Chapter 14 - Childfreedom

Summary

Inconsolable distress is neither a universal nor inevitable response to inability to have biological children. In Chapter 14, the author criticizes research with clinic samples that has produced a problem-saturated account of childlessness that obscures a wide range of alternative responses. The author examines the influence of pronatalist ideology on people who are impacted by infertility including many people with sex variations. Away from the treatment context, psychological input can guide individuals, couples and groups to explore personal meaning of nonparenthood. It can facilitate service users to grieve for what is not possible, challenge feelings of deviance and shame, reengage with a range of life goals and, perhaps most important of all, recast adult identities. Through the practice vignette built around a heterosexual couple, one of whom has a late diagnosis of Klinefelter syndrome, the author teases out the difficulties of working psychologically in a treatment context, where complex existential issues and relational dynamics are compressed into the frame of pressurized treatment decisions.