Functional infertility and femininity: a comparison of infertile women and their mothers.

The hypotheses that functionally infertile women and their mothers will express more difficulties in femininity and motherhood than organically infertile women and their mothers, and that mothers of functionally infertile women will evince less such difficulties were investigated with groups of functionally infertile women, former mechanically infertile women, and their mothers (n = 20, each). The results showed significantly more difficulties in the functional daughters/mothers groups. Each daughters' group scored similar to their respective mothers. There were significant correlations between the results of the daughters and their mothers only for the functionally infertile group. While the existence of a conflicted maternal background was demonstrated, difficulties in femininity and motherhood did not appear to constitute a sufficient cause for functional infertility.