Priorities for family building among patients and partners seeking treatment for infertility.
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Infertility treatment decisions require people to balance multiple priorities.
Within couples, partners must also negotiate priorities with one another. In this
study, we assessed the family-building priorities of couples prior to their first
consultations with a reproductive specialist. METHODS: Participants were couples who
had upcoming first consultations with a reproductive specialist (N = 59 couples (59
women; 59 men)). Prior to the consultation, couples separately completed the Family-Building
Priorities Tool, which tasked them with ranking from least to most important 10 factors
associated with family building. We describe the highest (top three) and lowest (bottom
three) priorities, the alignment of priorities within couples, and test for differences
in prioritization between men and women within couples (Wilcoxon signed rank test).
RESULTS: Maintaining a close and satisfying relationship with one's partner was ranked
as a high priority by majorities of men and women, and in 25% of couples, both partners
ranked this factor as their most important priority for family building. Majorities
of men and women also ranked building a family in a way that does not make infertility
obvious to others as a low priority, and in 27% of couples, both partners ranked this
factor as the least important priority for family building. There were also differences
within couples that involved either men or women ranking a particular goal more highly
than their partners. More women ranked two factors higher than did their partners:
1) that I become a parent one way or another (p = 0.015) and 2) that I have a child
in the next year or two (p < 0.001), whereas more men ranked 4 factors higher than
their partners: 1) that our child has [woman's] genes (p = 0.025), 2) that our child
has [man's] genes (p < 0.001), 3) that I maintain a close relationship with my partner
(p = 0.034), and 4) that I avoid side effects from treatment (p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS:
Clinicians who support patients in assessing available family-building paths should
be aware that: (1) patients balance multiple priorities as a part of, or beside, becoming
a parent; and (2) patients and their partners may not be aligned in their prioritization
of achieving parenthood. For infertility patients who are in relationships, clinicians
should encourage the active participation of both partners as well as frank discussions
about each partner's priorities for building their family.
Type
Journal articlePermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/14244Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1186/s12978-017-0311-8Publication Info
Duthie, Elizabeth A; Cooper, Alexandra; Davis, Joseph B; Sandlow, Jay; Schoyer, Katherine
D; Strawn, Estil; & Flynn, Kathryn E (2017). Priorities for family building among patients and partners seeking treatment for infertility.
Reprod Health, 14(1). pp. 52. 10.1186/s12978-017-0311-8. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/14244.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Alexandra Cooper
Manager, Program Assessment
Alexandra Cooper serves as Associate Director for Evaluation and Assessment within
the Purpose Project in the Kenan Institute for Ethics. She supports the Project in
making question of character, purpose and meaning signature features of the Duke community
by gathering evidence about the Project's programs and their effects and by working
with Project team members to examine and understand what that evidence shows us about
what the Project does and can accomplish.
Prior to joini
Kathryn Eve Flynn
Adjunct Professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences
Kathryn E. Flynn, PhD, is an adjunct assistant professor in psychiatry and behavioral
sciences at the Duke University School of Medicine. She works primarily at the Duke
Clinical Research Institute. Dr. Flynn was trained in sociology and population health
sciences at the University of Wisconsin, where she worked with Maureen Smith on the
development and fielding of new survey instruments to assess health care access and
utilization in the near elderly as part of the Wisconsin Longitu
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