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Threat of biographical disruption: the gendered construction and experience of infertility following cancer for women and men
BACKGROUND: Infertility is a major concern for people with cancer and their partners. There have been calls for further research on the gendered nature of psychosocial, emotional and identity concomitants of fertility post-cancer across women and men. METHOD: The gendered construction and experience...
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5836444/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29506492 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12885-018-4172-5 |
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author | Ussher, Jane M. Perz, Janette |
author_facet | Ussher, Jane M. Perz, Janette |
author_sort | Ussher, Jane M. |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Infertility is a major concern for people with cancer and their partners. There have been calls for further research on the gendered nature of psychosocial, emotional and identity concomitants of fertility post-cancer across women and men. METHOD: The gendered construction and experience of infertility following cancer was examined through a survey of 693 women and 185 men, and in-depth one-to-one interviews with a subsample of survey respondents, 61 women and 17 men, purposively selected across cancer types and age groups. Thematic decomposition was used to examine the open ended survey responses and interviews. The chi square test for independence was used to test for group differences between women and men on closed survey items. RESULTS: In the thematic decomposition, infertility was identified as providing a ‘Threat of Biographical Disruption’ which impacted on life course and identity, for both women and men. Subthemes identified were: ‘Parenthood as central to adulthood’; ‘Infertility as a threat to gender identity’; ‘ Unknown fertility status and delayed parenthood’; ‘Feelings of loss and grief’; ‘Absence of understanding and support’; ‘Benefit finding and renegotiation of identity’. In the closed survey items, the majority of women and men agreed that they had always ‘wanted to be a parent’ and that ‘parenthood was a more important life goal than a satisfying career’. ‘It is hard to feel like a true adult until you have a child’ and impact upon ‘my feelings about myself as a man or a woman’ was reported by both women and men, with significantly more women reporting ‘I feel empty because of fertility issues’. Many participants agreed they ‘could visualise a happy life without a child’ and there is ‘freedom without children’. Significantly more men than women reported that they had not discussed fertility with a health care professional. CONCLUSION: The fear of infertility following cancer, or knowledge of compromised fertility, can have negative effects on identity and psychological wellbeing for both women and men, serving to create biographical disruption. Support from family, partners and health care professionals can facilitate renegotiation of identity and coping. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5836444 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-58364442018-03-07 Threat of biographical disruption: the gendered construction and experience of infertility following cancer for women and men Ussher, Jane M. Perz, Janette BMC Cancer Research Article BACKGROUND: Infertility is a major concern for people with cancer and their partners. There have been calls for further research on the gendered nature of psychosocial, emotional and identity concomitants of fertility post-cancer across women and men. METHOD: The gendered construction and experience of infertility following cancer was examined through a survey of 693 women and 185 men, and in-depth one-to-one interviews with a subsample of survey respondents, 61 women and 17 men, purposively selected across cancer types and age groups. Thematic decomposition was used to examine the open ended survey responses and interviews. The chi square test for independence was used to test for group differences between women and men on closed survey items. RESULTS: In the thematic decomposition, infertility was identified as providing a ‘Threat of Biographical Disruption’ which impacted on life course and identity, for both women and men. Subthemes identified were: ‘Parenthood as central to adulthood’; ‘Infertility as a threat to gender identity’; ‘ Unknown fertility status and delayed parenthood’; ‘Feelings of loss and grief’; ‘Absence of understanding and support’; ‘Benefit finding and renegotiation of identity’. In the closed survey items, the majority of women and men agreed that they had always ‘wanted to be a parent’ and that ‘parenthood was a more important life goal than a satisfying career’. ‘It is hard to feel like a true adult until you have a child’ and impact upon ‘my feelings about myself as a man or a woman’ was reported by both women and men, with significantly more women reporting ‘I feel empty because of fertility issues’. Many participants agreed they ‘could visualise a happy life without a child’ and there is ‘freedom without children’. Significantly more men than women reported that they had not discussed fertility with a health care professional. CONCLUSION: The fear of infertility following cancer, or knowledge of compromised fertility, can have negative effects on identity and psychological wellbeing for both women and men, serving to create biographical disruption. Support from family, partners and health care professionals can facilitate renegotiation of identity and coping. BioMed Central 2018-03-05 /pmc/articles/PMC5836444/ /pubmed/29506492 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12885-018-4172-5 Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Ussher, Jane M. Perz, Janette Threat of biographical disruption: the gendered construction and experience of infertility following cancer for women and men |
title | Threat of biographical disruption: the gendered construction and experience of infertility following cancer for women and men |
title_full | Threat of biographical disruption: the gendered construction and experience of infertility following cancer for women and men |
title_fullStr | Threat of biographical disruption: the gendered construction and experience of infertility following cancer for women and men |
title_full_unstemmed | Threat of biographical disruption: the gendered construction and experience of infertility following cancer for women and men |
title_short | Threat of biographical disruption: the gendered construction and experience of infertility following cancer for women and men |
title_sort | threat of biographical disruption: the gendered construction and experience of infertility following cancer for women and men |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5836444/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29506492 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12885-018-4172-5 |
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