that), the promise of a reversible method of male birth control has been on the horizon. The old joke is that it’s been five years away from market availability for the past 50 years, or some version of that. There are several male birth control methods going through trials right now, and some of them seem promising. But the fact remains that for now, condoms and vasectomy are the only reliable methods of male birth control, and for men who aren’t finished having kids, that leaves only condoms. Which isn’t to say that men who want to avoid pregnancy shouldn’t be using condoms — they should be! But there is a yawning gap in the method mix for men who are in monogamous relationships and don’t require STI protection but would prefer a non-barrier method.

Marian Starkey

I love reading John’s President’s Note — it’s always spot on. It’s eternally confounding why the rest of the world doesn’t see things with the clarity that he does. I especially love the Kathryn Schulz quote that preceded his last column, and may co-opt it as my new email signature.

James E. Close

John’s latest President’s Note should make the sleepers awake! The Cascadia subduction zone and the coal and renewable energy facts about India are shocking.

Dick Bennett

The World Population Map [our PopEd classroom wall poster that depicts countries by population size rather than land area] featured in the December 2023 issue is attention grabbing and says more than 100 articles. I have had the magazine page up in my apartment for months and am sending a donation in open-mouthed appreciation.

At first, I thought China was Russia, and that yellow island that’s so much smaller than most of Indonesia turns out to be Australia!!! It is a fascinating map.

Penny Jones

I became aware of Zero Population Growth decades ago and have always felt the Earth could not easily support billions of people. Of course, we are already living among billions of people, but if everyone had the lifestyle we enjoy in the US, the Earth would be depleted of its resources. We are already facing climate and habitat loss crises today.

Thank you for working on programs that address the issues of population growth and, most importantly to me, the education of women around the world about family planning.

Steve Leonard

Email Marian Starkey, editor of Population Connection magazine: mstarkey@popconnect.org