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Causal Explanations for Infertility

Their Relation to Control Appraisals and Psychological Adjustment

  • Chapter
Infertility

Part of the book series: The Springer Series on Stress and Coping ((SSSO))

Abstract

Infertility offers an ideal opportunity to examine people’s cognitive adaptation in the face of threat. First, it is a major life event that is an impediment to a developmental milestone, the transition to parenthood (Belsky, Spanier, & Rovine, 1983; Hobbs & Cole, 1976). The magnitude of this threat is captured in the following spontaneous descriptions offered by our research participants:

I think it’s the worst experience of my life. The only other tragedy I can compare it to in my life was when my father died, out of the blue...

Devastating, frustrating, painful, rageful. As many negative adjectives I could think of to describe it. It’s not an experience I would wish on anyone.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, University of Connecticut School of Medicine, Farmington, Connecticut, 06032, USA

    Howard Tennen, Glenn Affleck & Richard Mendola

Authors
  1. Howard Tennen
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  2. Glenn Affleck
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  3. Richard Mendola
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, USA

    Annette L. Stanton

  2. University of California, Los Angeles, California, USA

    Christine Dunkel-Schetter

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© 1991 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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Tennen, H., Affleck, G., Mendola, R. (1991). Causal Explanations for Infertility. In: Stanton, A.L., Dunkel-Schetter, C. (eds) Infertility. The Springer Series on Stress and Coping. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0753-0_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0753-0_6

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4899-0755-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4899-0753-0

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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