Law of Inverse Fertility: Difference between revisions

[[File:129041122701975931.png|framethumb|350px|Red for movies, blue for real life]]

{{quote|''"Once on a time there was a king and a queen who had no children, and that gave the queen much grief; she scarce had one happy hour. She was always bewailing and bemoaning herself, and saying how dull and lonesome it was in the palace.<br />

'' 'If we had children there'd be life enough', she said."''|"[[Tatterhood (Literature)|Tatterhood]]"}}

Couples who want to have children will have trouble not only conceiving, but adopting and using surrogates as well. Women who don't want to have children, however, will be faced with unwanted pregnancies [[But We Used a Condom|even if they used several different forms of birth control]]. Particularly if the conception was [[Child Byby Rape|forced upon them]]. Teenagers, of course, [[Can't Get Away Withwith Nuthin'|will get pregnant their first time]], double points if they [[Miss Conception|thought they couldn't]]. The reason for this, of course, is obvious: "woman becomes pregnant with longed-for child immediately" and "woman doesn't want to get pregnant and doesn't" [[Rule of Drama|don't make for very good stories]]. At least the woman with a baby she doesn't want can give it up to the woman who is desperate to conceive, but expect much [[True Art Is Angsty|angst]] along the way.

In many cases the stress of trying to have a baby will suppress fertility, and, once the couple decides to adopt or give up, the stress disappears, and: hooplah! they have a baby! Sometimes it's ''after'' they went through the hassle of adopting, as if Mother Nature felt humorous one day. Many people believe this to be [[Truth in Television]], but in [[Real Life]], while infertile couples do sometime conceive after adopting, they also sometimes conceive if they don't adopt -- andadopt—and at the same rate.

This is very old, involuntary infertility being found in the opening of a number of [[Fairy Tale|Fairy Tales]]s, before the birth of the main character, and just about required for the [[Wonder Child]]. Note that this law gets revoked during the [[Denouement]] for [[Babies Ever After]]. See also [[But We Used a Condom]]. For inverse correlation of fertility with a creature's size or longevity, see [[Immortal Procreation Clause]].

== Anime &and Manga ==

* The ''[[DragonballDragon Ball]]'' franchise has an uneven history with this trope. Trunks was apparently the result of a one-night stand between Bulma and Vegeta. And given the amount of time Goku spends either dead, traveling through space, training in the wilderness, or bedridden with a killer virus between and during the Freeza and Android / Cell sagas, it's amazing that he and Chichi ever found time to conceive Goten.

* In the [[Child Ballad]] ''[[Tam Lin (Literature)|Tam Lin]]'', Fair Janet becomes pregnant after her first meeting with Tam Lin. Which raises the spectre of an [[Arranged Marriage]] to ensure that the baby is born in wedlock, and has her resorting to some desperate measures to ensure the right father marries her.

{{quote| ''Out then spak her father dear,<br />

And he spak meek and mild;<br />

"And ever alas, sweet Janet," he says,<br />

== ComicbooksComic Books ==

* In the Salvation arc of [[Preacher (Comic Book)]], Toby and [[The Ghost|never-seen girlfriend Turleen]] aren't even ''thinking'' of having a baby (or much else, for that matter) when he tells Jodie that he thought she was pregnant because she'd missed her period. They're not worried, because it happened once before, ''last month''. God, these two are such ''idiots''.

* In ''[[Y: theThe Last Man]]'', the (literal) last man on Earth manages to have sex exactly twice (in one night, with the same woman) in the years directly following the plague that killed all the other men. Nine months later, guess who's the last father on Earth?

* [[Spider -Man]]'s Aunt May had a miscarriage that left her infertile. She and Uncle Ben were more than happy to adopt Peter when his parents died, though it makes one wonder why they didn't try adoption before.

{{quote| ''A long time ago there were a King and Queen who said every day, "Ah, if only we had a child!" but they never had one. But it happened that once when the Queen was bathing, a frog crept out of the water on to the land, and said to her, "Your wish shall be fulfilled; before a year has gone by, you shall have a daughter."''}}

* "[[Rapunzel (Literature)|Rapunzel]]"

* In "[[Tatterhood (Literature)|Tatterhood]]", the queen is so eager to have a child, she neglects to follow the magical directions to get them.

* "[https://web.archive.org/web/20130921113251/http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/authors/grimms/47junipertree.html The Juniper Tree]"

* In ''[[Beetlejuice (Film)|Beetlejuice]]'' the one cloud in Adam and Barbara's blissed-out life is their inability to have a child - but by movie's end, they've become sort-of surrogate parents to Lydia.

* In the second ''[[Look WhosWho's Talking]]'' film, Mollie gets pregnant with Jimmy's daughter and Mikey's half-sister, Julie, despite [[But We Used a Condom|wearing her diaphragm]]. The diaphragm is also a [[Chekhov's Gun]] from the first film.

* ''[[Cthulhu (Filmfilm)|Cthulhu]]'' (2007). The father of the protagonist wants his gay son to start a family; naturally he refuses and snidely suggests pressuring his sister instead. She immediately storms off crying as she's been unable to have children. {{spoiler|It turns out the father has his own dark reasons for continuing their line, and later arranges for the protagonist to be drugged and raped by a woman to ensure this happens.}}

* As noted below in the [[Western Animation]] section, the trope was played very straight with ''[[The Flintstones (Filmfilm)|The Flintstones]]'', in the film as well as the cartoon. The difference is that in the film, the Rubbles decide to adopt, and [[Crowning Moment of Heartwarming|Fred empties his savings account to lend them the money so they can afford to do so]].

* In the dark comedy ''Kingdom Come'', Luanne's angst comes from her inability to have children. She had multiple miscarriages, her latest one lost in an empty fried chicken bucket (she was ordered on bed rest and was using it as a makeshift bedpan while her husband Ray went to the drug store to buy a real one; a KFC bucket [[Brick Joke|becomes]] a [[Trigger]] for her). She and Ray stopped trying after that. {{spoiler|Towards the end of the movie, she discovers that she's pregnant again, and the [[Where Are They Now? Epilogue]] over the end credits show her and Ray with a baby girl.}}

* Claudia desperately wants a child in ''[[Snow White: aA Tale of Terror (Film)|Snow White a Tale of Terror]]'', but she only carries to term/gets pregnant (the film doesn't specify which) the one time in nine years. The baby doesn't live.

* In ''[[Twilight (Literaturenovel)|Twilight]]'', Rosalie and Esme can't ever have kids and yet they really, really want them. Bella, who wasn't trying to have kids and in fact wasn't even thinking about them, gets pregnant the very first time she and Edward have sex, despite being explicitly incapable of it. Justified if (as they imply) a vampire can't get pregnant but a vampire can get someone pregnant.

** But Cordelia had been looking forward to having several children. Growing up, Miles is uncomfortably aware that his parents had chosen not to, to protect their "mutie" son from being shunted aside.

{{quote| Now, family ''size''; that was the real, secret, wicked fascination of Barrayar. There were no legal limits here, no certificates to be earned, no third-child variances to be scrimped for; no rules, in fact, at all. She'd seen a woman on the street with not three but four children in tow, and no one had even stared. Cordelia had upped her own imagined brood from two to three, and felt deliciously sinful, till she'd met a woman with ten. Four, maybe? Six? }}

* In [[Dan Abnett]]'s [[Warhammer 4000040,000]] novel ''[[Brothers of the Snake (Literature)|Brothers of the Snake]]'' Antoni explains to a Space Marine that she has had two husbands and no children -- presumablychildren—presumably because of her [[Heroic Bystander]] actions earlier in the novel, when she went with him to where a Dark Eldar ship crashlanded, and was exposed to heavy radiation.

* Happens to two "friends" in ''[httphttps://wwwweb.archive.org/web/20190928152840/https://ew.com/ew/article/0,,20294878,00.html2009/07/31/im-so-happy-you/ I'm So Happy For You]''.

* A major part of Gordie's character in "The Body" (the [[Stephen King]] novella that later became the film ''[[Stand Byby Me]]''): his late brother Denny was born after a series of miscarriages and stillbirths and regarded as a gift from God, while he came along ten years later, when his parents didn't want another child.

* Similarly subverted in ''~[[Mama's Family~]]'', where Vinton and Naomi had reached the end of their rope (turned down for adoption, Vinton's low sperm count) and were about to move away from Thelma's house after a nasty row, only to find out Naomi was pregnant after all.

* In ''[[That '70s Show]]'' this trope is invoked when Eric and Donna realize that Donna had missed a day of her birth control, and were therefore convinced that Donna was pregnant. Most teenagers don't realize that birth control doesn't stop working just because you missed one day, so their panic is understandable.

* On ''[[3rd Rock Fromfrom the Sun]]'', Vicki and Harry go to a doctor when they can't seem to have a baby. [[Subverted Trope|Subverted]] in that they had only been trying for a month.

{{quote| '''Vicki:''' Well, [[Crowning Moment of Funny|it's not like we've been doing anything else]].}}

* In ''[[Sex and Thethe City]]'', Charlotte, who is the character who's the most excited about the idea of marriage and family, turns out to have trouble conceiving. Miranda, who's more lukewarm on the subject, suffers an unplanned pregnancy. What's more, Miranda had a lazy ovary and the man who impregnated her had lost one testicle to cancer!

* Provides the motivation for murder in the ''[[Cold Case (TV)|Cold Case]]'' episode "Family".

* This appears to be law #1 on ''[[Lost]]'''s island. Pregnancy is a death sentence for mother and baby, but normal sperm count is magnified by five.

* Cuddy from ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'' went to great lengths to get pregnant. When that doesn't work out, she tries to adopt which doesn't work out either, at least at first.

* Played hilariously straight on ''[[Scrubs (TV)|Scrubs]],'' where J.D. accidentally impregnated his girlfriend without even having sex with her (he didn't have a condom, and he ''didn't want to get her pregnant''), Jordan and Dr. Cox had Jack with their relationship being little more than a booty call, and Jennifer Dylan after Dr. Cox had three vasectomies. Turk and Carla, on the other hand, had to both have fertility tests and counseling before they finally had Izzy.

* On ''[[The West Wing]]'', we find out via flashbacks that Toby's wife Andi desperately wanted to have a baby, and they tried every fertility treatment under the sun. In the series timeline, they're divorced, but Andi becomes pregnant with Toby's twins -- andtwins—and then rejects his proposal of remarriage, saying that he's "sad," "angry" and "not warm," and she's worried about the influence he would have on the kids. Oddly, we're never told whether she finally had a successful in vitro fertilization using his stowed-away sperm or they rekindled their relationship long enough to do it the old-fashioned way. This is a point of contention is the fanbase: one side insists that it's too much of a long shot for Andi to have become pregnant just by luck, after failing for all those years, while the other maintains that if those are really her conclusions about Toby's potential as a family man, she wouldn't have intentionally made him the father of her children.

* On ''[[Spartacus Blood and Sand (TV)|Spartacus: Blood and Sand]]'' and ''[[Spartacus: Blood and Sand (TV)|Spartacus: Gods of the Arena]]'', Lucretia tries for years to provide her husband Batiatus with an heir, even resorting to adultery with one of his gladiators due to the belief that a Gaul's seed was extraordinarily potent. Despite regularly having sex with both men and undergoing a fertility ritual, she remains unable to conceive. {{spoiler|Until the end of season one. Not long afterwards, the Gaullish gladiator and probable father stabs her in the womb during a revolt.}}

* Flagrantly abused by Shonda Rimes on ''[[Grey's Anatomy (TV)|Greys Anatomy]]''. To date:

* Implied to have been the case with Jessica and her late husband Frank on ''[[Murder, She Wrote]]''. In the pilot, Jessica explains her childlessness to a new suitor by saying "We were never blessed in that way."

* Both sides are featured in ''[[Boardwalk Empire]]''. On the one hand, Rose Van Alden, who wants a child more than anything in the world and practically considers sex a chore to get that, can't conceive. Her husband Nelson is not so thrilled about having children himself {{spoiler|but knocks up Lucy during his first and only one night stand.}} Meanwhile, Lucy had suggested to stop using birth control in order to secure Nucky for herself, but only gets pregnant after he has abandoned her.

* Avoided, mostly, on [[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]. Keiko opens up one episode by telling her husband, Chief O'Brien, that she's pregnant. While there was no build-up in previous episodes of them wanting a second child, they apparently were trying. O'Brien is simply disappointed because he wanted to have to keep trying a little while longer.

* On ''[[Charmed (TV)|Charmed]]'', after a year of marriage, Piper and Leo admit that they've been trying to have a baby for a while but have been unsuccessful. Piper eventually finds out that all the demon-hunting and "sharp blows to the abdomen" have made it "difficult if not impossible" for her to get pregnant. Meanwhile her sister Phoebe, who has been married for a month to the Source of All Evil but doesn't want children does get pregnant. She at first doesn't tell Piper about her pregnancy because she knows it will hurt her; when Piper does find out she says this is ridiculous and that she would love to be an aunt if she can't be a mother. Subverted in the end when Phoebe's fetus is taken from her ( [[It Makes Sense in Context]] )and Piper finds out she has gotten pregnant.

== Religion &and Mythology ==

* [[The Bible|Genesis]] is ripe with examples of this trope; in fact, the only matriarchs who don't have problems conceiving are Eve and Leah (who in fact subverts this trope, having at least seven children). Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel were all infertile, and all three required divine intervention in order to have children.

** Apocryphal stories say that Mary's mother was also infertile for a number of years before having Mary at a relatively old age.

* In [[Werewolf: The Apocalypse (Tabletop Game)|Werewolf: The Apocalypse]] and [[Werewolf: The Forsaken]], if two werewolves engage in the forbidden act [[No Sex Allowed|with one another]] despite the massive social taboos involved and punishment that will fall upon their heads if they are caught, then conception is a virtual certainty. Thanks to their dual physical/spiritual nature, this [[Can't Get Away Withwith Nuthin'|frequently applies even if they]] [[But We Used a Condom|used protection]]. The resulting offspring are (in Apocalypse) sterile, deformed and frequently insane freaks or (in Forsaken) horrifyingly hideous [[Fetus Terrible|vengeful spirits]].

* ''[[Blood Brothers (Theatretheatre)|Blood Brothers]]'' is a major example of this trope- Mrs. Johnston seems to have produced about ten kids and gives one away because she can't afford any more.

* Played with in ''[[BaldursBaldur's Gate]]'' in the form of Aerie, and more straightforwardly, the mod-added [[Mary Sue|Mary Sues]]s Kelsey and Saerileth.

* In the sound novel ''[[Umineko no Naku Koro Nini]]'', it takes Natsuhi and Krauss Ushiromiya 8 years after their marriage to conceive their daughter, Jessica. Krauss' ambitious younger sister Eva, however, gives birth almost immediately after she and Hideyoshi marry, so she tries to use this as a bargaining chip to secure her son George's headship in the family over Jessica.

* Used in ''[[Arthur, King of Time and Space]]'' [http://www.arthurkingoftimeandspace.com/1484.htm here]. What kicks it up a notch is that it's the exact same people, but in different situations - one where they want to have a child, one where they don't. That particular comic makes it seem as though the desire to have a child is the one factor that keeps them from having one. Later [http://www.arthurkingoftimeandspace.com/2810.htm averted in the space arc].

* Eugene and Sara Greenhilt's contraceptive spell fails in [[The Order of the Stick]], leading to the protagonist's unplanned birth and the end of his mother's freewheeling lifestyle (until she got to the ''afterlife'', anyway!)

* Frequently happens in ''[[The Gungan Council]]''. Beth gets knocked up after her first time ever and Kirk, who vehemently ''does not'' want children, knocks someone up as well with just one encounter .<ref> The woman he knocked up decided to terminate the child anyway, yet for her own reasons.</ref>.

* ''[[The Simpsons (Animationanimation)|The Simpsons]]'' - Apu and Manjula are trying to have a child with no success. Apu asks Homer how he and Marge did it, and Homer laughingly notes that each of their kids was unintentional. He then tries to [[Invoked Trope|deliberately invoke this trope]] to help them -- stagingthem—staging an entire setup where they were having sex dressed in teenage-y clothes in the backseat of a car, while Majula reads her lines in a monotone: "Oh no, [[Blatant Lies|I hope I don't get pregnant]]."

* In Disney's ''[[Hercules (Disney1997 film)||Hercules]]'', the title character's adoptive human parents have prayed to the gods for years to bless them with a child, and they see Herc as the answer to that prayer.

* In the ''[[Thundercats 2011 (Western Animation)|ThunderCats (2011)]]'' episode "Native Son" a [[Flash Back]] reveals that the king and queen of Thundera tried to have a child for years. It got so bad that the queen worried she might be infertile. Their concerns were put to rest when baby Tygra literally flew into their lives [[Moses in Thethe Bulrushes|in a balloon]]. So of course just when the royal couple have gotten comfortable with Tygra inheriting the throne as crown prince, the queen became pregnant. {{spoiler|Then she died in childbirth, so little Tygra lost his mother and the throne in one night.}}

** After one year of "trying" (well-timed, unprotected sex) with no pregnancy, you meet the medical definition of "infertile." Most couples without a diagnosable medical problem will be pregnant by that point, although there are always exceptions...

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