Attitudes, Norms, and Beliefs Related to Assisted Reproduction Technologies among Childless Women in a Pronatalist Society

Szalma, Ivett

doi:10.1007/978-3-658-35628-6

Cited by 6 publications

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“…Reasons are multifaceted. 9 Women's increased educational level and economic uncertainty (Mills -Blossfeld 2013, Lesthaege 2010, the introduction of contraception (England 2010), the lack of affordable housing (Mulder -Billari 2010), medical factors (Szalma 2021) all unambiguously had a strong postponement effect. The role of children in families also changed, and the decision to become a parent is now stronger depending on how childbirths influence the lifestyle and well-being of the parents (Liefbroer 2005).…”

Section: Timing Of Motherhoodmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The most common age for women faculty 12 to have children is between 38 and 40 years of age (Mason et al 2013, Jacobs -Winslow 2004. The ages at receiving PhD and tenure have been still increasing, and women delaying their motherhood till their late thirties can even face health risks and time-and money-consuming fertility treatments (Szalma 2021, Mountz 2016). Meanwhile, professional women are not always aware of health-related consequences (Hewlett et al 2008).…”

Section: Work-family Conflictmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the first place they all mentioned the health risks of late motherhood. They were also aware of the casuality and risk of artificial reproductive technologies (ART) as it is introduced by Szalma (2021). I want to have the baby before 35 anyway.…”

Section: After Phdmentioning

confidence: 99%

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PHD and Childbearing? - Work-life Balance of Female PHD Students in the Field of Engineering

Paksi¹

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- The goal of the present research was to explore the work-life balance (WLB) of young female engineers during their PhD studies. Obstacles to WLB in high-status occupations can be magnified in the male-dominated STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields, where women are significantly underrepresented. While women and different societal actors invest significant capitals into women’s education – and also an insufficient supply of high-skilled labour force –, women often are dissuaded from a career in science, particularly after obtaining PhD; not only in the USA and the EU member states but even in the more gender-equal Nordic countries. I propose in this dissertation that young women researchers in STEM fields face severe work-life balance-related obstacles even as early as their PhD education due to the intersection of their gender, age, parental status, nationality, and also the characteristics of their strongly male-dominated, knowledge-intensive occupation, particularly if it involves laboratory work with hazardous substances. - The research is embedded into a dual theoretical framework. While WLB theories help to understand the relationship of school, work and family life, the life course approach highlights how the critical intersection of individual and academic life courses affects WLB, especially the timing of childbearing. The research is based on a qualitative research design; 27 semi-structured interviews were conducted with female PhD students in engineering in Hungary. Two main research questions and three sub-questions were raised: 1) What dilemmas do female PhD engineering students face when trying to create a WLB? 2) Which strategies do female PhD engineering students (want to) apply to achieve WLB? --What main factors do female PhD engineering students identify that constrain and /or facilitate their WLB? -- How do studying and working in engineering influence the WLB of female PhD students? -- How do institutional and normative contexts shape the family plans of female PhD students in engineering, especially their timing of motherhood? - Results show that -- The vast majority of female PhD students in this sample were engaged in multiple roles: education, work, private and family life, which severely challenged their WLB. Their main concerns and dilemmas were when to integrate motherhood into an academic career and how to balance their life. -- PhD students were socialising in the greedy organisations of both the productivity-based neoliberal academia and the private sector. They carried heavy workloads and were further pressured by the knowledge intensity of engineering profession. Women, particularly mothers, were also solely responsible for caring and household tasks at home; therefore, they failed to follow the dominant male engineer career model – long working days without days off, even at the weekends –, which was associated with the image of the “ideal, good researcher” and a successful career. -- Interviewees frequently encountered time- and strain-based work-to-family conflicts: time-squeeze, tiredness, exhaustion, stress, strain, bad mood, insomnia and negative spillovers. They sought support from their families but lacked well-developed coping strategies. They rather used different practices to facilitate their WLB with greater or lesser success: adequate scheduling, segmentation of life domains, and communication of the boundaries between work and private life. Flexible working arrangements seemed to be a double-edged sword: it enhanced and hindered their WLB at the same time. -- The vast majority of the PhD students perceived different labour market-based uncertainties – extremely short fixed-term contracts, low income and gender-based discrimination, particularly that of mothers –, which resulted in an imbalance of work and family life. -- The inflexibility and health hazards of laboratory work particularly hindered the timing of childbearing during their academic career. -- Engineer women reported a bunch of negative experiences from their male-dominated learning and working environments that hindered their WLB and family plans: the masculine view of science, devaluation of their knowledge, unfair and humiliating treatment, isolation. Assimilation strategy was more often applied than those of humour and sensitisation. -- These women more than once delayed motherhood. Their most significant dilemma was based on the tension between the defining social norms, their biological clock and the perceived feasibility of their family plans. Women could not call any ideal period for childbearing in their profession; therefore, they named the period of dissertation writing the “least bad option”. - Research findings highlight the Hungarian case, nuance international research findings and offer intervention points to stakeholders. Results can enhance the WLB of young researchers and may contribute to the elimination of barriers to women’s professional advancement and to the increase of the proportion of women in STEM fields.

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Section: Timing Of Motherhoodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Work-family Conflictmentioning

confidence: 99%

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PHD and Childbearing? - Work-life Balance of Female PHD Students in the Field of Engineering

Paksi¹

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“…Blood relations and genetically related offspring are the most valued in pronatalist societies and attitude towards childlessness is diverse. Voluntary childlessness (or the childfree lifestyle) is shunned and punished through social and family policies (for detail see chapter 4 of the dissertation) (Szalma, 2021b). Involuntary childlessness has a more fragmented judgementi.e., in Hungary the government places high emphasis on supporting infertile couples seeking medically assisted reproductive solutions (first five, then from 2020 six IVF cycles are financedmaking it one of the most generous financial support), but continuously limits access, narrows the group of citizens who can participate in these treatments, and also aims to nationalize institutions, private fertility clinics.…”

Section: Pronatalismgendered Expectations Unequal Burdensmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the Hungarian social scientific community until recently, assisted reproduction was mainly looked at from a demographic, legal or psychological perspective (Cserepes et al, 2013;Kapitány and Spéder, 2019;Keglovics, 2015;Sándor, 2005). More recently there have been sociological projects investigating the public attitudes concerning assisted reproductive technologies, analysing large databases, using statistical analysis (Szalma, 2014;Szalma and Bitó, 2021), or qualitative methods (e.g., , Szalma, 2021a, 2021b. The lived experiences of patients utilizing the technologies were studied in-depth applying several methodologies, guided by multiple theoretical fields by Vicsek and research team, including the author of this doctoral dissertation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Narrated Experiences of Medically Assisted Reproduction in Hungary - Infertility from a Multimethod Perspective

Bauer¹

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The doctoral dissertation is focusing on the biographical disruptions and lived experiences of female patients using medically assisted reproductive technologies in Hungary. In general, the aim of the thesis research is to explore patients’ constructed narratives about infertility and reproduction technologies used in treatment. Further goal is to understand the role of patients’ accumulated knowledge in the form of ‘lay expertise’ has affected interactions with medical professionals and their perceptions of the doctor-patient relationship. Moreover, the inquiry aspired to uncover how the gendered reproductive responsibility of pronatalist Hungary influence participating women’s actualities and experiences. Four research questions were formulated for the investigation, the main findings detailed in the last section of the abstract. The thesis draws on the combination of four distinct theoretical fields. The four approaches the thesis gains inspiration from are the following: (1) science and technology studies (STS) to explore the connection between lay public and complex technologies; (2) medical sociology to trace what factors contribute to the new type of doctor-patient relationship apparent today; (3) gender role theory to engage the fact of gendered reproductive responsibility and genetic burden fuelled by the pronatalist rhetoric and social policy of Hungary; (4) the unique position and effect of online science communication on the aforementioned phenomena and mechanisms. To achieve its goals the exploratory thesis research utilizes a multimethod qualitative approach, relying on both active and passive research methodologies. The methodological design of the project connects online and offline data, its main prong being a netnography of online traces about infertility and medically assisted reproduction appearing in Hungarian public online discussion communities. The other, active strand of inquiry involved 18 qualitative patient, and 12 semi-structured expert interviews, which were used as complementary methodology. Rigorous qualitative thematic analysis guided by the six-step framework and guidelines presented by Braun and Clarke (2006) was applied to all data types. The main findings of the thesis research can be summarized as follows: • • Online conversation can be structured along the lines of four distinct patient pathways, or thirteen main identified themes about infertility and medically assisted reproduction. • • Participants of these online discussion communities are female, and group cohesion can be observed in both the topics and a special patient language used, which aims to soften textbook medical terminology. • Both in the online trace data and the qualitative interviews evidence was found that the patients were not only knowledgeable but have accumulated knowledge that fit the definition of lay expertise. • • The lay expert patients often utilized their knowledge to confront medical professionals, lay expert peers were asked to validate professional diagnoses and recommendations. • • The tensions observed in the doctor-patient relationship can partly be attributed to this accumulation of lay, contextual expertise, but also to the dysfunctions experienced in the public and private branches of the Hungarian health care system. • • Limited trust towards medical professionals was also observed. Patients attributed this declining trust both to the perceived lack of expertise of the professionals and from a behavioural focus, their perceived bad intentions. This observed decline in authority provides further evidence of the shift in the dyad’s interactional change, and orientation towards a form that can be grasped by modern doctor-patient relationship models and not the traditional Parsonian functionalist role-based modelling. • • Women assume most of the genetic responsibility during medically assisted reproduction. Underlying this is partially ideological, embedded in the pronatalist and traditionalist Hungarian society, and partially practical with women having more access to the information flow from professionals and the fertility institutions. • • Contradicting international research findings, while male partners proved to be supportive during the treatment process, they did not take on the role of information seekers but appeared to stay more passive.

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Risk, Reward, and Resistance: Navigating Work and Family under Hungary’s New Pronatalism

Glass

Fodor²

2022

Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State &Amp; Society

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New pronatalist regimes rely on market incentives to increase childbearing and encourage full employment. Few countries have instituted a more extreme version of new pronatalism than Hungary. The current study analyzes how professional women navigate uncertainty and risk under Hungary’s pronatalist regime. Our analysis of twenty-one in-depth interviews with middle-class professional women reveals inherent tensions and contradictions. Respondents perceived two competing imperatives: seek financial security in a highly unstable labor market and privately absorb care burdens associated with larger families. Respondents weighed the potential rewards of accessing various pronatalist benefits against the costs of reproduction in a policy context characterized by risk and uncertainty. Respondents were highly selective regarding which benefits they accessed and which they avoided. Our analysis contributes to research and theory on the substantive impact of formal welfare and work policies, including the ways actors interpret and engage policies in order to limit risk and uncertainty.

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Attitudes, Norms, and Beliefs Related to Assisted Reproduction Technologies among Childless Women in a Pronatalist Society

Cited by 6 publications

References 0 publications

PHD and Childbearing? - Work-life Balance of Female PHD Students in the Field of Engineering

PHD and Childbearing? - Work-life Balance of Female PHD Students in the Field of Engineering

Narrated Experiences of Medically Assisted Reproduction in Hungary - Infertility from a Multimethod Perspective

Risk, Reward, and Resistance: Navigating Work and Family under Hungary’s New Pronatalism

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