by Robin Baker
For him, this is a dangerous and delicate turn of events. Somehow, he has to prevent the situation just described from happening. At the same time, he has to avoid impregnating his partner himself. Without knowing it, the man in Scene 16, the woman’s original partner, was in this situation in the weeks before her desertion. The only option for such a man is to use routine sex to prevent his partner from conceiving to anybody, himself included. And men have a very sophisticated mechanism by which they can do just that: they wage war on their own sperm.
There are two types of sperm in a man’s ejaculate which strongly reduce the chances of conception if they are present in large numbers. It seems that these sperm might actually be programmed to destroy a man’s own egg-getters. One of them has a cigar-shaped head and is called a tapering sperm. The other has a pear-shaped head and is called a pyriform sperm. Just as for women, stress is contraceptive. When men are stressed, they produce much greater numbers of these so-called family-planning sperm.
The more family-planning sperm and the fewer egg-getters a man introduces into his partner, the lower the chances that she will conceive. But if she is unfaithful and sperm warfare occurs, her partner’s family-planning sperm can help his conventional killers overcome the other man’s egg-getters. Furthermore if, despite the partner’s efforts, an egg-getter does get through, there is at least a chance that the child will be his. Had he responded to stress by abstaining from routine sex, there would be no such chance.
In Scene 16 this strategy worked successfully for the woman’s first partner. He managed to prevent her becoming pregnant throughout her weeks of infidelity. But when, eventually, she conceived, he was the victor in the sperm war she had promoted.
As we have now seen, the bodies of both men and women have a range of natural methods, mainly triggered by stress, by which they avoid having children when times are bad. We might expect, therefore, that societies living in generally more stressful situations would have fewer children. But they do not – in fact, exactly the opposite is true. How is this possible?
The explanation is that the factors that influence the best number of children to have are different from the factors that influence the best time to have those children. Historically and geographically, the number of times a woman gives birth in her lifetime is linked closely to the chances of her children surviving to adulthood. When survival prospects are poor, a woman gives birth to many children. If she does not, few or none may survive to adulthood. She avoids having children during only the very worst times, and conceives whenever circumstances show signs of improving. In contrast, as we saw earlier, when survival prospects are good a woman gives birth to fewer children and lavishes much more of her time and resources on each. Her effort is less likely to be wasted because each child’s chance of survival is high. Again, she avoids having children during bad times and only conceives when circumstances are really favourable.
In all of these situations, stress is the contraceptive. But because women in different circumstances have different expectations, they are stressed by different levels of deprivation. Circumstances which would stress a woman in the suburbs of Western Europe or North America would not stress a woman living in a drainpipe in the Third World. It is a woman’s expectation of living standard that determines the number of children she attempts to have. Whatever her expectation, as circumstances fluctuate and her expectations are exceeded or disappointed, stress comes and goes. As it does so, it influences just when she has each child as she strives to reach her preferred total.
Small families are not a new invention. For most of human history, from about one million years ago until as recently as ten to fifteen thousand years ago, all people lived as hunter-gatherers. Men hunted animals and women foraged for fruit and vegetables. Societies were made up of small, scattered bands of people. They had a good, protein-rich diet and most deaths were due to accident, predation and inter-group warfare rather than disease. The children of hunter-gatherers had an excellent chance of survival. Using nothing but the natural, stress-related methods we have discussed, women gave birth to only three or four children in their lifetime. Of these, two or three survived.
Large families did not appear until about ten thousand years or so ago, when agriculture brought a change of lifestyle. In the most fertile areas, large and concentrated communities developed, living on a carbohydrate-rich diet. Disease and infant mortality were rife. The average number of children was about seven or eight, but double figures were commonplace. Even so, whole families could be wiped out in days by virulent disease. As with the hunter-gatherers, on average, only two or three in each survived.
With the advent of ‘modernisation’, the infant mortality rate began to fall and so, too, a few decades later, did the birth rate. In Western Europe this decline in birth rate was again the product of natural family planning, for it preceded by up to a century the availability and use of modern contraception. So this reduction in family size to the levels found in modern industrial societies was due not to improved contraception technology, but to women subconsciously planning smaller families in response to the improved survival prospects of their children.
Many women will read this discussion of natural family planning with some cynicism, wondering how, if their bodies are so wonderful at family planning, they managed to conceive at precisely the time they least wanted. This is yet another example of the conflict between the conscious brain and the subconscious body.
As we have repeatedly seen, a woman’s body may interpret its circumstances very differently from her brain. We encountered this conflict in Scene 15, in which the woman thought the last thing she wanted in the middle of wartime was to conceive. Nevertheless, her body actually went out of its way to become pregnant. In that instance, the body was proved right and the woman achieved most of her reproductive success through the son ‘mistakenly’ conceived on that occasion.
It would, of course, be wrong to conclude that the body is always right. No body is programmed to respond perfectly to every situation. The very fact that in every generation some people achieve a greater reproductive success than others indicates that some bodies make more mistakes than others. Quite possibly, though, bodies make fewer mistakes than brains. Yet recently, brains have been given greater power in this question of contraception. Modern contraceptives, such as the pill and the cap, at first sight would seem to take the control of conception away from the body and hand it much more firmly to the brain. But this change in control may not, as we have seen, influence the total number of children a woman may have. Rather, modern contraceptive methods supplement a woman’s natural mechanisms by helping her to control when she has her children – and with whom, as we shall see in the next scene.
SCENE 17
How Forgetful
As the taxi pulled up, the woman heard her partner opening the front door. She listened as he came back into the house and picked up his bags. Holding her breath, she waited to see if he would come back into the room to say goodbye. But the front door closed, more loudly than usual, and he walked to the taxi without looking back. He would be gone for four weeks, and they were parting on bad terms.
They had been arguing on and off for a year now, and nearly always about the same thing. He wanted another child – preferably a son – but she didn’t. She had been under pressure to come off the pill ever since the younger of their two daughters had started school. Now in her early thirties, the woman wanted to return to her career. Over the past few months, her partner had become increasingly disillusioned with his job and recently he had been ill. His disillusionment seemed to have stripped him of his health and energy and he had been off work for six weeks, returning only a month ago.
Those six weeks had been a nightmare. She knew that what he really needed to speed his recovery was peace and quiet but, in spite of herself, she just could not oblige. It irritated her, having him under her feet all day while she ferried the children to and from school, did the shopping and maintained the ho
use. He had insisted on sitting around downstairs instead of keeping out of her way in bed. Try as she might, she could not avoid showing her irritation, and arguments were frequent. They had even argued over the new window-cleaner. He was a young man, earning money over the summer to help finance his place on some tropical expedition. Good-looking, confident and flirtatious, he had once commented on the bikini she was wearing in the garden. Her partner had overheard and accused her of making a pass at the young man.
Despite his return to work, their relationship had failed to improve. Early in the month she had vomited on and off for two days, and had been so worried in case she had lost the contraceptive protection of her pill that she had insisted on him using a condom. He had sulked all month. Then, last night, he had wanted unprotected sex – a gesture from her to him to see him through his four weeks away from her. She had refused, and they hadn’t spoken since. Now he was gone, bad feeling unresolved. The day after he left, two things happened. She finished her current month’s supply of the pill and she received an apologetic long-distance phone call from her partner. They made up over the phone as best they could. Then, over the next few days, they returned to their normal long-distance relationship, exchanging platitudes of concern and affection.
It happened just a week into his trip. It was mid-morning and she had just returned home from taking their two daughters to school and doing the shopping. Just as she had finished showering and drying her hair, the door-bell rang. She pulled on her bath robe and went to the door, to be confronted by her partner’s immediate superior from work. He had called round to see if she had heard from her partner recently – because he hadn’t. He had tried to phone her but had got no reply and, because there was an urgent message about a change of itinerary, he had decided to call round. She invited him in and, after they had discussed the reason for his call, politely offered him a coffee.
They had met socially a few times before. Once, much to the irritation of their respective partners, they had indulged in a flirtatious conversation at a drunken New Year’s party. He reminded her of that night, and they laughed. Gradually, their conversation turned to the problems they were each having with their respective partners. She didn’t notice what triggered her first flutter of sexual excitement as she busied herself with percolator and cups in the kitchen. All she knew was that at some point she became aware that only her hastily tied bath robe separated her body from his eyes and that he was watching her intently, waiting for glimpses of her nakedness. As the excitement took hold of her, she found excuses to touch his arms and back as she moved around in the kitchen. She laughed exaggeratedly at his comments and contrived reasons for bending and twisting in front of him, pretending not to notice as her robe loosened and the bulge in his trousers grew.
When the drinks were ready, they went into the sitting-room. She sat opposite him, breasts scarcely covered. Conversation became strained as they each waited for a sign that they would not be rebuffed. In a final move, she lifted her legs on to the chair, deftly pushing her bath robe between her legs to cover herself. Then, over the next few minutes, she watched his eyes flick backwards and forwards between her face and her genitals as she allowed her bath robe slowly to slip away, giving him an open display of her vulva. Minutes later they were having intercourse on the floor and ten minutes after that he had gone, suddenly embarrassed by what had just happened but telling her that her body had been irresistible.
This event began a week that in later life would seem to her like a scene from a film – a very bad film. Surely it couldn’t have been her doing all of those things – acting out such clichéd events. At the time, though, she had simply seemed driven by some powerful force deep inside her. As the week progressed, she was to have many moments of fear – fear that somehow her partner would find out what she had done and fear that she had caught something. When, two days after this first infidelity, she realised she had forgotten to start her new pack of pills on time, she also feared that she might be pregnant. But for most of the week that had just begun, she was simply to feel a height of sexual restlessness and excitement that she hadn’t experienced in years – and would never experience again.
Only an hour after her infidelity, she masturbated. She masturbated again the next morning. That afternoon, while sunbathing in the back garden, she heard the young window-cleaner arrive at the front. She was inside the house and up to her bedroom in seconds, standing in front of her bedroom mirror, back to the window. When she saw the reflection of the young man’s face appear at the window, she slowly took off her bikini, then turned to face him. Feigning surprise at seeing him she waved unconcernedly, then busied herself with tidying the room, deliberately choosing jobs that involved much stretching and bending. When he rang the door-bell for his money, she opened the door naked, ‘hiding’ her body behind the frosted-glass door panel. She complained of the heat and, looking down at her nakedness, laughed that she had no money on her. Inviting him in while she went to fetch some, she joked that he could have sex with her instead if he liked.
No more windows were cleaned on her road that afternoon until, after her best climax during intercourse for years, she left to pick up the children from school.
She didn’t masturbate again that week, but she had sex twice more with her partner’s boss and once more with the young window-cleaner. That weekend, which she spent with her two daughters, it was as if she suddenly woke up from a dream. The excitement of the week disappeared, to be replaced by sheer disbelief at what she had done. On the Monday, she told both lovers that it had been fun but a mistake, and she was no longer available. The older man was relieved, the younger man disappointed.
When her partner returned, two weeks later, she told him about forgetting to start her pills on time but let him have unprotected sex anyway as a coming-home present. After that, in the days they were waiting for her period to start, she insisted he wore a condom.
She never did have her period. Three weeks after her partner’s return, a pregnancy test confirmed that she was pregnant. Her partner was thrilled, even when the child turned out to be another girl. And he never did find out about his boss and the window-cleaner.
Most readers will recognise the seduction of the young window-cleaner as a cliché (as, later, did the main character in Scene 17 herself). It, or something similar, has been used as a not very imaginative ‘dramatic device’ in a multitude of films, plays and books. If the man involved is not a window-cleaner, he is an electrician, a plumber, a builder, a TV repair man or (in Britain, the biggest cliché of all) a milkman. In short, he is any man who has a legitimate reason for visiting a woman in her home while her partner is absent.
Indeed, so hackneyed is this scenario that there is a danger, if we are not careful, of missing the important point: namely, that the behaviour has become hackneyed precisely because it is so common. As such, it plays an important role in the promotion of sperm warfare – and hence in the paternity of children conceived via such warfare. Why should the woman in the scene, and so many like her, suddenly throw herself at two male visitors to her home? What is the significance of the saga of her contraceptive pills? And how did she benefit from her behaviour in terms of reproductive success?
When this scene began, the woman genuinely believed that she didn’t want another child. In order to prevent conception, she was taking the pill and, when necessary, making doubly sure by forcing her partner to use a condom. Then, in the midst of what, sexually, was the most active week of her life, she ‘forgot’ to take contraceptive precautions. Was this lapse of memory really a mistake, or was it a subconscious strategy? And was it yet another example of a ‘failure’ destined actually to increase a woman’s reproductive success? What this woman’s body had really decided was that it didn’t want another child by her partner. Her brain was then simply coerced into finding a convincing reason why they, as a couple, should avoid conception. That reason was so convincing, she even managed to persuade herself that she wanted to go back to work
.
In her eyes, her partner had decreased in stature over the years. He had failed to live up to the potential he had shown when she committed her first two children to his genes. Now his health also was failing, and he was proving less than robust. As far as she was concerned, he had no saving graces in terms of intellect or character, either. In effect, her body had decided that a third child should be fathered by somebody with signs of a more robust genetic constitution than him. So when the opportunity presented itself, her body made sure that she took full advantage.
A woman is less likely to use contraception when she has sex with somebody other than her partner. And it is not always because the circumstances surrounding the infidelity make the use of contraception difficult. The first time the woman in Scene 17 had sex with her partner’s boss or with the window-cleaner, it would have been difficult to insist on their wearing a condom. But on subsequent occasions she, and they, could have been better prepared – but they weren’t. In any case, she wasn’t dependent on these men and on condoms. Had she taken her pill at the appropriate time, she could still have avoided conception. But she forgot. Was it really an accident, a genuine lapse of memory? Or did her body subconsciously manipulate her into forgetting, so that she conceived to a man other than her partner?
The sudden but week-long surge of sexual excitement the woman experienced was the outward manifestation of hormones produced during her fertile period. We have already discussed (Scene 6) how women become more interested in infidelity at this time. Her sudden loss of sexual interest at the end of her week of infidelity marked the end of her fertile period and, as it happened, the beginning of her pregnancy. By the time her partner returned and accepted an unprotected intercourse as a coming-home present, the woman will already have been two weeks pregnant.