Maternal Sociological Study of Infertile Women with Adopted Children1

Gaining maternal and paternal experience is one of the natural goals of marriage. When pregnancy does not occur, couples are looking for solutions to have children. One of these methods is the adoption of an adopted child. The purpose of this study is how infertile women decide on maternal experience with adoption.

In this study, samples of 11 people based on theoretical sampling of infertile women aged 20 to 40 years living in Tehran who had adopted children, were identified by snowball method and their consent to participate in the interview was received. The interviews were studied using the data-based method and then analyzed in three stages of open, axial and selective coding. After implementing each interview, the text was entered and analyzed in Maxqda software.

The results showed that and the main reason for adopting adopted children is the experience of motherhood. Infertility and lack of results from therapies are the basis and support of those around the intervening categories in the adoption process. The strategy that women had from adopting an adopted child was to raise and excel an individual, and an important consequence of this is the warming of the family center for families who are not able to have children naturally.

With difficulties that adoption has for individuals, the main consequence of the warming of the couple's relationship and the help it provides to maintain the family shows the need to create facilities to encourage more infertile couples to adopt a child.