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Couples undergoing infertility treatment in the Czech Republic: Broad range of possibilities in a traditional milieu

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Abstract

Infertility is a defining experience in a person's individual biography. It disrupts one's assumptions and expectations, especially the assumption of one's fertility and control over the reproductive powers of one's body. This article focuses on the couple's experience with infertility. Its goal is to show how couples handle the problem and which roles are taken when confronted with infertility, within a specific social context. The study is dividend into three parts: in the begining we sum up how partners are affected by constraints lifting access to the methods of assisted reproduction in the Czech Republic and how they react to these constraints. Secondly we describe the roles of men and women in resolving infertility. And finally, we focus on partner negotiations regarding possible solutions for resolving infertility and how they approach two main solutions in infertility – adoption and assisted reproduction. The analysis is based on data from more than 30 qualitative in-depth interviews with men and women.

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Notes

  1.  1 The study was supported by the research intention Reproduction and Integration of Society. Written for the Ministry of Schooling and Research (MSM0021622408).

  2.  2 ‘A person must have children for his life to be fulfilled’ was agreed with by 91.5 per cent of women and 81.2 per cent of men. Only 8.5 per cent of women and 18.8 per cent of men agreed with the opposite statement: ‘Today's world offers so many diverse opportunities’ (Marriage, Work and Family, 2005).

  3.  3 The concept of chronic illness as a biographical turning point was introducted into sociology and revised by Bury (1982). Bury presented a theory of illness as a milestone event, in the words of Giddens (1992, p. 123), as a ‘critical situation’ that disrupts the natural assumptions and behavior, requires mobilization of social and material resources, and a revision of the individual's biography.

  4.  4 Many of the interviewees, both male and female, made use of other methods of treatment (hormonal, intra-uterine insemination and so on), which are regarded as a first stage of treatments leading to artificial fertilization.

  5.  5 Analysis of the response to the question ‘What possibilities would you consider in the event of a problem with fertility?’ shows that infertility is perceived primarily as a medical problem requiring high-technology treatment in the Czech Republic. The most frequent choice among both men and women is artificial fertilization, in the opinion of 80 per cent of respondents. However, both men and women also declared very positive attitudes toward adoption, which is the second most frequently considered solution to a hypothetical situation of infertility.

  6.  6 Ethno-methodological study in primary school conducted by Jarkovská (2009) showed that girls are socialized to the care about their reproductive capacities within official curriculum as well as informally.

  7.  7 Men and their partners in the surveys often spontaneously described the circumstances of taking the sperm sample, in particular their shock at the places to which they were sent: these were the sexology department of the local psychiatric clinic (the so-called ‘mansion’), or the office of a veterinary clinic, a janitor's closet, a room where they had to stand in line with other men in front of the reception desk for the key, a room with such a thin door that they could sense the presence of the entire staff of the adjacent office and so on. It is clear that clinics treating infertility are not set up to treat men. Similar experiences were described by respondents in the studies by Mason (1993) and Carmeli and Birenbaum-Carmeli (1994).

  8.  8 However, it is not the same everywhere; for example, among Afro-American families. Anthropologists have also described many non-western societies in which non-biological family relations are a common and unstigmatized type of family formation (Edgar, 2000).

  9.  9 All of the Czech media, including the popular press and TV stations in the past few years have paid a lot of attention to defects in male fertility (including such reports in which the report or journalist undergo examination of spermatoid). These news reports are often qualified as alarming or shocking and the decline in fertility of Czech men as rapid. Some Czech celebrities willingly talk about conceiving their children (or attempts to conceive) through assisted reproduction.

  10. De Singly (2001) defines partner relationships of late modernity through authenticity, freedom, protection against existentialist insecurity and confirming oneself and one's identity through another. The constructivist view of Berger and Kellner (Bergera and Kellner, 1974) emphasizes marital interaction as the basis for creating a world together and redefining reality in terms of a joint reality. For them, marriage in a society that completely differentiates the opaque and anonymous public arena from the intimate, familiar one is welcomed as the key tool for creating social reality.

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  1. Institute for Research on Social Reproduction and Integration, Jostova 10, Brno, 602 00, Czech Republic

    Lenka Slepičková

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Slepičková, L. Couples undergoing infertility treatment in the Czech Republic: Broad range of possibilities in a traditional milieu. Soc Theory Health 8, 151–174 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/sth.2009.25

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