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Added References: 4, 5, 6, 12, 13
Statistics
- Infertility is estimated to affect 10 to 15 percent of the population.[1]
- One out of every five couples are faced with involuntary childlessness.[1]
- Infertility has increased by 4 percent since the 1980s, mostly from problems with fecundity due to an increase in age. [2]
- In several developed countries a growing proportion of women and their partners are not having children. Recent estimates of permanent childlessness for women in the United Kingdom and the United States of America of 20% and 22% respectively.[1] Estimates for 2000 suggested that 24% of Australian women currently in their reproductive years would never have children.[1]
- About 40 percent of the issues involved with infertility are due to the man, another 40 percent due to the woman, and 20 percent result from complications with both partners. [3]
- 70,000 babies are conceived by donor insemination in the United States every year.
- When the problem is entirely hormonal fertility drugs have a success rate from 50-70 percent.
- For women under 35 years of age, the success rate of in vitro fertilization treatment is 65-83 percent.
- The average amount paid to surrogate is usually $20,000 to $25,000.
- Childlessness in women between the ages of forty and forty-four doubled from 10 percent to 20 percent in the years 1976 to 2006 [4]
- Deduced from recent studies, voluntary childlessness is predominant in those that are college-educated, less religious, less traditional gender role perspectives, and those that are less conventional. [5]
- According to the Census Bureau's 1998 survey, the total normal of married women in the United States who are childless is 5.7 million. [6]
Possible Impact of involuntary childlessness
Personal
For most individuals, for most of history, childlessness has been regarded as a great personal tragedy, involving much emotional pain and grief, especially when it resulted from the inability to conceive or from the death of a child. Before conception was well-understood, childlessness was usually blamed on the woman and this in itself added to the high level of negative emotional and social effects of childlessness.
- Psychological
People trying to cope with involuntary childlessness may experience symptoms of distress that are similar to those experienced by bereaved people, such as health problems, anxiety and depression.[7]
Political
Specific instances of childlessness, especially in cases of royal succession, but more generally for people in positions of power or influence, may have enormous impacts on politics, culture and society. In many cases, a lack of a male child was also considered a type of childlessness, since male children were needed as heirs to property and titles. Examples of historical impacts of actual or potential childlessness include:
- Elizabeth I of England was childless, choosing not to marry in part to prevent political instability in the kingdom, which passed on her death from the House of Tudor to the House of Stuart.
- Henry VIII of England divorced his first wife Catherine of Aragon, to whom he had been married for more than 20 years, because she had not produced a male heir to the throne. This decision set in train a break between the English and the Roman churches that reverberated across Europe for centuries.
- Queen Anne had seventeen pregnancies but none of her children survived so the throne passed from the House of Stuart to the House of Hanover.
- Napoléon’s first wife, Joséphine de Beauharnais, did not bear him any children so he divorced her and married another in order to produce an heir.
- The lack of a male heir to the Chrysanthemum Throne in Japan brought the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis.[8][9]
Social
Socially, childlessness has also resulted in financial stress and sometimes ruin in societies which depend on their offspring to contribute economically and to support other members of the family or tribe. “In agricultural societies about 20 per cent of all couples would not have children because of problems for at least one of the partners. Worry about assuring the desired birth rate could become an important part of family life … even after a first child was born. … In agricultural societies up to half of all children born would die within two years … (Excess surviving children could among other things, be sent to childless families to provide labour there, reducing upkeep demands at home.) When a population disaster hit – like war or major disease – higher birth rates might briefly be feasible to fill out community ranks.”[10]
In the 20th and 21st centuries, when control over conception became reliable in some countries, childlessness is having an enormous impact on national planning and financial planning.[11]
Possible Stigma of Involuntary Childlessness
In a society that encourages and promotes parenthood, with its current social norms and culture, childlessness can be stigmatizing. The traditional idea that couples should reproduce and want to reproduce is still widespread in North America. [12]Childlessness is considered deviant behavior in marriage and this may lead to adverse affects on the relationship of the couple, as well as their individual identities when pertaining to the lack of children being involuntary. For persons that assume that becoming parents was a critical process of their adult family life, a "transition" as Rossi deems it must take place. This transition is from the anticipated parenthood to an unwanted status of nonparenthood. Such a transition may require the individual to readjust their perspective of self and/or relationship role with their significant other. [13]