Sex Cell and Their Origins

Sex cells are different from other body cells. A sex cell has just one function to perform and that is to pass on, by union with a cell from the partner in marriage, the spark of life from this generation to the next.

Male sex cells are produced in the testes-a man’s essential sex organs. Female sex cells are produced in the ovaries. Early in the life history of a human being-even before the time of his own birth-a certain bit of living tissue was set aside, as it were, for purposes of later parenthood.

In a boy, this highly specialized tissue developed into the testes. Even during childhood immature male sex cells are present in the testes. But only as a boy reaches early manhood do, these sex cells become mature enough to enable him to be a father. Beginning at this time (by the early teens) a young man’s testes produce enormous numbers of sex cells. The testes remain active in producing sex cells throughout the years of a man’s physical prime. Of course, most of them perish, for it takes only one male sex cell to unite with a female sex cell at the time of conception to initiate the life of a child.

In the case of a girl, the life perpetuating tissue is built into the ovaries-small glands located, one on the right and one on the left, within the lower abdominal cavity. The immature female sex cells contained in the ovaries lie dormant throughout the years of a girl’s childhood.

As a girl arrives at young womanhood, changes occur each month in the ovaries. Although there are thousands of immature sex cells, only a few respond each month to the influence of the hormones and, as they respond, grow rapidly. These few seem to compete with each other for a chance to arrive at full maturity and be liberated from the ovary. Usually only one out of the several is released during a particular month.

This one female sex cell, as it reaches full maturity, is located within a blister-like structure on the ovary’s surface. At just the right time this breaks open and the sex cell it contains escapes into the abdominal cavity. Remarkably, it is not lost here but is guided into the open end of the oviduct, a tube leading to the uterus.

The female sex cell is propelled through the oviduct toward the uterus by a multitude of microscopic fingers which have the effect of sweeping the sex cell on its way.

While the female sex cell is passing through the oviduct, it becomes available for union with a male sex cell if sexual intercourse has occurred at this time. If no male sex cells are available, the female cell passes on into the uterus and soon perishes. If it does unite with a male sex cell so that a new life is begun. The combined cell makes its way slowly through the remainder of the oviduct and lodges in the uterus where, in nine month, it develops into a full-term baby.

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