I was recently told that infertility was not an
illness. In the speaker’s mind,
infertility therefore did not merit emotional support in the same way as if the
person was suffering from an illness.
This gave pause for thought. I hadn’t actually thought about it in those
terms. Admittedly, it is not like having
a life-threatening condition such as cancer.
Without a doubt, however, it is a medical condition, and one which can
have far-reaching consequences on the person suffering from it.
What analogies could you use to express what
infertility feels like? Could you say
that it is like having a tumor on your arm which you don’t know if can be
controlled with treatments, or if they will have to cut off your arm? I was told that this could be a bit
melodramatic. But I don’t think it is,
as emotionally it evokes how a person suffering from infertility can feel - as
if a part of them could potentially always be missing. There is a sense of grief. Infertility can also lead in some cases to
mental illness – this is a well known fact from time immemorial.
If people are suffering, shouldn’t we be
understanding and sympathetic? If the
up-and-coming athlete suddenly has a fatal injury that means he can’t run in
the Olympics, we would feel for that person and not tell them to ‘just get over
it’. While we can’t all have the
ambition of running in the Olympics, it is very natural for the majority of us
to have the ambition of having a family of our own one day. Therefore, being potentially denied something
which is taken as one of the natural and defining events in life, will affect a
person to their core.
A dismissive reaction to infertility, however,
can be very typical of many people in society.
Religious arguments are
sometimes put forward. Religious thinking such as the Catholic
Church sees any form of intervention, be it even for the creation of life, as a
sin, as they view infertility as a sign from God that the person should look to
an alternative in their lives.
Political and financial
considerations can influence a person’s thinking on the topic: In the United Kingdom where there is a National Health Service (‘NHS’)
(there is a monthly deduction from salaries to contribute to the national healthcare
pot), there have been many objections along similar lines to those in the USA
saying that insurance companies should not cover fertility treatments because
it is not an illness. People react negatively because they do not want to see
their monies being spent against fertility treatments when they would rather
see it spent against saving lives which they consider more relevant to
them. In economic terms what is the
opportunity cost of spending on infertility?
This is a very subjective evaluation.
There is a general lack of
awareness of infertility as an issue: A large amount of the reaction that the man
in the street has to infertility comes from the fact that it is not something
that people talk about openly. Therefore
the man in the street may not actually know what it actually feels like. Or be aware of how common it is. One in eight people in the USA is dealing
with infertility. Infertility comes in
many forms – PCOS, endometriosis, advancing age, low sperm count, sperm
antibodies, miscarriages etc. These are
all debilitating to a couple trying to start a family, and sadly conditions
that they generally only learn about when they join the infertility world, and
not before. So the person who has never
been affected by fertility issues, or known someone affected by it, is
definitely not going to know about it.
Even if the man in the street knows someone with
fertility issues, it is a difficult topic to grapple with emotionally, and it
is easier to turn the other cheek or to think of something else. Although it is time to change and bring
discussing fertility issues out of the closet.
Human nature cannot be
under-estimated: It is human nature for people to make quick
judgments on a topic without questioning further as to whether they have all
the information, considered all the angles and the legitimacy of the
sources. This is even more the case in
today’s world which is very much driven by people focusing on the headline and
punch-line in a fast paced media environment.
A good example of this is when you read the
online comments section on newspaper articles.
You will see comments telling people going through infertility treatment
to stop being selfish and to just adopt one of the needy children in the
world. What people, however, do not realize
is what struggles those people have gone through already and what the entire
adoption process entails – it is not easy.
The numbers of children available for local adoption, happily, are far
less than they used to be. International
adoption can be an expensive process.
The adoption process is long and intrusive. In some cases you are required to maintain
contact with the birth relatives (it can be direct or indirect contact). These are all things which the individuals
have to come to terms with. Until you
walk in another man’s shoes, it is easy to make off the cuff comments.
What would these people say if you told them that
instead of having a second or third child, they should adopt and play back
their own arguments to them – feed an existing needy or hungry child as opposed
to bring another into the world? From an environmental footprint perspective it
is said that families should seek to have less children. May be they should
have had one less child or even have elected to have no biological children.
It is a different world today to before: My mother recently told me that she had a
conversation with my aunt along the lines of ‘what is wrong with the
world? Why is there so much more of this
today than before?’ This was a very
interesting comment. For one, people
probably didn’t go to the doctor in those days for such things and just got on
with life and accepted their fate as there was nothing to be done. So it was not considered something relevant
to discuss, or was swept under the carpet.
If we could go back in time with the knowledge we have today I think we
would be surprised, for example, at the level of miscarriages occurring.
In today’s world it is a fact that your
son or daughter is likely to have children later in life than before. The delayed timing of the child rearing years
isn’t necessarily out of choice.
In today’s world it can take many years to meet
Mr. or Mrs. Right.
We have created a society where many people spend
much of their young lives in secondary and tertiary education in order to gain
access to an average to decent job. In
years gone by, often that same level job would not have required today’s level
of advance study. This, therefore,
involves personal debt and more years before young people are able to afford a
home for a family.
The cost of housing is expensive and takes a far
greater percentage of a person’s salary than it used to, so it can take people
many more years to get on the property ladder and be able to put a roof to put
over their children’s heads, as they feel responsible parents should do.
Parents today often want to live their own lives
once their children are grown up. This
means that even if they can, they may be less likely to offer to help their
children financially or with childcare. Children know they need to find a way
to pay their way on their own, which translates into a delay in child-rearing
years. There are those parents, of
course, who would love to be able to help their children but cannot do so
financially, or due to poor health. And
even if parents are willing to help with childcare, they may live far away from
their children because their children have had to move to where the work
was.
Take even only one of these factors, and you have
the lives of many young adults today delaying when they start to try for a
family, not out of choice but because it has taken them longer to find their
‘mate’ and build their ‘nest’. And
consequently these couples end up with an increased risk of infertility
issues. Which can come as an even harder
blow to them when they see all their efforts into building that ‘nest’ could be
redundant in terms of having biological children.
We need to remind people that we have a collective
responsibility for the type of society that we live in today, and the
fertility challenges that those of child-bearing age experience today. It isn’t all of somebody else’s making, and
nothing to do with them. The person
suffering infertility could well be themselves or their son or daughter.
Fertility may not be an illness as we understand
the word ordinarily. It isn’t going to
kill you physically necessarily.
But it is, without doubt, a medical condition with a much higher level
of incidence today than it should have and one which people should be supportive
of. It can have a very serious and
permanent effect on people mentally, made worse by the complications of growing
up in today’s world. In November 2009,
the World Health Organization in Geneva defined infertility as a disease, which
is a great step in allowing people to validate the suffering that many are
experiencing and people are ignoring.
And people are starting to stand up and make a voice for their message
to be heard – two good recent examples are the What IF: A portrait of
infertility Video which won an award for promoting fertility awareness with a
call for grassroots advocacy and the SELF Magazine Article on Breaking the
Silence on Infertility. The man in the street should understand that the
increased incidence of infertility is a modern day phenomenon not to be
ignored. If people want to see less of
this ‘medical condition’, they need to stop being critical or unsupportive.
They need to start doing, taking part, speaking to their children and family
about this important topic and helping to change society so that we are more
supportive and encouraging to young couples.
They need to support research aimed at reducing infertility, and funding
to help those who need assistance.
Medical condition or not, without doubt, it is an
‘illness’ of our modern world. And it is
in our hands whether to change this or not in an enlightened way. Not anybody else’s.
Maria Portella is originally from the U.K. and now resides in the West Indies. Her special interest is promoting better education about fertility amongst working women. She reached out to The American Fertility Association because she wished to share her story.
Photo: Courtesy M. Portella
Who made this researches?
Posted by: Karmen | 08/22/2010 at 12:26 PM