Experience of adoption and the formation of maternal identity in adoptive infertile women

This study was conducted to identify the effect of child adoption on infertile women's motherhood identity with studying the living experience of infertile adoptive women.

The present study was conducted in a qualitative approach and phenomenological method, it is deeply studying the phenomena with no domination and interference occurred by the researcher. Participants in this study included 10 infertile women with unborn children in Tehran in year 1396 that were selected based on the criteria of selection based on snowball method. Data gathering tools were semi-structured interviews, and interviews continued until saturation. The data were processed based on Strauss and Glaser approach, analysis, classification by interpretive analysis.

The findings were obtained in three Aspects of parenting experience, maternal identity acquisition process and self-assessment as a mother.

As a result, . Infertile mothers, in their Adopting and motherhood identity building experience, have four processes: 1) self-recovery, 2) readiness, 3) achieving motherhood identity 4) motherhood identity development and reinforcement.