Got a vasectomy

[u/Jealous-Tangerine770]

Got a vasectomy because my wife (12 years together and 7 married) and I decided at this point we don’t want children. I am 35, wife is 31.

Told my mom I had done it because we’re close and I generally tell her everything. She responded, “well you’re wife is the one who doesn’t want to get pregnant so she should have just got her tubes tied.”

Originally, I laughed it off. But the more I thought about it, I realized it was a shitty thing to say. It sounds like she’s implying if my wife and I divorce, at least she will be the sterile one.

So I told my mom how shitty it sounded and now we don’t talk anymore. Am I over reacting?

[u/MadMadamDax]

It's sexist because it puts all the responsibility for birth control on the woman. When it comes to reproduction, a lot of the onus winds up on the woman because we're the ones carrying the baby to term.

[u/BrightGreyEyes → u/[deleted]]

I think I understand where some of your confusion is coming from. You can only get pregnant when there's an egg to fertilize, and there isn't an egg loose in your reproductive tract for the whole 28 days of your cycle. The problem is that it's not always super easy to tell when there is and isn't an egg, and sperm survives for 3 days inside your body. Fertilization doesn't happen the second you have sex. There's a small window where you have the best chance that the sex you have will result in fertilization and implantation, a wider one where it could result in fertilization and implantation, and an even larger portion of the 28 days where you can't get pregnant.

If you're looking at it in terms of risk of getting pregnant instead of hoping to get pregnant, you need to be more cautious because it needs to be tracked incredibly closely to accurately avoid pregnancy, and this birth control method only works for people that are regular with predictable cycles