“I’m missing out on it all”: the lived experience of involuntarily childless older men

Hadley, Robin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4254-7648 (2018) “I’m missing out on it all”: the lived experience of involuntarily childless older men. In: University of Cambridge Centre for Family Research Seminar Series, 15 February 2018, Centre for Family Research, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. (Unpublished)

Preview

Presentation Available under License In Copyright. Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

Invited presentation. The global trend of an increasingly ageing population and a declining fertility rate has been widely accepted. Moreover, as men’s mortality rates are predicted to soon equal women’s, the gender profile of the UK’s ageing population is predicted to change. Childless men are, compared to women, missing from gerontological, sociological, infertility, and psychological research. These fields have all mainly focussed on family and women, with the fertility intentions, history and experience of older men being overlooked. Involuntary childlessness may be seen as a complex bereavement formed by multiple losses with distress levels in both men and women in this population have been found to be as high those with grave medical conditions This presentation draws on all my research into childless men’s desire for fatherhood. I draw draw mainly on my auto/biographical doctoral qualitative study in to the life experience of older involuntarily childless men. The biographical, feminist, gerontological, and life course approaches framed the study. A thematic analysis was applied to the semi-structured interviews conducted with 14 men aged between 49 and 82 years. The analysis highlighted the complex intersections between involuntary childlessness and agency, biology, relationships, and socio-cultural structures. This study challenges the stereotype that the social, emotional and relational aspects of involuntary childlessness do not affect men. The men’s attitude to fatherhood changed with age and centred on the theme of the ‘social clock’ that revealed the synergy between an individual and societal morès surrounding parenthood. The participants’ narratives demonstrated the diverse elements that affected the men’s experience of involuntary childlessness: upbringing, economics, and timing of events, interpersonal skills, sexual orientation, partner selection, relationship formation and dissolution, bereavement, and the assumption of fertility. The importance of relationship quality was highlighted in the social networks of both those with and without partners. Grand fatherhood was referenced through four routes: Latent, Adopted, Surrogate, and Proxy. Awareness of ‘outsiderness’ and a fear of being viewed a paedophile were widely reported.