“Living with Silence and Shame”: A Meta-Synthesis of Women’s Lived Experiences of Infertility-Related Stigma
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Jungmin Lee,1 Seoyoung Kim,2 Soo-Hyun Nam3 1School of Nursing, Hallym University, Chuncheon-si, Gangwon-do, South Korea; 2Department of Artificial Intelligence Convergence, Graduate School, Hallym University, Chuncheon-si, Gangwon-do, South Korea; 3School of Nursing Science, Gyungkuk National University, Andong, South KoreaCorrespondence: Soo-Hyun Nam, School of Nursing Science, Gyungkuk National University, Andong, South Korea, Email snam@anu.ac.krBackground: Infertility is a global reproductive health concern that imposes intense psychological and social burdens, particularly in cultural contexts where childbearing is integral to the construction of womanhood.Objective: This qualitative meta-synthesis aimed to gain an in-depth understanding how women experiencing infertility across diverse settings experience stigma, and how they navigate its psychological and relational consequences.Methods: A systematic search was conducted using six electronic databases (PubMed, CINAHL Plus with Full Text, JSTOR, ProQuest Central, Web of Science, and Ovid MEDLINE), supplemented by manual searches. Data quality was evaluated using the Critical Appraisal Skills Program (CASP) checklist. Fourteen peer-reviewed qualitative studies published between 2014 and 2025 were systematically synthesized through a qualitative meta-synthesis to derive integrated themes.Results: Three overarching themes were identified: (1) Sources of stigmatization in the context of infertility, (2) Psycho-social consequences of infertility-related stigma, and (3) Coping strategies among women experiencing infertility-related stigma. Women experiencing infertility reported deep feelings of worthlessness, self-blame, and isolation, shaped by internalized stigma and societal expectations surrounding motherhood. These experiences often led to strained relationships, social withdrawal, and emotional distress. Nevertheless, many women demonstrated resilience through coping strategies such as acceptance, religious reframing, and caregiving roles. These strategies helped them reclaim their sense of identity and overcome the psychosocial impacts of infertility-related stigma.Conclusion: Infertility stigma is not solely a personal burden but a culturally mediated social phenomenon. Effective interventions should be gender-sensitive and tailored to the sociocultural realities of women’s lives. Mental health support and psychosocial services must consider these dynamics to adequately support women navigating infertility in resource-limited or culturally conservative settings.Keywords: infertility, stigma, women’s health, qualitative meta-synthesis, coping strategies
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.057 | 0.115 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.008 | 0.012 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.020 | 0.014 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.006 |
| Open science | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".