“I’m missing out and I think I have something to give”: experiences of older involuntarily childless men

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to extensively report the implications of the global trend of declining fertility rates and an increasingly ageing population. The experiences of childless men are mostly absent from gerontological, psychological, reproduction, and sociological, research. These disciplines have mainly focussed on family formation and practices, whilst the fertility intentions, history, and experience of men have been overlooked. Not fulfilling the dominant social status of parenthood provides a significant challenge to both individual and cultural identity. Distress levels in both infertile men and women have been recorded as high as those with grave medical conditions. Design/methodology/approach The aim of this paper is to provide some insight into the affect involuntarily childless has on the lives of older men. This auto/biographical qualitative study used a pluralistic framework drawn from the biographical, feminist, gerontological, and life course approaches. Data were gathered from in-depth semi-structured biographical interviews with 14 self-defined involuntary men aged between 49 and 82 years from across the UK. A broad thematic analysis highlighted the complex intersections between involuntary childlessness and agency, biology, relationships, and socio-cultural structures. Findings Diverse elements affected the men’s involuntary childlessness: upbringing, economics, timing of events, interpersonal skills, sexual orientation, partner selection, relationship formation and dissolution, bereavement, and the assumption of fertility. The importance of relationship quality was highlighted for all the men: with and without partners. Quality of life was affected by health, relationships, and social networks. Awareness of “outsiderness” and a fear of being viewed a paedophile were widely reported. Research limitations/implications This is a study based on a small self-selecting “fortuitous” sample. Consequently care should be taken in applying the findings to the wider population. Originality/value Health and social care policy, practice and research have tended to focus on family and women. The ageing childless are absent and excluded from policy, practice, and research. Recognition of those ageing without children or family is urgent given that it is predicted that there will be over two million childless people aged 65 and over by 2030 (approximately 25 per cent of the 65 and over population). The consequences for health and social care of individuals and organisations are catastrophic if this does not happen.

A wonderful experience or a frightening commitment? An exploration of men's reasons to (not) have children

“…Although there were some who could or would not motivate why they did (not) want children, a majority gave one or several reasons. The results show that there is variation in men's motivations to have children, and that the decision is often multi-layered; this confirms findings from previous studies on men's reproductive decision-making (Bergnéhr, 2008;Goldberg et al, 2012;Hadley, 2018;Lundqvist and Roman, 2003;Peterson and Jenni, 2003;Sørensen et al, 2016;Sylvest et al, 2018). The reasons to have children often reflected a dream of what procreation could give men (love, personal development), but also what men had to offer as fathers.…”

“…To summarize the existing literature on men's reasons to have children, achieving family unity is emerging as a powerful ideal, and there are high, if not miraculous, expectations of what the birth of a child can accomplish. Parenthood has been described, by older involuntarily childless men in the UK, as a an integral part of the lifecourse trajectory (Hadley, 2018). Men viewed parenthood as a central experience of human life, and longed for the unconditional love that comes with a child.…”

“…As highlighted by Overall and Caplan (2012), no reasons seem to be required to have children in contemporary Western cultures. The pronatal normative is deeply embedded into sociocultural structures (Hadley, 2018), and parenthood is constructed as an inevitable and passive decision among heterosexual couples (Lupton and Barclay, 1997;Morison, 2013). Childlessness, on the other hand, frequently becomes questioned, and people without children are assumed to be infertile, overly self-centred or expected to eventually change their minds (Overall and Caplan, 2012).…”

‘It's most of my life – going to the pub or the group’: the social networks of involuntarily childless older men

“…The common misrepresentation that men are unaffected and uninterested in reproduction are ‘false and reflect out-dated and unhelpful gender stereotypes’ (Fisher and Hammarberg, 2017: 1307). For men, the losses surrounding fatherhood include the potential father/grandfather–child relationship, the role of father/grandfather (Hadley and Hanley, 2011), access to social scripts, exclusion from the intimate parent–child–family bond (Earle and Letherby, 2003) and wider social relationships and community (Hadley, 2018 b ). The fluidity in relational dynamics, illustrated by the inclusion of non-familial members into the inner and closest categories, was not limited to partner networks but included circumstantial association.…”

“…Inhorn (2012) argues that the absence of men's procreative experience has led to a concomitant absence in both scholarship and policy. For example, statistics on the level of childlessness are ambiguous (Sobotka, 2017) because they are, almost exclusively, based on the collection of a mother's fertility history (Berrington, 2004) at the registration of a child's birth (Hadley, 2018 b ). A number of factors can be related to the lack of available data on men's fertility.…”