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Thesis (M. A.(Social Work)) --University of Limpopo, 2018 / Involuntary childlessness and infertility affects women from various cultural and religious backgrounds. Childless women suffer from social and psychological ailments because of their circumstances. Previous research reveals that women who suffer from infertility and childlessness experience social exclusion and ridicule from their women folk who have children. In South Africa reproduction is a human right and everyone is allowed to make decisions on whether or not they should have children. Surrogacy as an assisted reproductive technique is allowed and governed through the Children’s Act 38 of 2005. However, the knowledge of childless women on surrogacy, their belief system and willingness to take up surrogacy as a way to have children is unknown to the researcher. The aim of this study was to explore the perceptions of childless women on surrogacy as an assisted reproductive technique. The study was exploratory and qualitative in nature. The participants were identified through purposive and snowball sampling. Data was collected until saturation point and seven participants were interviewed. Unstructured, face to face interviews were conducted. An audio recorder was utilised during the interviews. Thematic analysis was employed in data analysis and trustworthiness was used to establish the credibility, transferability, dependability and conformability of the study. Most women in this study mentioned that they had heard and were aware of surrogacy but they were not well-informed about the relevant legislation. Women in this study were willing to take up surrogacy as an option to have their own children.

Despite the many advances of medical technology to help treat infertility, approximately half of women seeking fertility treatment will never give birth to a child. Women coping with treatment failure face many challenges, including deciding when to abandon treatment and how to let go of their dreams of having a baby to focus on other pursuits. In order to better understand how women cope with these challenges, in depth interviews and a focus group were carried out with 12 women for whom fertility treatment had not been successful. Data was gathered and analysed using Grounded Theory, and a model of the process of adjustment from pursuing treatment to coming to terms with involuntary childlessness was co-constructed from the data. The model conceptualizes women's journey as moving through three main phases; 'living in limbo' in which women are still undergoing treatment, 'leaving treatment' in which women decide to terminate treatment and abandon the search for a resolution to their infertility, and finally 'learning to live with involuntary childlessness' in which women start the 'work' of grappling with the questions that childlessness seems to raise about the meaning of their lives, their identity and self image, and their sense of social belonging. The model goes on to highlight the factors which seem to aid women in resolving these challenges. The findings of this study suggest that the emotional challenges of coping with unsuccessful fertility treatment extend well beyond the end of treatment, highlighting the need for good access to therapeutic support for women coping with involuntary childlessness longer term. Results also point to certain sources and types of support which may be particularly helpful, including peer support from other childless women, and therapeutic interventions which help women develop more positive perspectives on childlessness and to identify alternative sources of fulfillment. The results of this study also point to the need for social action which works to challenge the misconceptions and stigma surrounding infertility and childlessness which add a further challenge to the lives of women who are involuntarily childless.

In Australia, as in other industrialised countries, rates of childlessness amongst women are rising. This has been attributed, in part, to a rise in the number of women choosing never to give birth; however, women’s perception of what constitutes choice in remaining childless is under-investigated. The aim of this study was to investigate Australian women’s experience of childlessness at mid age and explore the role of choice in this reproductive outcome. It investigated the determinants of childlessness, considered the consequences of never giving birth, and explored how choice affects childless women’s evaluation of non-motherhood. / A cross-sectional study of the experience of never giving birth was conducted, which comprised two components. The minor component was a secondary analysis of survey data (collected in 1996) from the Women’s Health Australia (WHA) project. WHA is a longitudinal study which recruited a nationally representative sample of 14,099 women born between 1945 and 1952. These women are amongst the first to have lived all their reproductive lives since the introduction of the oral contraceptive. This study compared demographic characteristics, self-rated health, and life satisfaction between 1,069 mid-aged childless women (exclusive of known adoptive and step-mothers) and 12,643 of their peers who are mothers. It was found that at mid-age, childless women have higher levels of education and are more extensively engaged in the paid workforce than mothers, however, there were no differences in health status between mothers and childless women. Life satisfaction differences between the two groups are complex and mediated by marital status. / The major component of the investigation was a study-specific survey (October 2002) completed by 426 nulliparous women who were all participants in the mid-aged cohort of Women’s Health Australia. This component investigated the determinants of childlessness, the role of choice, and the experience of non-motherhood. / In contrast to existing studies into childlessness, this large quantitative investigation has a sample which comprises a broad selection of nulliparous women irrespective of their marital status, medical history, or level of choice in never giving birth. Using an original classification system, women were categorised into three childless groups which describe three levels of choice in never giving birth: 37.1% of respondents chose childlessness actively (Active Choice), 15.4% chose childlessness given their personal circumstances (Constrained Choice), and 47.5% felt denied the opportunity to give birth (Denied Choice). The predominant reason for childlessness amongst the Active Choice women was not experiencing a strong ‘maternal instinct’, the Denied Choice group mainly cited infertility or the lack of a husband/partner, whilst the Constrained Choice group gave a mixture of voluntary and involuntary explanations. / This study developed a balance sheet approach to assessing both the positive and negative aspects of non-motherhood – the Consequence of Childlessness Balance Sheet (CCBS). It also introduced a technique for measuring ambivalence that was developed within social psychology. In contrast to the public discourse that depicts childlessness as a negative life outcome, participants in this study gave a favourable evaluation of their lives. Even so, more than half (55.6%) of the participants experienced moderate levels of ambivalence. Comparisons between the three childless groups revealed that as choice increased participants were more likely to give a higher rating to the positive aspects of their lives, a lower rating to the negative ones, and experience lower levels of ambivalence. However, Denied Choice women generally did not find childlessness a devastating experience. / Therefore, amongst the mid-aged participants in this study the experience of childlessness was complex and diverse, varying with the level of choice women had in never giving birth. Childlessness was not, however, a burdensome or detrimental life outcome for these women.

Childlessness in the Czech Republic, Germany, and Austria Abstract The main goal of this thesis is to examine and compare the state of childlessness in the Czech Republic, the Federal Republic of Germany and Austria. In Germany particularly, childlessness has become a phenomenon and a society-wide issue. Austria, where childlessness is at a high level in comparison with other European countries is in a similar situation. Data analysis in this thesis showed that childlessness is more widespread in the former West Germany and Austria than in the Czech Republic and former East Germany. This difference is caused, among other things, by the pro-natal policies adopted in the former communist countries which led to a temporary increase in total fertility rate. Further, the thesis deals with the perception of parenthood and childlessness in society on the basis of the European Values Study 2008 international survey and with the relationship between the ideal and preferred number of children on the basis of the Eurobarometer 2006 international survey. The results of the surveys show that childlessness cannot be considered as a new kind of lifestyle, and that the preferred family form still involves two children. Considerable part of the study focuses on the causes and consequences of childlessness and its possible...

The area of childlessness, particulary voluntary childlessness, has been virtually ignored by most researchers. Pohlman claims to have been unable to find research which supports the popular idea that intentionally childless husbands and wives tend to be emotionally disturbed. However, he does note that he was able to find numerous statements from medical and social science publications which in various ways imply that the deliberately childless are usually maladjusted.

We study the aggregate gap between intended and actual fertility in 19 European countries and the US based on a cohort approach. This complements prior research that had mainly used a period approach. We compare the mean intended number of children among young women aged 20 to 24 (born in the early 1970s), meas ured during the 1990s in the Fertility and Family Surveys, with data on completed fertility in the same cohorts around age 40. In a similar manner, we compare the share who state that they do not want a child with actual cohort childlessness. Our exploration is informed by the cognitive-social model of fertility intentions devel- oped by Bachrach and Morgan (Popul Dev Rev 39(3):459-485, 2013). In all coun- tries, women eventually had, on average, fewer children than the earlier expectations in their birth cohort, and more often than intended, they remained childless. The results reveal distinct regional patterns, which are most apparent for childlessness. The gap between intended and actual childlessness is widest in the Southern Euro- pean and the German-speaking countries and smallest in the Central and Eastern European countries. Additionally, we analyze the aggregate intentions-fertility gap among women with different levels of education. The gap is largest among highly educated women in most countries studied and the educational gradient varies by region, most distinctively for childlessness. Differences between countries suggest that contextual factors-norms about parenthood, work-family policies, unemployment-shape women's fertility goals, total family size, and the gap between them.

Infertile and childless women think about, live with, and defend their status as mothers and as nonmothers, arguably more so than other women for whom motherhood comes about accidentally or relatively easily in accordance with a plan. Within this group of infertile and childless women are those who are otherwise socially marginalized by factors like class, race, age, marital status, and sexual identity. This dissertation asks about the ways in which marginalized infertile and childless women in America make sense of their situations given the climate of “stratified reproduction” in which the motherhood mandate excludes them or applies to them only obliquely. While other researchers focus on inequalities in access to treatment to explain why many marginalized women eschew medically assisted reproduction and adoption, I emphasize women’s resistance to these attempts at normalization. I take a critical, poststructural, feminist stance within a constructivist analytical framework to suggest that the medicalization, commodification, and bureaucratization of the most available alternative paths to motherhood create the role of the “infertile woman”—i.e., the white, middle class, heternormative, married, “desperate and damaged” cum savvy consumer. By contrast, the women who participated in this study are better described as the “ambivalent childless” (i.e., neither voluntary nor involuntary) and the “pragmatic infertile.” These women experience infertility and childlessness—two interrelated, potentially stigmatizing “roles”—in ways that belie this stereotype, reject the associated stigma in favor of an abiding, dynamic ambivalence, and re-assert themselves as fulfilled women in spite of their presumed deviance.

Bakgrund: I Sverige är 7-8 % av kvinnorna ofrivilligt barnlösa. Orsakerna till infertilitet kan vara hormonrubbningar, skador på äggledarna, kvinnor senarelägger familjebildningen och livsstilsfaktorer. Infertilitet medför många olika känslomässiga reaktioner. Syfte: Syftet med denna litteraturstudie var att belysa kvinnors upplevelser av ofrivillig barnlöshet. Metod: Artikelsökningen genomfördes i EBSCO som innehåller omvårdnadsinriktade databaser. I litteraturstudien ingick det 12 kvalitativa studier som har analyserats och sammanställts med inspiration av Fribergs analysmetod. Resultat: Resultatet delades in i följande fem kategorier: "Känslomässiga upplevelser", "upplevelsen av förändrad kvinnlighet", "upplevelsen av utanförskap", "upplevelsen av meningen med livet" och "upplevelsen av ett livslångt fenomen". Konklusion: Litteraturstudiens resultat visar att kvinnans upplevelse av ofrivillig barnlöshet är ett komplext fenomen. Kvinnor behöver psykosocialt stöd för att kunna hantera och bearbeta sin situation på bästa sätt. Som sjuksköterskan är det viktigt att ha ett holistiskt synsätt. Mer forskning behövs inom området.

The aim of this study is to problematize social support at online communities for unwanted childlessness by analyzing the discourses of the unwantedly childless and unwanted childlessness at a Swedish online community. This with the purpose of relating online social support to the societal norm for having children. The study is conducted by doing a Critical Discourse Analysis from a Relational- Cultural and Intersectional perspective on a Swedish online community sub-forum called “LESS på ofrivillig barnlöshet? Skriv av dig!” The results show that the social support becomes a paradox. The unwantedly childless themselves view the social support as fostering connection and belonging. In the meantime the social support is reinforcing the societal norm for having children by creating a collective identity of hope and an individual identity of emotional and physical failure. The norm for having children is further reinforced by the relations outside the online community leading to feelings of social exclusion.