Last month, Phethelo “Jag” Fakude had about 500 followers on Twitter, a relatively small following for the microblogging site ... but one short post soon changed that.
“I’m 29. Unmarried. No children and no intention of ever having any. I’ve wanted this for years. It’s surreal,” Fakude tweeted, having just undergone a vasectomy.
He was surprised at the level of attention his tweet garnered. What he thought was a casual tweet thanking friends who had supported him on his journey towards voluntary infertility sparked a nationwide conversation about the choice he made.
With his followers having grown to more than 3,000, the attorney from Johannesburg has received responses to his viral tweet that range from supportive to casting doubts on his masculinity.
Even the ancestors were brought into the online debate — and they are “not happy”, according to one disgruntled stranger. Another called his actions “the end of a generation”.
“I am an uncle to more than 10 nieces and nephews. I was around to help raise them, and there was no point at which I looked at them or anyone else’s child and thought: ‘That’s cute,’” says the newly minted vasectomy influencer.
His journey began in 2016. At a social gathering he overheard a man describing his recent vasectomy, which had cost him R8,000. A student at the time, Fakude could not afford the operation.
“I went into a space of working, waiting and doing research,” he says. A discussion with his doctor didn’t yield much hope; the urologist Fakude was referred to quoted tens of thousands of rands for the procedure.
A friend who was engaged in similar research came across Reproductive Choices in Centurion, Gauteng, a day clinic that offers vasectomies for R5,500, a fraction of the private urologist’s quote.
“I was like, I don’t care what comes next — I’m definitely doing this,” says Fakude. With the total amount still out of his reach, he turned to friends for contributions. After raising enough funds, he made an appointment where there were “no questions asked, no questioning of volition or future plans”.
Throughout the course of my life, I never once had the desire to become a parent or to go through fatherhood as an experience
— Jag Fakude
Besides sparking a conversation about young, childless men getting vasectomies, Fakude's experience highlighted a growing trend among millennials who are choosing to be child-free.
According to the Pew Research Centre, which conducts research on public opinion on social issues in the US and the rest of the world, a growing number of 18-49 year olds are choosing not to have children.
A recent survey revealed that 44% of nonparents aged 18-49 responded that “it is not too, or not at all, likely that they will have children someday”, a significant rise from the 37% who held this view in 2018, when the survey was last conducted.
Fakude identifies with this growing sentiment: “Throughout the course of my life, I never once had the desire to become a parent or to go through fatherhood as an experience.”
Other than the lack of desire to have a biological child, one of the central issues for those choosing to go child-free is the effect population growth has on the environment. According to several studies, one of the most impactful ways one can contribute to addressing the climate crisis is by having fewer or no children.
This was one of the key considerations for Adam Buch when he had the snip in Cape Town at the age of 25.
“There is human incentive and drive to populate the planet, but we are struggling to take care of who’s already living here,” says the uncle of two. “The sustainability of humankind right now is not possible, whether your tipping point is climate change or the loss of resources.
"I would never say that I want people not to have children ... but if we could slowly start undoing the thinking that more people are always better, we might be able to make some progress.”
His decision was made in three stages: the personal realisation he did not want to have his own biological children, a process he says “took a very long time”; the environmental considerations; and being more involved in contraception.
“The burden of contraception falls so unequally and so heavily on women, so I thought that this would give me an opportunity to make some teeny, tiny dent on one tiny part,” says Buch.
He admits to finding discussing the idea of sterilisation with his peers “a little embarrassing at first. I hadn’t really spoken to women my age about getting the vasectomy. There was some sort of internalised masculinity that I thought I was losing.”
Buch, whose medical aid covered some of the costs of the procedure at a private hospital in Cape Town, paid R1,000 from his own pocket. Now 29, he says he does not regret the decision. His partner also does not want to have children.
One stark difference between the experiences of Buch and Fakude is in how their decisions were received by others. Buch encountered little resistance, but when Fakude tweeted about having had his vasectomy, even the minister of transport, Fikile Mbalula, felt moved to weigh in, responding: “Yhoooo meneer.”
“The amount of pushback Jag got is so absurd,” says Buch, who had also previously tweeted about his experience. “[Mbalula] would never do that on mine … In this country we somehow feel like commenting on the reality of being black is something for everyone to do.”
Of Jewish ancestry, Buch describes being white in SA as “easier”. “When I say easier, I don’t mean better, more important, preferable, right or wrong, but there has been a system that was built over 100 years in order to make our lives easier.”
When Fakude tweeted about having had his vasectomy, even the minister of transport, Fikile Mbalula, felt moved to weigh in, responding: 'Yhoooo meneer'
It was the kind of responses Fakude got that made Sean Sibande reluctant to use his real name when describing his experience.
The 27-year-old Zimbabwean had his vasectomy two years ago, a month shy of his 25th birthday. He celebrates the day, which falls in April, as his “personal freedom day”.
Sibande had wanted to get the snip since he was a teenager, and when the pandemic hit in early 2020, he saw it as the perfect time to execute his plan, setting up an appointment at a Marie Stopes reproductive clinic. (The nonprofit no longer offers the service due to low uptake.)
“I really, really fought for it. I wanted to control the conversation around birth control,” says the hospitality professional. A pregnancy scare while he was at university — a former girlfriend removed his condom while he was drunk — made him even more determined to find a permanent solution.
Part of his reasoning for not wanting to procreate is medical. He has the hereditary skin condition vitiligo, which he does not want to pass on.
As part of his journey, Sibande has joined support groups for those who have chosen voluntary infertility or to live child-free. He has written about his journey as a guest columnist on several blogs, including Australia-based Childfree Happily Ever After, founded by author and child-free advocate Tanya Williams.
The issue of legacy does not bother him. “When you die, you die … My mom prays for me,” he says — but he has yet to tell her about his procedure.
In fact, though all three men are confident in their decisions, the news has either been withheld from their families, or met with a lack of enthusiasm.
“My family prides itself in their virility and the number of kids they have,” says Sibande. “They look at me and think I’m still young. I really don’t have time for all the questions.”
Fakude has also not directly communicated his choice to his family. “Ultimately there is nothing they could have said that would have affected my decision. All that really remains is what their reaction will be. I know it’s going to be negative. It’s going to be taken as a personal attack on our lineage.”
Buch has shared the news with his family. His parents, he says, were not happy.
“My immediate family knew before I did the procedure. My sister is quite religious. She has two children and she has always tried to be supportive, but she wasn’t happy.” She tried to encourage him to postpone the procedure until he was in his 30s.
“My parents are quite similar to me. They appreciated that the idea wasn’t about just losing something, but trying to gain something else ... but they weren’t happy.”
But Fakude and Sibande report positive feedback from women. “I was genuinely surprised by how many women highlighted this as a point of attraction,” says Fakude. One woman on Twitter even declared him “an icon”. Sibande is dating a single mom who does not want to have more children.
One question that continues to come up is whether getting a vasectomy is a way of ensuring they can conduct their sex lives free from responsibility or repercussions.
“When I was thinking about it in my early 20s it was definitely part of it — the idea that you can go all over the place, do what you want to do and not have to worry about one of the consequences of having unprotected sex,” says Buch.
“Obviously [a vasectomy] has to do with sex to some extent, but as far as using it as an opportunity to go around shooting as many loads as possible, with as many people, without consequences, is ridiculous. You have to be [conscious of] sexual and reproductive safety.”
Buch has shared the news with his family. His parents, he says, were not happy
Fakude echoes the sentiment. “This was a response to contraception. I am obviously still exposed [to sexually transmitted diseases] the way other people are exposed. I will continue to practise safe sex.”
When it comes to choosing to be child-free, one thing that cannot be ignored is how much easier it is for men to do so than it is for women.
At the core of this is the belief that motherhood is the Holy Grail of the female experience. Ivanka Trump said on the campaign trail: “The most important job any mother can have is being a mother.” The Catholic Church weighed in, with Pope Francis declaring that “the choice not to have children is selfish”.
For most women, the expectation is that they will go on some form of contraception once they become sexually active, but one of the most popular and more readily available contraceptive measures, the pill (which was designed by men in the 1950s), has a number of adverse effects. These include but are not limited to spotting, developing high cholesterol, increased risk of cardiovascular disease, hormonal imbalances and migraines.
With this in mind, some women prefer a more permanent solution to the issue of contraception.
When Carmen Williams, 32, sought out voluntary infertility options, she was met with great resistance. “I was about 22 when I realised: ‘Wow, I don’t want kids,’” she says of the start of her journey. “When I was a teenager, I thought I did. I even had names picked out for my children.”
Raising children simply did not appeal to her. “I didn’t want to sit at 2am feeding a baby or watch them be a tree in a school play,” she says. It was “a very tough realisation to make at 22, but I knew even then it was the right one for me”.
At 26 she saw a Ted talk by writer Christen Reighter, who wanted to be sterilised but was repeatedly denied by doctors. Watching the talk left Williams angry at the lack of agency afforded to Reighter. “I remember thinking: ‘I want this. I want as little possibility of having a child as possible.'”
Williams started to research her options, but like Reighter, her consultations with doctors were met with rebuttals. Her youth and potential future regret were at the core of their arguments. Williams says there was no opportunity for informed consent or discussion.
At 29 she finally found a glimmer of hope when someone reached out to her on social media, where she had posted about her woes, offering the possibility of getting the procedure done at a public hospital. Williams sent an e-mail motivating her desire.
“There were many reasons, part of them being that I am severely mentally ill and I do not want to pass that on to a child. I am also at high risk for post-partum depression and psychosis,” she says. Her efforts paid off when she was finally admitted for a bilateral tubal ligation.
Another woman who managed to secure voluntary sterilisation under the age of 30 — something that is only rarely performed — is 26-year-old Priya Ramgoolam.
As well as having no interest in having children, something she says she knew from high school, Ramgoolam was born with a hereditary bleeding disorder, which would pose a high risk during pregnancy. Like Williams, she also cites mental wellness as one of the motivating factors for her decision to be sterilised.
Ramgoolam is an only child, but her parents supported her decision when she discussed her plans. “I only started seeking permanent sterilisation when I turned 18. By that point, I had told my family … My parents are actually the biggest fans of my decision. They have always been pro me forging my own path, doing whatever I need to do to make myself happy. ”
Again, it was health-care professionals who proved the biggest barrier. A family doctor tried to talk her out of her decision. “It was such a shock that more reproductive autonomy was being given to two beings [a husband and a child] that did not exist yet” than it was to her, she said.
Williams had a very different experience. Despite discussing the procedure with her mother before getting it done, Williams says, her mother is still angry with her to this day. “She does not talk about it. If I dare talk about it, she changes the subject. She is not happy with me.”
Another marked difference between the experiences of men and women lies in the pain experienced by men who undergo vasectomies versus that felt by women undergoing a tubal ligation.
We need more parents, not more children on this planet. There are kids here already who need parents
— Adam Buch
The latter process, which takes just under an hour and is performed under general anaesthesia, involves inserting a device into the cervix and clamping down on the uterus.
“I woke up, and holy s*** was I in pain,” recalls Williams. “It was the worst pain I had ever felt in my life.” The procedure was performed at a government hospital. “I’m still grateful because I don’t think I would have gotten it done in private.”
For Ramgoolam, the experience was somewhat different. Soon after her operation, where she opted for the total removal of her fallopian tubes, she was able to move around with manageable pain.
Her choice to have the more drastic procedure than the more common tubal ligation was based on three things: permanence, reduced risk of ovarian cancer and the avoidance of ectopic pregnancy, a potential complication of tying one's fallopian tubes.
Herself a medical doctor, Ramgoolam says part of the challenge when it comes to health care is that it is still largely taught from a patriarchal point of view, with old-fashioned thinking.
“There has been a shift in power dynamics and in how medicine is structured, and the role that women have in medicine, but for the most part, we still have a lot to address in terms of transformation.”
With the continued promotion of informed consent — one of the cornerstones of health care, she says — there is no reason voluntary infertility should still be so challenging for women.
“If you are a competent clinician, you should be able to understand the concept of informed consent, and know how to express that to your patient ... making a clinical decision that is not just for your patient, but with your patient.”
Since his procedure, Fakude says, the clinic where he had his vasectomy has seen an increase in inquiries. “I’ve had a string of private messages from men telling me about having now booked their vasectomies,” he says.
Says Buch: “We need more parents, not more children on this planet. There are kids here already who need parents.”
Williams says that “a lot of women have come to me after hearing my story, but unfortunately it looks like my case was special. It’s a miracle I got this done before 30 and without having had kids.”
She hopes to empower other women by creating a resource for them to consult should they want to explore voluntary infertility — but so far, she has been met with pushback.
“I asked the doctor who did my procedure if she has colleagues in the rest of the country who might be willing to do this. She sent out an e-mail and says she was met with a resounding ‘No’. It pissed me off no end. I can’t fathom why doctors are not even willing to have the conversation. It’s incredibly depressing.”
Ramgoolam advocates for better knowledge of reproductive rights, especially for women. “It’s so empowering for women to have access to that knowledge ... to ensure a safe, welcoming and non-judgemental environment.”
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