[Motivations for parenthood in infertile women]

A poll was conducted among 50 primary sterile women, 50 secondary sterile women and 70 fertile women, to question their motivation for parenthood, with assumption that innate "maternal instinct" does not exist, but that the wish to have a child is socially conditioned and it might differ in women having children and those without them. According to the gathered results it can be said that the fatalistic motivation for parenthood ("reproduction is the fate of every person") is more expressed in fertile women than in sterile ones, while the instrumental motivation (the child is there to enable achieving certain aims, not narcisistic) is more expressed in sterile that in fertile women. Primary sterile women wish to have a child for themselves, without concrete reasons being the main initiators for the beginning of sterility treatment, while secondary sterile women, especially those who already have one child, consider family and marriage incomplete without children and in the latter the husbands are usually initiators for the beginning of sterility treatment or the wish is mutual. However, the altruistic motivation for parenthood is the first and most important for all three groups of women (affection for children, a wish to protect them).