Roczniki Socjologii Rodziny, 2003, tom 15

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Naznaczanie społeczne i samonaznaczanie osób niepłodnych
(Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2003) Przybył, Iwona
This paper explores community constructs of childlessness and how these constructs influence the experience of infertility. The author presents stigma concept within the deviance literature and then the social construction of reproduction as a moral issue and the most important part of marital life in country with strong pronatalist ideology. The main way of labeling is stereotyping infertile couples and to press childless people to become a parent regardless of any costs. The author analyzes infertility experienced by women and men as guilt, inadequacy, failure and pain treated as self-labeling. The last part of the paper presents the coping strategies including selective disclosure, avoidance of exposure of own hidden disability or create the “potential identity” of a biological parent in the struggle to reject possibly permanent infertile identity. Findings are presented from psychological and sociological literature and the results of the author’s study investigating marital roles in a sample of 140 childlessness married couples and from the study exploring attitudes toward infertility among 135 high educated respondents.