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‘A Precipice in Time’ – Reproductive Biotechnology
Published in Rosa Maria Quatraro, Pietro Grussu, Handbook of Perinatal Clinical Psychology, 2020
Paradoxically, a great division occurs once a heterosexual couple suspend their mode of contraception to make a hybrid baby. Even the most egalitarian partners begin to diverge dramatically. At the very moment of male/female unification their differently sexed bodies polarise – each to their own respective reproductive apparatus and substances. His concerns with erection, virility, potency, magnitude of sperm or fantasies of their super-active or ‘sluggish’ quality contrast with her centripetal anxieties, focused on her monthly egg, her enigmatic interior, and its vague organs and lubricants. Quintessentially feminine, she is undertaking what only members of her sex can do, engaging with the female mysteries of implantation, formation, transformation and sustenance (Raphael-Leff, 1993, 2015). But conception can occur only if one bold sperm among many finds its way to meet and penetrate her receptive ovum, encountering no obstacles on the way. If all goes well, her womb will be the one to nurture their baby; her body will carry it, give birth and lactate. If not, the failure to conceive, complications or miscarriage will occur in her body, with all the accompanying culpability and guilt. In many societies, childlessness is ascribed to the woman although male factors are just as common in infertility.
Assisted Conception
Published in Jane M. Ussher, Joan C. Chrisler, Janette Perz, Routledge International Handbook of Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health, 2019
Most people across the world expect, and want, to become parents at some stage in their life (Lampic et al., 2006). However, 48 million couples experience infertility due to medical reasons (Mascarenhas et al., 2012), and these rates are rising. The rise in infertility (or involuntary childlessness) is also due in part to global changes in lifestyle factors, such as delayed childbearing (Mathews & Hamilton, 2016), same-sex partnerships, and women and men deciding to become solo parents (van den Akker, 2017a). These medical and lifestyle factors present biological challenges that can be treated with assisted conception (AC), including fertility preservation, surrogate motherhood, gamete or embryo donation, and in vitro fertilisation (IVF). In this chapter I explore the processes involved in overcoming barriers to parenthood and the psychological effects associated with these. The contexts in which the medical and lifestyle factors associated with involuntary childlessness occur, and overcoming these barriers, are also discussed from within the wider sociocultural, family, and work environments.
Freedom through science?
Published in Elisabeth Hildt, Dietmar Mieth, In Vitro Fertilisation in the 1990s, 2018
With the exception of strong medical indications physicians themselves must always weigh the prospects for the success of an IVF treatment against the prospects without treatment or of alternative treatment by methods that tackle the psychosomatic problems, when they help overcome the suffering of childlessness. If the physician him- or herself is pressurised by an unquestioning belief in science and fails to really fathom all other alternatives to IVF, he or she violates the principle of beneficence.
Breaking the silence around infertility: a scoping review of interventions addressing infertility-related gendered stigmatisation in low- and middle-income countries
Published in Sexual and Reproductive Health Matters, 2023
Trudie Gerrits, Hilde Kroes, Steve Russell, Floor van Rooij
This scoping review builds upon a study commissioned by Share-Net International (SNI), the International Knowledge Platform on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights, in preparation for the Co-Creation Conference “Breaking the Silence on Infertility”, held in Amsterdam in 2019.22b The study aimed to identify existing interventions related to infertility (and if available, their effectiveness), as well as gaps in infertility policies, programmes and interventions. It included a review of interventions in three priority areas: (1) the prevention of infertility; (2) access to quality (in)fertility care, and (3) destigmatisation of infertility and childlessness.22c To capture an overview of the different types of existing interventions, a combination of research methods was used: academic database searches, Google and social media searches, and primary data collection (key informant interviews and focus groups; described below). In this article, we build on the third priority area (destigmatisation).
Step-by-step decision-making process in third party assisted reproduction: a qualitative study
Published in Human Fertility, 2022
Zohreh Behjati Ardakani, Mehrdad Navabakhsh, Fahimeh Ranjbar, Mohammad Mehdi Akhondi, Alireza Mohseni Tabrizi
The results showed that selection of the treatment options in infertile couples has occurred in a gradual and step-by-step process. In other words, in the first step, the couple tried to use their own gametes and embryos. When they become certain that it was impossible to have children using their own gametes and embryos, they choose the treatment option nearest to biological parenthood. In this study, ‘step-by-step adjustment to infertility treatment using third-party reproduction’ included the subcategories of ‘parental preference for biological children over non-biological children’, ‘parental preference for non-biological children over childlessness threats’, ‘strong preference for having partial genetic link with children’, ‘flexibility in removing or overcoming barriers to third party reproduction’, and ‘parental preference for adopted children over childlessness’ (Table 2).
Quality of life and related constructs in a group of infertile Hungarian women: a validation study of the FertiQoL
Published in Human Fertility, 2022
Judit Szigeti F, Dennis Grevenstein, Tewes Wischmann, Enikő Lakatos, Piroska Balog, Réka Sexty
Interestingly enough, Q5, referring to satisfaction with support from friends, has a low loading (<0.30) on the Social subscale, while Q14, about sympathy on the part of the family, shows a strong relationship with the subscale. It seems that women struggling with infertility have a different support experience with friends than with family members (Martins et al., 2011). In international comparison, the Hungarian society counts as especially conservative in terms of attitudes towards the importance of child rearing (Blaskó, 2006). These views are probably more strongly held by parents and parents-in-law than by friends, who belong to the same generation as those struggling with infertility. While infertility also deprives the potential grandparents of pursuing their normative life courses, friends are not directly affected by the experience of loss, thus being able to show more empathy towards the involuntarily childless. Indeed, some findings pointed out that friends are important sources of social support in the context of infertility (Erdem & Ejder Apay, 2014). We suggest that further research aim at disentangling the different roles that various sources of social support may play in coping with unintended childlessness.