This man and I were chatting at a gathering for a book launch. He is one of the very few academics in the West who is researching a subject solely concerned with men. His special interest is in how individual men are affected psychologically by finding themselves involuntarily childless in middle-age when they might naturally have expected to become fathers. Intrigued by the sound of that topic, I added that I knew of no studies on the psychological effects on men finding that they were infertile. He then came out with the two statements at the top of this article.