Couple relationship flourishing and procreative options to overcome infertility

Only few studies consider attitudes toward procreative options in the case of infertility and the individual and couple factors potentially predicting these attitudes. This study focused on couple relationship flourishing and analyzed its association with attitudes toward several procreative options: adoption, foster care, assisted reproductive technologies (i.e., homologous fertilization, heterologous fertilization, surrogacy), and living without children. According to the eudaimonic view, flourishing does not merely refer to relationship happiness or satisfaction, but it is characterized by intimacy, commitment, personal growth, and resilience (Fincham & Beach, 2010). Flourishing relationships are source of meaning and purpose in life and provide an “identity of us with a future” (Fincham, Stanley, & Beach, 2007, p. 280). In the present explorative study we involved 218 Italian women of childbearing age (M=31.7; SD=6.3) with a heterosexual stable couple relationship. They were asked to complete a self-report questionnaire including the Relationship Flourishing Scale (Fowers et al., 2016) and a series of ad hoc items to measure their attitudes toward procreative options. Results of correlation analysis showed that couple relationship flourishing was positively related to adoption, foster care, and homologous fertilization. In other words, in case of infertility, the more women perceive to be in a flourishing couple relationship, the more they are willing to adopt or foster a child, or to opt for homologous fertilization. On the contrary, there were no significant associations of flourishing with heterologous fertilization, surrogacy, and the choice to live without children. Implications of results and future research developments will be discussed.