Do children make you happier?

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

9-Sep-2014

Contact: Emma Mason wordmason@mac.com European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology http://www.twitter.com/ESHRE

Women who have difficulty accepting the fact that they can't have children following unsuccessful fertility treatment have worse long-term mental health than women who are able to let go of their desire for children, according to new research.

The study published online today (Wednesday) in Human Reproduction [1], one of the world's leading reproductive medicine journals, is the first to look at a large group of women (over 7,000) to try to disentangle the different factors that may affect women's mental health over a decade after unsuccessful fertility treatment. These factors include whether or not they have children, whether they still want children, their diagnosis and their medical treatment.

Dr Sofia Gameiro, the lead author, said: "It was already known that people who have infertility treatment and remain childless have worse mental health than those who do manage to conceive with treatment. However, most previous research assumed that this was due exclusively to having children or not, and did not consider the role of other factors."

The researchers say that their findings show only that there is a link between an unfulfilled wish for children and worse mental health, and not that the unfulfilled wish is causing the mental health problems. This is due to the nature of the study, in which the women's mental health was measured at only one point in time rather than continuously since the end of fertility treatment.

Dr Gameiro, a lecturer at the School of Psychology at Cardiff University (Cardiff, UK), and colleagues from The Netherlands analysed answers to questionnaires completed by 7,148 women who started fertility treatment at any of 12 IVF hospitals in The Netherlands between 1995-2000. The questionnaires were sent out to the women between January 2011 and 2012, meaning that for most women their last fertility treatment would have been between 11-17 years ago.

The women were asked about their age, marital status, education and menopausal status, whether the infertility was due to them, their partners, both or of unknown cause, and what treatment they had received, including ovarian stimulation, intrauterine insemination and in vitro fertilisation / intra-cytoplasmic sperm injection (IVF/ICSI). In addition, they completed a mental health questionnaire, which asked them how they felt during the past four weeks.

The researchers asked the women whether or not they had children, and, if they did, whether they were their biological children or adopted (or both). They also asked them whether they still wished for children.

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Do children make you happier?