Fertility Practitioners’ Coping Strategies When Faced with Intra-Role Conflict from Screening Aspiring Single Mothers by Choice

Paulien Hertogs, Dries Van Gasse, Sascha Spikic and Dimitri Mortelmans
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Paulien Hertogs: Center for Population, Family and Health, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Antwerp, 2000 Antwerpen, Belgium
Dries Van Gasse: Center for Population, Family and Health, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Antwerp, 2000 Antwerpen, Belgium
Sascha Spikic: Center for Population, Family and Health, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Antwerp, 2000 Antwerpen, Belgium
Dimitri Mortelmans: Center for Population, Family and Health, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Antwerp, 2000 Antwerpen, Belgium

Social Sciences, 2021, vol. 10, issue 11, 1-15

Abstract: Women without a partner can become single mothers by choice through the use of fertility treatments. In Belgium, the decision to accept a candidate single mother by choice rests with the fertility clinic’s multidisciplinary team of fertility practitioners. As a result, the fertility practitioners fulfil a gatekeeping role. However, this can cause an intra-role conflict as the responsibility to select the best fitting candidates is at odds with the responsibility to help patients. In this explorative study, we examine how fertility practitioners cope with the strain resulting from intra-role conflict in the decision-making process regarding single motherhood by choice in Belgium. The findings showed that practitioners appear to mainly resort to problem-focused coping, by constructing a grassroots criteria list and by shifting their role from screening agent to counsellor. These results are based on ten open in-depth interviews with fertility practitioners employed in the multidisciplinary teams of fertility centers, using a reflexive interview lead.

Keywords: (clinical) gatekeeping; fertility; single mother by choice (SMC); solo mother (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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