(THE ADVOCATE) 26 March 2008:

Thomas Beatie is a normal guy. He and his wife Nancy live in Oregon and are expecting their first child. Except Nancy is not the one carrying the child. Thomas is pregnant.  Thomas is transgender female to male, legally male, and legally married to Nancy. When Thomas had his sex reassignment procedures, he kept his female reproductive organs. Nancy has a hysterectomy and therefore is unable to carry a child for the couple. When the couple decided they wanted a child, Thomas stopped taking his testosterone injections. After four months, his body knew what to do. He was able to get pregnant without the aid of fertility drugs or any additional hormone treatments.  The sperm came from a sperm bank. Many people they’ve encountered are hostile and angry, but they are thrilled that the pregnancy is free from complications and they are expecting a baby girl on July 3.

(MSNBC.COM) 12 November 2007:

Deciding when to have children is a decision fraught with emotion for many young career women. A new mathematical model could actually take into account many individual factors and determine the optimal time to have children on a case-by-case basis.

According to Live Science, “Ralph Keeney and doctoral student Dinah Vernik of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business developed the model with the goal of balancing a woman’s professional, social and family objectives and their relative importance to a woman. The model also included age-related concerns such as diminished fertility and the likelihood of having a child with genetic ailments.”

(MSNBC.COM) 22 October 2007:

Women who have put off having children with the idea that egg freezing technology is just around the corner may have to come up with plan B. New fertility guidelines say that the procedure remains highly experimental, even though it is being offered in some areas. While the technology for freezing sperm is sound, the egg freezing technology doesn’t work nearly as well. The reason may be because eggs contain lots of water and this makes it harder to freeze them successfully. Ice crystals form during the freezing or thawing process, which destroys the eggs in much the same way ice crystals on frozen foods destroys the flavor and texture.

(SUNDAY LIFE) 5 August 2007:

It’s not a secret that women tend to dress for themselves first and other women second. What men like comes well after making sure that the women are happy and fashionable. Which is as it should be of course: no one has ever accused men of dressing to please women.

But the newspaper asked men what they would like to see women wearing and to any evolutionary psychologist, the results were entirely unsurprising. Big hips and a small waist are signs of fertility in a woman so men like clothes that emphasize these shapes: from belted or nipped jackets, to tight jeans and hated things like smock tops which deliberately hide such shapes.

(New York Times) 8 November 2006

One thing that has eluded medical researchers in recent decades is a reliable and reversible male contraceptive. The only reliable type has been vasectomy, which is not reversible. There are thought to be two groups who would welcome something as simple as the pill or patch for women. Those men who want to be more in control of their own fertility and those who would like to relieve their wives of the burden.

Those drugs that look good in animal studies tend not to work at all in men or reduce either desire or ability so much that whether a contraceptive is being used becomes moot.

Researchers though have not been able to answer possibly the most important question: would women trust a man who said he was taking such a contraceptive?

(REUTERS) 30 October 2006

If you were to design a phone expressly to be used by women, what functions would you give it? The Japanese designer Momoko Ikuta added things you might think of: a pastel paisley look for example. Also something you might think useful, a camouflage melody, which you can trigger to pretend to take a call to avoid unwanted attention.

But would you have thought of an alarm, one that rings only twice a month? First, it rings three days before the user’s time of highest fertility and the second time it rings means it’s time to get pregnant!

The hope is that it will raise the very low Japanese birth rate.

(ABC SCIENCE ONLINE) October, 17, 2006

Beetles with the biggest horns have the smallest testes, say scientists who show that in evolutionary terms you can’t have it all. They say their finding is clear evidence of an evolutionary trade-off between the ability to fight off sexual competitors and reproductive potency. Or put simply, the ability to find a mate and the ability to fertilize her.

(ABCNEWS.COM)  10 October 2006:

What makes a woman dress to impress?

A new report says the answer might be in the ovaries.

According to a study done by UCLA and the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, women put more time and effort into their appearance when they’re ovulating.

The study’s lead author, UCLA professor Martie Haselton, explained how she and her researchers had come to the conclusion that ovulation affects a woman’s appearance.

“What we did was photograph the women on a high fertility day and a low fertility day, and we showed those photographs to a separate set of judges, and we asked them, ‘In which photo is the woman trying to be more attractive?’” she said.

The judges picked a woman’s high fertility photograph 60 percent of the time — a rate much higher than random chance.

“For the women who were actually ovulating on the day of their period, it was more than 80 percent for those photos,” Haselton said.

(REUTERS) 22 June 2006

Researchers studying the fall in Japan’s fertility rate surveyed a selection of the public to find out more. The Japanese birth rate has fallen to 1.25 children per woman, but keep population at a constant level, the birth rate would need to be 2.1 children per woman. The Japan Family Planning Association contacted just under 1,000 people and found that 31% had not had sex for a month “for no particular reason”. Another survey by Durex, the condom manufacturers, found that Japan was last out of 41 countries with the average person having sex 45 times a year as opposed to the global average of 103.

The conclusion? To have more children people should have more sex.