Abstract
Infertility and ART treatments represent stressful experiences for the couples, impacting on the overall psychological well-being of partners as well as on their couple adjustment. Several variables were analyzed as risk factors for infertility-related distress. The impact of these experiences has been well-documented in both women and men, reporting important gender differences. The aim of this study was to assess gender differences in individual and relational well-being in infertile couples. Gender differences for psychological and medical variables predicting psychological distress were investigated. Two hundred and thirty couples who entered an ART program at a public hospital in Milan were recruited. Each partner completed the following scales: ScreenIVF, Dyadic Adjustment Scale, and Experience in Close Relationship Questionnaire. Findings revealed several gender differences with women reporting higher levels of both anxiety and depressive symptoms, anxiety and avoidance attachment, and helplessness, but lower levels of acceptance than men. Differences emerged also in factors predicting well-being: poor support predicted anxiety in men and depression in women. Furthermore, individual well-being was predicted only for men by attachment anxiety and previous treatment. Finally, in the women subsample, couple’s adjustment was predicted by anxiety attachment, while in men predictors were helplessness and type of diagnosis. These results suggest the importance of implementing support interventions for couples which take into consideration the specific needs and fragility of each partner as well as focusing on enhancing a sense of partnership.
Highlights
Infertility defines a wide range of conditions that impact the possibility for a couple to have a baby through natural conception (Zegers-Hochschild et al, 2017)
The American National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) data report that about 7% of married women aged 15–44 years are infertile (Somnath, 2018)
We aimed to investigate gender differences in predictors of psychological distress; in particular, three psychological variables and two medical variables were analyzed for their association with psychological well-being of both men and women
Summary
Infertility defines a wide range of conditions that impact the possibility for a couple to have a baby through natural conception (Zegers-Hochschild et al, 2017). Total consensus on the percentage of infertile couple is lacking, it is estimated that globally 15% of couples in the fertile life stage – corresponding to almost 190 million people worldwide – have an infertility problem (Inhorn and Patrizio, 2015; Sun et al, 2019). In Italy, it is estimated that approximately 15% of couples are infertile (Fertility Europe and Eshre, 2017) The difference in these percentages can be explained by several factors, including age of partners when they try to conceive a baby naturally; fertility declines with age both in men, more gradually, and in women, with a significant decline of conception possibility after the age of 35 (Dunson et al, 2004; Pfeifer et al, 2017)
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