ABSTRACT
This section explains what the researcher’s personal story—not only her own first-hand experience of infertility but also the opportunity she has, as a result of this, to investigate a group that does not easily open up to “outsiders”—contributes to studies of (in)fertility, stigma, and political communication. The section, more specifically, reviews and discusses a range of concepts and theories—such as “stigma” and “spiral of silence”—that partially account for the communication blackout around involuntary childlessness. The limitations and problem areas of current approaches are highlighted to lay the ground for developing, as a next step, a more comprehensive explanatory framework.
