Law of Inverse Fertility: Difference between revisions

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== Comicbooks ==

* 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 the ''[[Green Arrow]]'' miniseries ''The Longbow Hunters'', Ollie tells Dinah he'd like to get married and have children. She says no, because their lives are too dangerous. A few years later she changes her mind...at which point they're informed that due to damage she sustained during ''Longbow Hunters'', she's not physically capable of having kids anymore.

* In ''[[Runaways]]'', Victor learns that his mother wanted a child but was infertile and unable to adopt because of her past as a drug mule. {{spoiler|She was so desperate that she ended up letting Ultron build Victor as a half robot/half human with her supplying the human genetic material.}}

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* In ''[[Diary of a Mad Black Woman]]'', Helen ''wanted'' to have children with Charles, but had two miscarriages. Meanwhile, he had two unplanned children with his mistress.

* As noted below in the [[Western Animation]] section, the trope was played very straight with ''[[The Flintstones (film)|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.}}

* ''[[The Curious Case of Benjamin Button]]'', Queenie wants a child but can't have one. The only child she raises is Benjamin, who loves her and later says that Queenie is born to be a mother.

* Part of Bethany's backstory in ''[[Dogma]]'' is that she was married and she and her husband both wanted children very much. But then she had cancer and the cancer treatments left her infertile, so her husband left her. {{spoiler|The movie ends with her being impregnated supernaturally a la the Virgin Mary.}}

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* In ''[[Twilight (novel)|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.

* Averted entirely in [[Lois McMaster Bujold]]'s novel ''[[Vorkosigan Saga|Barrayar]]''. Cordelia, who's actually trying to have a baby with her husband, gets pregnant first go, while her friend Drou, in the midst of a pregnancy scare after an ill-judged encounter, is not. And then the ''real'' plot starts.

** 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? }}

* Aunt Sissy in ''[[A Tree Grows in Brooklyn]]'' wants a child more than anything, but all her pregnancies result in stillbirth. She finally fakes a pregnancy and adopts the child of an unwed Italian girl, and about a year later becomes pregnant and has a healthy baby boy.

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** Lynette gets pregnant at the end of Season 5, despite having just undergone a chemo and being, judging by the age of her older children, well in her forties. Well, at least it gave occasion to one of the best lines of the season "Are you sure it's not cancer?"

* On ''[[One Tree Hill]]'', Brooke Davis wants to be a mother, but her foster daughter leaves her, and she ultimately discovers she is infertile.

* 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.

* 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 from 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]].}}

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** Through flashbacks, we find out that [[Son of a Whore]] Don was only taken in by his father's wife because all of her pregnancies had ended in stillbirths and she desperately wanted a child. She had a son of her own about ten years later.

* Provides the motivation for murder in the ''[[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.

** Also seen in flashbacks. Sun and Jin desperately want a baby, and can't conceive. Claire is on the pill, and gets pregnant.

* ''[[Coupling]]'': in the season finale Susan is desperate to conceive but is told the chances are low, while Sally has a pregnancy scare when she doesn't want a baby - subverted as Susan finds out at the last minute that she's pregnant, and Sally isn't (Jane was also involved in the test mixup and she was not pregnant).

* An episode of ''[[The Last Detective]]'' had the culprit specifically call attention to this trope in her [[Motive Rant]].

* 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]],'' 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.

** Played straight in the last season with Carla and Turk too. Carla gets pregnant a second time when they weren't really trying. No one cared other than the couple though.

* Notably [[Averted Trope|averted]] in ''[[How I Met Your Mother]]''. In Season 4, Marshall and Lily decide that the time just isn't right for the two of them to have a baby, and they actually make it stick; Lily doesn't get pregnant. What makes it notable is that Alyson Hannigan, the actress who plays Lily, ''was'' pregnant throughout season, but the writers still passed on the chance to write it into the story.

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* 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."

* This is ''really'' played up in the [[Korean Drama]] ''[[Ojakgyo Brothers]]''. Cha Soo Young had surgery that removed one ovary completely and partially removed the other, yet became pregnant by a one-night-stand with her coworker.

* 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.

* In season five of [[Stromberg]], Jennifer gets pregnant with Stromberg's child, which was unwanted and thought they had used birth control. Conversely, in the same season, Tanja and Ulf are trying to have a child, but it turns out that Ulf is infertile.

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== Religion & Mythology ==

* Theseus's father visited an oracle to find out why he was childless. Theseus was conceived on the way home.

* [[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.

** Not just Genesis; the respective mothers of Samuel, Sampson, John the Baptist. In fact, Michal, the wife of King David and daughter of King Saul, was the only notably infertile woman in the Bible who didn't eventually give birth (her infertility being a divine punishment). Mary, the mother of Jesus, could fall under this trope as well.

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

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* ''[[Up]]''. Subtly implied in the opening montage of ''Up''. It's especially heartbreaking since the buildup has Carl and Ellie making a room for the baby. [[Word of God]] says it was a miscarriage that left Ellie unable to have more children. What we see is what little they could actually show/feel comfortable putting in a kid's movie.

* In Disney's ''[[Hercules (Disney 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|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 the 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.}}

== Real Life ==

* A book by Mary Pride points out that some people (like the author) may get so used to "family planning"-style matter-of-course birth control that they believe that merely ''going off the birth control'' is enough to cause pregnancy in a very short period of time. This is, of course, at odds with (statistical) reality -- even perfectly healthy, fertile couples can go months or in extreme cases years without a viable pregnancy while not using birth control.

** If you have gone for years with your birth control method working perfectly, it can mean that eventually you become less vigilant about using it, or worry less about whether you might be pregnant even if you do have a condom break or forget to take a pill. But yes, women in their thirties or forties can still get pregnant by accident, and just because you never have got pregnant doesn't mean you can't.

** 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...

* Some infertile couples who take fertility meds to increase their chances of having just ''one'' child end up having... quintuplets. Or sextuplets. Or even more. (Due to multiple ovulation.) And once this fact is realized, the reality of low birth-weight and the chance of miscarriage sets in... and then some doctors may propose "selective reduction" to increase the chances of a normal birth-weight / normal term for the remaining babies.

** See ''[[Jon and Kate Plus Eight]]''. Or don't - you can find out more about them than you ever wanted to know just by reading the magazine covers while waiting in the supermarket checkout line.

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* If a woman is actively pursuing a baby, there's a very good chance they're also dealing with a good amount of stress (if not the specific ticking biological clock, possibly a more generic "why isn't this working" frustration.) Stress can have some bad effects on anybody, and there are a few studies that suggest stress can affect infertility, creating a vicious cycle of "the more you obsess over a baby, the more likely you're not gonna have one."

* Women face declining fertility as they age, so by the time some women are mature enough to have a child, they often can't have one due to infertility. So if older age = greater desire to have a child, and older age = less fertile, then it makes sense that the desire to have a child would correlate inversely with the ability to have one.

* There are probably many men and women who don't want to have babies who are infertile, they just don't know it. Only when someone tries to have a baby (and therefore wants children) does fertility become an issue.