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Abstract

Infertility means psychological stress for both sexes if their wish to have a child remains unfulfilled. The way men cope with infertility is partly due to the psychodynamics of their motives for parenting. In the paper, these motives are analysed by a combination of statistical and qualitative methods (content analysis). 137 Patients addressing an andrological outpatient department were asked to fill in a questionnaire of their motives for parenting. A cluster analysis yielded a four cluster solution, two of them being contrary to each other. One was interpreted as characterising "ambivalence towards the child", the other as "child-dependent or offspring-fixated". This interpretation was validated by qualitative data drawn from content analyses of psychodynamic interviews performed with a subgroup of 80 andrological patients. The results do have clinical relevance; they allow to better understand the psychological and psychodynamic sequelae of male infertility thus providing some cues for specific therapeutic interventions. In addition, the study is of methodological interest, because of the combination of quantitative and qualitative empirical methods.