KEY POINTS:
New Zealand blokes are not only unbuttoning their trousers in world-high numbers to have vasectomies, they are queueing up afterwards to talk about it.
An Auckland University PhD student investigating why New Zealand men chose to have vasectomies hoped to find 20 men to talk to him.
Within days of making a media call in January for interview subjects, Gareth Terry was deluged with responses.
"I had 300 emails in the first three days and I'm still getting emails at the moment. I didn't have the structures in place to handle it," he said. "Obviously it hit a nerve to some extent."
Mr Terry said he had been forced to spend two or three weeks just replying to the emailed offers of help.
He had now heard from about 350 men but had narrowed that down to about 30.
New Zealand's vasectomy rates are in the top three in the world, with Britain and the Netherlands.
At 18 per cent of all men, 25 per cent of all married men, and 55 per cent of 40-49 year-olds, New Zealand's vasectomy rate towers above places such as the United States, with just 7 per cent.
Most men in New Zealand who have vasectomies do so after having children but Mr Terry said the high number of responses to his research had enabled him to broaden his research - about 16 men who had undergone "pre-emptive" vasectomies had contacted him.
He had already spoken to some men in both the with and without-children groups. A common feature of those who had had a pre-emptive vasectomy was a strong ability to articulate why they had done it, along with the relationship and societal pressures to have children.
"One guy who I interviewed recently, his relationship ended up breaking up and [his partner] claimed at the time it wasn't to do with the vasectomy but when she broke up with him, within two years she was having her first child, so clearly it was an issue," Mr Terry said.
Some of the pre-emptive vasectomy men had also expressed strong ecological views and were very aware of over-population in the world.
Mr Terry expected his PhD research would take about three years.
- NZPA
