Was thinking about this last week, but was abit wary of putting it up in case it's actually a very well studied area and I just happen to have overlooked it.
It concerns fertility: what kind of parameters structure a person's decision to find out if they are infertile or sterile prior to trying for a child? There's a fairly obvious disincentive for people on one level, as finding out they definiteivley cannot (or are even not likely to) have a child would place a burden on them to tell their partner(s) (subsequent or current), thus running the risk that they will be left single. Moreover, the timing of any such disclosure is also important: if you tell someone fairly early on that you've gone for a fertility test, that might scare the other person into deciding very quickly that their partner is serious about this relationship being a lifelong commitment.
I'd be interested in seeing if patriarchal cultures pressurise women quite early on in a relationship to go for a fertility test. I presume this would be the case for two reasons; less extramarital sex in a less morally relativist society, thus a reduced number of relationships in total per person, and a great pressure to produce children (preferably male, thus explaining the demand in India, for example, for sex-typing of unborn children to occur). But how the 'fertility test' pressure would happen in more secular cultures, particularly among educated partners, would be fascinating (at least I think so, anyway!)
4 comments:
There is some work in Antonia Lyons book "Health Psychology; A critical introduction" which may be relevant to the pressure aspect, in particular the chapter on "controlling the body", which talks about how the medical drive to test various biological aspects of women's bodies is in ways a patriarchal control strategy which objectifies and promotes worry, fear and blame and so on.
fertility knowledge is more important in cultures where marriage is irreversible and adoption is difficult/frowned upon.
I dont know about the controlling the body/partriarchy angle. Fertility testing applies to both women and men - i dont know the figures but i would be surprised if there was massive gender differences in infertility rates.
in western cultures where marriage is reversible, pre-marital sex is common and adoption is available (though difficult) i think infection screening is much more of an issue. Also, screening for genetically inhereted illnesses such as Down's syndrome and Huntingon's that can be passed through to children is becoming more of an issue.
although, getting back to your substantive point, how do couples in secular societies deal with this? it is clearly not something that comes up on the first date nor is it something that people would actively disclose without reason, nor is it something that many people would know until they tried having children. outside of cases where the person knows beforehand for other reasons (e.g. told by specialist after non-related surgery) i would imagine that by far the most common method is a fertility test that takes place after active attempts to have a child have ensued. i cant see any mechanism whereby couples or individuals would do this beforehand as part of the marriage process.
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