Perceptions of informal sanctioning and the stigma of involuntary childlessness

This study systematically examines the role of informal social response in the emergence of involuntary childlessness or infertility as a stigmatizing attribute. Seventy‐one involuntarily childless women provide detailed instances of perceived informal social sanctions related to their infertility. Subjects perceive that normals consider infertility to be caused by psychological or sexual malfunctioning, or by the woman in the dyad. Infertility …