Peer-to-peer counselling and emotional guidance on infertility in Britain and Belgium (1970s–1980s)

In the wake of sexual and reproductive health counselling in postwar Western Europe, emotional guidance on infertility was as yet neither readily recognised nor available. In this article, we show that in Britain and Belgium, infertile couples themselves identified the need for systematic emotional guidance on their infertility experiences. They set up self-help support groups to provide counselling on infertility in their respective countries. Originally formed by heterosexual, white, middle-class couples, who were childless due to infertility, these support groups were cautious—rather than a... Mehr ...