“People have no conception of just how isolated someone who hasn't got kids in middle age is”: the experiences of older involuntarily childless men

Hadley, Robin ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4254-7648 (2014) “People have no conception of just how isolated someone who hasn't got kids in middle age is”: the experiences of older involuntarily childless men. In: Midlands Health Psychology Network 10th Annual Conference: Ten Years of MHPN: Looking Back and Moving Forward, 20 February 2014, The University of Northampton, UK. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

The global trend of a declining fertility rate and an increasingly ageing population has been extensively reported. 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. Infertility research has shown that failure to fulfil both the personal, and socially accepted, status of parenthood leads to a complex form of bereavement. The grief associated with the multiple losses, and distress levels of females and males in this population, have been found to equal those with serious medical conditions. This paper is an overview of a PhD of the life experiences of older involuntarily childless men. In-depth biographical interviews were conducted with 14 men, aged between 49 and 82, at different locations across the country. The thematic analysis showed the complex intersections between the men’s assumption of fertility and their experience of involuntary childlessness. The participant’s narratives showed a diverse range of routes to their childlessness from the affect of being diagnosed infertile to the response to tokophobia. The importance of relationship quality across the life course had significant affects on health behaviours as the men aged. The men’s attitude and experience of counselling following infertility treatment will be examined as will the relationship between individual and institutionalised hegemonic masculinity. The participant’s attitude to later-life was of expected decline in health and functionality and highlighted issues surrounding finitude.