Social Norms and Supportive Communication in Infertility: Public Attitudes Toward Women's Reproductive Challenges

Infertility is an increasingly common women's health concern with well-documented mental health consequences, yet little research has examined how public communication and stigma shape the social support available to women experiencing fertility challenges. Supportive communication is a critical component of social support and may mitigate infertility-related distress, whereas stigmatizing attitudes and misconceptions may contribute to harmful or dismissive responses. This study examined potential attitude-based variables associated with helpful and unhelpful infertility-related communication, as well as contextual factors influencing these attitudes.

A total of 419 adults from the general public completed an online survey assessing fertility-related attitudes, beliefs, and misconceptions, along with their likelihood of endorsing supportive or unsupportive statements after reading a vignette describing a woman experiencing one of four types of fertility challenges: female-factor infertility, male-factor infertility, age-related infertility, or infertility in a same-sex relationship.

Overall, 72.4% of participants endorsed at least one unhelpful response. Misconceptions about infertility were common. Expressing more sympathetic and blame-oriented attitudes toward the woman in the vignette was associated with higher endorsement of both helpful (ΔR² = .09, p < .05) and unhelpful (ΔR² = .07, p < .05) statements, whereas factual knowledge about infertility was not associated with communication responses. Endorsement of helpful statements was modestly higher in the male-factor infertility condition (M = 5.75, SD = 1.26) compared with the same-sex infertility condition (M = 5.14, SD = 1.96, p < .05).

Interventions that address stigma and promote compassionate, informed communication may represent an important public health strategy for improving psychosocial support for women experiencing infertility.