Male motives for parenting and infertility - a multimethodical enquiry

Infertility means psychological stress for both sexes if their wish to have a child remains unfulfilled. The way men cope with infertility is partly d ue to the psychodynamics of their motives for parenting. In the paper, thes e motives are analysed by a combination of statistical and qualitative meth ods (content analysis). 137 Patients addressing an andrological outpatient department were asked to fill in a questionnaire of their motives for paren ting. A cluster analysis yielded a four cluster solution, two of them being contrary to each other. One was interpreted as characterising,ambivalence towards the child", the other as,child-dependent or offspring-fixated". Thi s interpretation was validated by qualitative data drawn from content analy ses of psychodynamic interviews performed with a subgroup of 80 andrologica l patients. The results do have clinical relevance; they allow to better un derstand the psychological and psychodynamic sequelae of male infertility t hus providing some cues for specific therapeutic interventions. In addition , the study is of methodological interest, because of the combination of qu antitative and qualitative empirical methods.