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Title Infertility in South African women: exploring narratives of self
Full text http://hdl.handle.net/10210/670
Date 2008
Author(s) Woodhead, Katrin Carol
Abstract This study undertook to explore the narratives of five South African women's experience with infertility. Two women are black; two women are white and one woman is Indian. All five participants are professional women who enjoy high socioeconomic status. No priority was given to whether infertility was a current or past experience although it subsequently became evident that all five women continue to live in hope for a baby. While one is not "doing anything to prevent it from happening" others remain active, to different extents, in the process of falling pregnant. The experience was explored to discover what impact the infertility had on their life specifically in the experience of themselves as women and secondly, in their interactions with others. What was evident that the experience of infertility did impact on their physical, psychological, emotional, social and spiritual being. However, emotional responses did not generally flow in a particular pattern or cycle as suggested by literature and in their individual processes participants varied in terms of the emotions experienced and their intensity. Generally, the participants did not experience themselves, their identity or femininity as being compromised nor did they show continuously heightened levels of anxiety or any other pathology. None of them experienced continued stigma and none of them feel they do not belong or are ostracised by their communities and other contexts. All participants seemed to enjoy an internal locus of control in moving them from difficult spaces to spaces that were more manageable in which their overall functioning and being in the world was not less than what it had been before. All participants had, or anticipated, making meaning from the experience and they felt that they had developed and continually grow as individuals. 8 Recommendations for education, communication and improved health care have been proposed. It is suggested that further research utilise a more random and greater sample of infertile women as well as longitudinal studies on the longterm experience of infertility. - Dr A. Novello
Subject(s) Female infertility in South africa
Language en
Type of publication Mini-Dissertation
Repository Johannesburg - University of Johannesburg
Added to C-A: 2014-05-08;14:18:57