Our beliefs have not advanced so far from those expressed in the C16th Book of Common Prayer – marriage is for the procreation of children. And so, in these days of IVF, there must be some secret darker reason for not having children if you are married.
In fact I know only one woman who has confided that she & her husband had decided from the very beginning that they did not want to have children – It’s messy, & you can’t send it back if you decide you don’t like it. It may be relevant to these feelings that she & her husband were each the only child of very elderly parents.
In the days before follicle stimulating drugs & other modern treatments were available, stories of the mysteries of fertility & infertility were legion. One of my mother’s best friends had endured 7 miscarriages before deciding to adopt. Within three years of the arrival of her chosen daughter she had produced two healthy strapping sons. Her doctor said that there was no explanation known to medical science, but there must be something about having a baby to look after – perhaps a change of diet – which put her hormones into the right kind of balance. Not quite so off-the-wall perhaps when you consider the well-attested phenomenon of cycles coming into sync in all-female residential establishments such as boarding schools or convents.
A friend of mine is 18 years younger than their only sibling – to the delighted surprise of their mother who had long before accepted that she would never again be blessed.
The daughter of a friend had fertility treatment in the very early days (pre-IVF). When her baby was a few months old she put her feelings of unwellness down to all the well known strains & stresses of new motherhood; when they seemed to get worse rather than better she plucked up courage to seek her doctor’s advice. After listening to her list of symptoms he said ‘Tell me, Mrs H, is there any chance you might be pregnant?’
‘The moment he said it, I realised. I felt such a fool.’ But then she had obviously not been taking fertility drugs while breast feeding.
If you ever read anything about the possible causes of infertility back in those days you could easily begin to wonder how any of us ever got here in the first place. And there was very little to be done about it – especially if you already had a child since it was well known that ‘The birth of a first baby is one of the biggest causes of infertility.’
Surprisingly enough however, the cause could sometimes be blindingly obvious; a small handbook of advice for GPs available as late as the 1970s began at the beginning. Make sure you see both members of the couple, & establish as tactfully as possible that they are in fact doing the necessary, which, surprising as it may seem, does not always come naturally. Hard to imagine that happening these days, but a point well worth remembering when doubts about the value of sex education are considered.
These days sex education tends to take fertility for granted & devotes more attention to protection from disease. But even before the causes of & treatments for STIs were better understood from the scientific point of view, their consequences for fertility were known – this of course was one of the reasons underlying the insistence upon virgin brides or, in some cultures, not marrying until the girl’s fertility were established in the most direct way possible.
Infertility has changed the course of history, not least in England with its dual system of hereditary monarchy & primogeniture through the male line. What would we be today if Henry VIII's efforts at paternity had turned out as he would have wished? So it is not surprising that it is, or can be, still more than just a personal private problem.
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