Becoming fathers in a ‘child-friendlier’ Germany: male infertility, reproductive visibility, and the labor of paternity

ABSTRACT

This article shows how, in a Berlin clinic, men diagnosed with infertility achieve reproductive visibility as they strive to become fathers. I extend beyond the realm of fertility treatments and conception to make the connection between male infertility and temporally broader experiences of fathering in Berlin. I argue that being named the Verursacher (cause of infertility) opened a route for men to articulate their reproductive desires and perspectives. By (re)constructing the infertile male body as a caring body that foregrounded embodied, emotional and/or imaginative relatedness, men strove to become fathers. This labor of paternity is simultaneously embedded in the broader context of in/visibility of (childless) men as reproductive citizens in a climate of conspicuous reproduction where (father-friendly) policy reforms encourage men to participate in child-care. I argue that male infertility and labor of paternity in the clinic serve as a lens through which we gain insight into demographic anxieties and men’s role in social reproduction. Thus, pronatalist policies and progressive parenting ironically emerge in conjunction with each other.

KEYWORDS:

• Assisted reproduction
• male infertility
• fatherhood
• Germany
• demographic ‘crisis’
• family policies

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editor of NORMA, my reviewers, and Dr Nurhak Polat and for critical comments during the writing of various drafts. My deepest gratitude to the men and women who spoke to me about their experiences of infertility and lives with and without children. Also, the doctors and clinic staff who opened their doors to me and introduced me to my interlocutors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on contributor

Meghana Joshi finished her PhD in Cultural Anthropology at Rutgers University in 2017. She has done research in Berlin, Germany on generational and gendered narratives of parenting and childlessness focusing on shifting meanings of biological and sociocultural reproduction at a time of demographic ‘crisis.’ Her research interests include masculinities, medical anthropology, conceptions of childhood, childlessness, and alternate forms of kinship and care. Currently, she is a Clinical Assistant Professor in Anthropology at the University of Buffalo. Her recent publication includes ‘Berlin’s Hypervisible Children: German Child-Unfriendliness amidst Demographic Anxieties,’ (2016) in Reimagining the Child: Conference Proceedings. J. Burton and K. Fredericks (Eds.).

Notes

1 ARTs or artificial reproductive technologies include in-vitro-fertilization (IVF) i.e. process of fertilization of the female egg and male sperm outside the human body. Following hormonal stimulation and extraction of mature eggs, sperm collected from the male partner through masturbation are used to fertilize the eggs in a laboratory. The developed embryo(s) are then placed back in the woman’s uterus after a couple of days of maturation. Intracytospalmic sperm injection (ICSI) involves a similar procedure except that a single sperm cell is drawn into a pipette and injected directly into the egg cytoplasm for fertilization. ICSI is used most effectively in cases of male infertility. Another procedure called TESE or testicular sperm extraction is highly recommended in cases of azoospermia (no sperm in the ejaculate) and is conducted under local/spinal anesthesia. Very small amounts of testicular tissue are surgically removed in order to extract viable sperm cells for an IVF procedure, often an ICSI.

2 Labor of paternity here refers to a consistent desire for, long-term focus on, and the physical, emotional and imaginative work directed at becoming a father. The narratives show how this labor is multifaceted and integrates several elements of men’s ideas and practices of paternity. These include embodiment of a yearning for a child, objectively expressed in physical pain that is interpreted as a manifestation of jealousy when someone else has a child. Physical pain is also a reflection of the quantity and quality of direct child-care fathers provide. Additionally, this labor is embodied in male bodies’ manipulation during fertility treatment. The physicality of infertility experience is intertwined with wishing for/dreaming about a not-yet-present child and providing emotional and social support to others’ who are on a quest for conception. All these forms integrate to reflect what I call the labor of paternity.

3 The term child-friendly/father-friendly refers to more recent reforms in family policy in Germany that have aimed to center the relationship between the father and child and assume its importance in formulating interventions such as parental leave or making decisions about child custody. These changes point to a general trend in EU that calls for men’s engagement in care work to achieve gender equality and reconcile child-care and paid work. More specific to Germany, these changes also reflect a concern with ‘catching up’ with other West-European nations in achieving gender equality. Amidst demographic anxieties and family policy shifts, reproduction I content, has taken on a ‘conspicuous’ form. Conspicuous here refers to discourse and practices that make reproduction explicit: for public contemplation and consumption. This is not only the visibility associated with physical presence, rather a hypervisibility that comes from growing prominence of men and reproduction in political and public consciousness. These ‘active fathers’ are especially conspicuous in Berlin where state and community-based initiatives involve men in daily child-care. The juxta-positioning or embeddedness of experiences of male infertility and the striving for fatherhood in this context of ‘conspicuous German reproduction’ illuminates the in/visibility of (childless) men as reproductive citizens as well as the simultaneous emergence of pronatalist policies and progressive parenting.

4 https://www.destatis.de/DE/ZahlenFakten/GesellschaftStaat/Bevoelkerung/Bevoelkerung.html.

5 bib-demografie.de see Keine Lust auf Kinder: Geburtenentwicklung in Deutschland, 2012.

6 Fertility specialists also expressed more sensitive and nuanced views and acknowledged how some of their patients struggled with infertility for many years. Yet, there were moments of frustration with older couples, or reflections on the demographic situation that often evoked these comments on the German culture of childlessness.

7 These discussions have shifted over time and since the end of my field work in Berlin in 2013. Managing the refugee or migrant ‘crisis,’ amidst political and public discontent and the rise of the nationalist, conservative, right-wing-populist, anti-immigrant AFD (Alternative for Germany) party in the German parliament have been a central element of these abovementioned demographic anxieties. Germany is in fact one of the most populous countries in West Europe and has also recorded a higher fertility than the previous decades since the influx of migrants. This debate/anxiety is not so much about numbers per se as much as it is about who is having children and who should have children in order to reproduce Germany. At the time of my research the question about why Germans do not have an interest in reproduction was palpable and the cohort of 30–50-year-old often felt addressed in these public discourses.

8 The federal government issues a report on specific family related themes based on scientific surveys every 5–6 years to discuss current and pressing demographic and population issues.

9 The IRB or Institutional Review Board is an administrative body (attached to educational institutions) that protects the rights of human research subjects who are recruited to participate in research such as the one I conducted.

10 All names and identifying characteristics have been changed.

11 Absence of viable sperm in the semen.

12 No matter what the cause of infertility, the woman’s body is always ‘treated’ and ‘prepared,’ through hormonal stimulation for the production of eggs, which are then extracted under anesthesia for fertilization using an invasive procedure. After an IVF procedure the embryo(s) is placed directly back into the uterus. Mark is referring to this when he says that even though his wife is healthy and capable of having biological children, she still has to undergo treatments.

13 I borrow quest for conception from Marcia Inhorn’s 1994 book title Quest for Conception: Gender, Infertility and Egyptian Medical Traditions.

14 I am the weak link or problem.

15 It is just a body!

16 Comparing management of donor information in Britain and Germany, Klotz (2013) shows how while differently regulated in the two countries, in both field sites parents tended toward disclosure (of alternate conception to child) not necessarily because they were invoking genetics as a basis of kinship but because disclosure signified openness, honesty, and likelihood of less conflict.

17 It is beyond the scope of this article to discuss how the increasing presence of refugees and rise in right-wing fundamentalism in Europe adds fuel to this fire: the ‘German man’ or the ‘German father’ refers specifically to a heterosexual, white middle-class man with a specific ethnic and national history. This reformulation then attempts to achieve two distinctions: this ‘new’ father is distinct from the absent post-war German father. He is also constructed as distinct from the recent refugee groups and other migrants who have been in Germany for many decades.

Additional information

Funding

This research was made possible through a grant from the German Academic Exchange Service, a Fellowship from the Humboldt University of Berlin, and Pre-Dissertation Research funding from Rutgers University.