Men’s Use of Metaphors to Make Sense of Their Spouse’s Miscarriage: Expanding the Communicated Sense-Making Model

ABSTRACT

With approximately 20 % of pregnancies ending in loss, miscarriage is a relatively common and stressful occurrence. Because romantic partners’ coping efforts are intimately connected, the way one partner copes with the other’s miscarriage has important implications for individual and relational well-being. Grounded in the communicated sense-making (CSM) model, the current study investigated how cis-gender men in heterosexual marriages (n = 45) communicatively constructed the meaning of their wife’s miscarriage through metaphors. Analysis of interview data revealed two supra-themes—metaphors of miscarriage and metaphors of men’s role as a husband. Metaphors of lost gift, cataclysm, death of a loved one, emptiness, and chaotic movement animated husbands’ CSM about their wife’s miscarriage. Men drew upon discourses of masculinity to make sense of their role as a husband in the miscarriage process as a rock, guard, repair man, and secondary character. We explore these findings in light of the master narrative of birth and propose an expansion of the CSM model to include metaphors as a key CSM device.

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank all those who shared their miscarriage experiences, and those who contributed to participant recruitment, especially Dr. Judy Stern with the Infertility Family Research Registry at Dartmouth College.

Notes

1. Although miscarriage and infertility—or “a disease of the reproductive system defined by the failure to achieve a clinical pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular unprotected sexual intercourse” (World Health Organization, 2009)—are not synonyms, they have commonalities. Two or more consecutive miscarriages constitute infertility and those who have had fertility treatment have a higher chance of miscarriage (Miscarriage Association, 2018). Both of these women’s reproductive health issues are fraught with grief and a lack of control, rendering the research on infertility and coping useful in understanding some of the sense-making processes occurring after a miscarriage.

2. We later refined our definition of miscarriage based on APA (2017) as “an unexpected loss of pregnancy prior to 20 weeks after the last menstrual cycle.” Fortunately, all participants fell under this definition of miscarriage.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by Creighton University’s Dr. George F. Haddix President’s Faculty Research Fund.