Perspectives on infertility and a childless lifestyle

: its associations with intimacy in infertile couples

Abstract

Infertility is a condition that affects many couples around the world. Most studies on infertility focus on individual experience of infertility and fertility treatments related stress, rather than study the associations of the different dimensions of the couples’ experience when facing infertility related struggles and the gender differences. This study aims to characterise the following variables: rejection of a childless lifestyle, need for parenthood, acceptance of infertility and intimacy dimensions (sexual intimacy, emotional proximity, communication and social intimacy) and explore the correlation between those variables. This study’s participant sample consisted of a group of Portuguese infertile couples (N=70 participants) with primary infertility that were on the waiting list for fertility treatments or starting their first fertility treatment cycle. The exploratory data analysis was conducted using Descriptive and inferential Statistics, Spearman Correlation Analysis and other non-parametric tests. There results findings indicated that rejection of a childless lifestyle, high levels of need for parenthood and difficulty in accepting infertility was associated with adaptive levels of intimacy in all four dimensions (sexual intimacy, emotional proximity, communication and social intimacy). Additionally, there was not significant difference between male and female participants across the variables analysed (rejection of childless lifestyle, need for parenthood, acceptance of infertility, sexual intimacy, emotional proximity, communication and social intimacy). These findings offer a new perspective on infertility and infertile couples that suggests that sharing hardship and adversity related to infertility might strengthen intimacy.

Date of Award	10 Feb 2022
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Maria Raul Xavier (Supervisor)