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Overcoming (and Maintaining) Reproductive Difference: Similarities in the Gendered Experience of Infertility

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Abstract

The social construction of gender is based on the idea of difference, and nowhere is this difference more pronounced or essentialized than in the area of reproduction. Research reinforces such divergence, as men are seldom included in studies of reproduction, and when they are included, studies often highlight their differences from women’s experiences. While such differences do exist, it is important to have a more nuanced understanding of reproduction, including examining why there is such difference, as well as recognizing similarities. Thus, in centering rather than marginalizing men’s voices in reproduction, this study reveals the commonalities across reproductive experiences. Through 43 in-depth interviews with men and women who have experienced infertility, the findings reveal that infertility has both physical and emotional implications for men as it does for women. Ironically, men’s reconciliation with those parallels further silences their experience and perpetuates difference. Exposing such effects extends understandings of infertility, reproduction, and gender.

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Notes

  1. ICSI, or Intracytoplasmic Sperm Injection, was first used in the mid-1990s, compared to other procedures focused on women that began nearly 20 years earlier.

  2. Upon screening, I ensured that the involuntary childlessness was due to the inability to conceive or carry a child to term for at least 12 months, thereby meeting the biomedical definition of infertility.

  3. All names are pseudonyms.

  4. While the pronatalist culture of the U.S. still constructs motherhood as essential to women’s identities, it is important to note that there are variations within that importance among women (e.g., see McQuillan et al. 2008).

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to Karin Martin and the anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article.

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  1. University of Delaware, 325 Smith Hall, Newark, DE, 19716, USA

    Ann V. Bell

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Bell, A.V. Overcoming (and Maintaining) Reproductive Difference: Similarities in the Gendered Experience of Infertility. Qual Sociol 38, 439–458 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-015-9315-2

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