Psychological adjustment to infertility: A unique comparison of two groups of infertile women, mothers and women childless by choice

Abstract

Women with explained and unexplained infertility currently on an IVF-ET program were compared to mothers and married women who were childless by choice on various measures of psychological and marital adjustment. Women did not differ in reported levels of self-esteem, psychological affect or ratings of the self and life adjustment. There was no evidence that infertile women were less happy with life. Infertile women had higher expectations about being loved and needed, about pursuing their self-interests and being proud. Although their lives are free of the demands of children, infertile women perceived their lives to be like mothers, in that both groups expected less freedom and independence compared to voluntarily childless women. Infertile women also described themselves in more traditional terms, seeing themselves in terms of traditional feminine attributes much more than did other women. Among infertile women a strong need to be loved, and an exaggerated sense of femininity may reflect a self-image among them in which emotionally and socially they perceive themselves as being potentially good mothers. Finally, several questions and scales measuring the quality of women's marriages revealed that both groups of infertile women generally disagreed that infertility had negatively affected their marriages. Indeed, on a scale of marital quality, infertile women had better marriages than mothers.