Male Infertility Is Hush Hush Topic Among Couples

Infertility

The social network of infertility: Study examines couples’ privacy preferences Eurekalert.org

Researcher Keli Ryan Steuber is eager to understand why couples who are having trouble getting pregnant adjust how much information they share, based on whether the wife or husband is having reproductive difficulties.

Steuber interviewed 50 couples in depth about the privacy rules that govern discussions with friends and family about the issue. Steuber discovered much greater concern to protect the facts of male infertility than female among these couples.

“It aligns with the idea that couples do more work to maintain the husband’s public persona,” said Steuber, who coauthored two recent papers on the topic with Penn State’s Denise Haunani Soloman.

“For women, it may be a response to our pronatalist culture. There’s an expectation that women want children, and sometimes those who are voluntarily childless are labeled as selfish or too career-driven. We wonder if that stigma overrides the stigma of infertility, to the point that women and their husbands feel compelled to clarify: ‘We’re not choosing to not have children. We can’t have children.’”