Male pregnancy

In nearly all animal species, offspring are carried by the female until birth, but in fish of the family Syngnathidae (pipefish, seahorses and the leafy seadragon), males perform that function.

Fertilization may take place in the pouch or in the water before implantation, but in either case, syngnathids' male pregnancy ensures them complete confidence of paternity.

In at least some species, the male also provisions his offspring with nutrients such as glucose and amino acids through the highly vascularized attachment sites in or on his body.

[1] The theoretical issue of male ectopic pregnancy (pregnancy outside the uterine cavity) by surgical implantation has been addressed by experts in the field of fertility medicine, who stress that the concept of ectopic implantation, while theoretically plausible, has never been attempted and would be difficult to justify – even for a woman lacking a uterus – owing to the extreme health risks to both the parent and child.

[12][13] Robert Winston, a pioneer of in-vitro fertilization, told London's Sunday Times that "male pregnancy would certainly be possible" by having an embryo implanted in a man's abdomen – with the placenta attached to an internal organ such as the bowel – and later delivered surgically.

[14][15][16] Ectopic implantation of the embryo along the abdominal wall, and resulting placenta growth would, however, be very dangerous and potentially fatal for the host, and is therefore unlikely to be studied in humans.

In 1931, transgender female Lili Elbe (assigned male at birth) underwent a uterus transplant in an attempt to achieve pregnancy, but died of complications following the procedure.

The earliest mention is in Book V of the Iliad (c. 800 BCE), when Ares accuses Zeus of being biased in favor of Athena because "autos egeinao" (literally "you fathered her", but probably intended as "you gave birth to her").

[30] Ursula K. Le Guin's novel The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) contains the sentence "The king was pregnant", and explores a society in which pregnancy can be experienced by anyone, since individuals are not sexually differentiated during most of their life and can become capable of inseminating or gestating at different times.

Larry Niven's 1969 essay "Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex" ends with considering Superman as a carrier for his own baby, due to the difficulties a human female might encounter carrying a superpowered fetus.

[31] Lois McMaster Bujold's Ethan of Athos (1986) features an all-male society in which men use artificial wombs, but experience many of the psychological effects of pregnancy (anticipation, anxiety, etc.).

The 1978 comedy film Rabbit Test stars Billy Crystal as a young man who inexplicably becomes pregnant instead of his female sex partner.

[32] The 1994 science fiction comedy/drama Junior stars Arnold Schwarzenegger as a fertility researcher who experiments on himself; the screenplay was inspired by a 1985 article in Omni magazine.

The 2017 film Mamaboy stars Sean O'Donnell as a teenager who decides to undergo an experimental procedure that enables him to carry his girlfriend's baby to term.

In 2020, the horror film Amulet depicts a soldier returning from war to live in a claustrophobic house with a woman and her mother, and a dark presence that may be lurking there as well.

In a 1981 episode of the Canadian sketch comedy series Bizarre, the show's resident daredevil character Super Dave Osborne (Bob Einstein) performs, as one of his many stunts, carrying and giving birth to a baby.

In the BBC science fiction comedy series Red Dwarf, the main character Dave Lister becomes pregnant after having sex with a female version of himself in an alternate universe.

In an episode of Sliders, the quartet "slides" into an alternate world in which babies develop during their final months in the father because a worldwide disease has kept women from being able to carry children beyond their first trimester.

In the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Unexpected", Trip Tucker becomes pregnant with the offspring of a female of another species, described late in the chapter, set in mid-22nd century, as being "the first recorded instance of a human male pregnancy".

episode "Deacon Stan, Jesus Man", the boy Steve becomes impregnated after giving the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to the extraterrestrial Roger, then unwittingly passes it on to his girlfriend via a kiss.

In the Ben 10: Alien Force episode "Save the Last Dance", it is revealed that Necrofriggians have an ability to asexually reproduce once every 80 years, building a large nest made of digested metal where their eggs will hatch and their offspring will feed on the metal, first eating from the nest before they instinctively feed on solar plasma until they mature and starts their own separate lives.

The series explores the workplace prejudice that men and women experience and the titular character's efforts to change public opinion once he himself becomes pregnant.