TITLE:
Coping with Infertility: An Explorative Study of South African Women’s Experiences
AUTHORS:
Athena Pedro
KEYWORDS:
Infertility, Psychological and Emotional Trauma, Motherhood, Involuntary Childlessness, Coping
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology,
Vol.5 No.1,
January
23,
2015
ABSTRACT: The expectation of
getting married and having children is for many individuals a natural part of
adult life. Many young people anticipate the prospect of becoming biological
mothers and fathers. This expectation of parenthood emanates as individuals and
couples are socially groomed to aspire to this social norm. Therefore,
infertility can be a very traumatic and tormenting time for many men and women
who aspire to conform to these socio-cultural conventions of normative
parenthood and who believe that childbearing is central to their lives.
Infertility is medically defined as the inability to achieve a pregnancy after
a period of at least twelve months of regular sexual intercourse without
contraception. For both men and women infertility may present pervasive
feelings of incompleteness, a sense of failure and inadequacy. However,
infertile women tend to endure a myriad of feeling losses and high levels of
suffering and sorrow as a result of their inability to have children. This
study explored a sample of South Africa women’s experiences of coping with
infertility. Utilising a qualitative methodology, a diverse group of 21 married
women who were diagnosed with primary infertility were recruited. Semi-structured,
in-depth individual interviews were conducted and the data were analysed using
thematic analysis. The results of the study indicated that the women reported
emotional turmoil characterised by emotions such as disappointment and shock,
anger and frustration, a deep sense of sadness and then progressed to
experience a sense of acknowledgement that a problem existed. The
findings of this study suggest that severe psychological and emotional strain
accompany infertility. The coping strategies employed by these women in the
study included social withdrawal and women isolating themselves from social
events and social gatherings, avoiding pregnant women and women with children,
engaging in escapism strategies on both a psychological level and a physical level.
Employing an escapism strategy on a psychological level would involve
deliberately thinking about strategies to avoid thinking about infertility,
pregnancy or babies. Escapism on the physical level would include engaging in
activities like shopping, working longer hours, sleeping more than usual,
engaging in activities that would occupy an individual to the extent that they
cannot think about anything else except the activities they are currently
engaged in.