The best fertility support groups for men and couples
In light of RESOLVE’s ‘Virtual Advocacy Day’, with the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, members around the United States lobbied Congress for better policies and regulations around infertility support.
This is important work because fertility is something that both men and women face, and they shouldn’t have to do it alone.
Our research at Legacy shows that coping with male factor infertility substantially tests the mental health of a couple. Unsurprisingly, many turn to licensed therapists for help. Often it’s not enough. Men and women crave information and, in the uncertainty, want to speak with people who’ve gone through the exact challenges they’re experiencing. In that search for fellow feeling, many eventually turn to support groups.
We find that support groups are effective. While male infertility is taboo in contemporary society, in these forums, men find privacy and couples find closure, information, and understanding. Their communities allow for vulnerability and healing.
To that effect, I wanted to take a moment to highlight five of the best online support groups that exist, mention who they serve, and call attention to the tremendous work they do. It’s hard to find the right, vetted online support group (there are so many!). I hope this list helps.
Men’s Fertility Support (Facebook)
This is a male-only support group on Facebook. Participating in the community means making it through a basic screen: an application that is approved by one of the support group’s administrators. There’s a reason this group has been profiled in Time Magazine (“The Same of Male Fertility”) and mentioned in The Fertility Podcast (“Is there online support for men struggling to conceive?”). With clear ground rules, it has over 2,000 members, is extremely active, supportive, and informative for men who need a discrete, online space to share their emotions and get inputs from men who felt the same loneliness.
Male Infertility Support Group (Facebook)
This is a male-and-female support group on Facebook. Run by women who moderate a sister group for female infertility, the group has an application to join. With over 1,000 members, it emphasizes sharing gained experiences about procedures, results, or life after. The administrators run an even large separate sister group for female infertility support — it has grown to over 20,000 members — and they filter out any discussion on female infertility to that group.
Reddit: Infertility, Pregnancy Loss, and Trouble Conceiving Community
This is an all-inclusive support group for anyone who is dealing with primary or secondary infertility, male or female. With nearly 20K members, this sub-reddit is compassionate and norm heavy about what posting should and should not be. A lot of the Redditers are, or have become, experts in female and male fertility, and I highly recommend it as a place for high quality information and discussion. We did an AMA to support the community in April, and we were blown away by the thoughtfulness and high standards of its admins and members.
Sometimes women need their own space to talk about coping with their partner’s infertility. What to Expect is for them. Among the forum, two groups in particular — the Fertility Treatments group, with nearly 20,000 members, and the Trying to Conceive group, with nearly 60,000 members — discuss infertility in their male partner with some frequency. If you need to hear from another couple that succeeded and get color on how to navigate the emotional mindfields around learning to live or to fight male infertility, this is your support forum.
This is a British-based support group with over 1,000 registered members. While it is intended for men, anyone can view all of its contents. While there are journeys documented in the forum that last years, and it is tremendous to see community members ultimately find positive outcomes, the vast majority of the users will lurk. It’s not unusual to see a topic has 100,000 views but only 100 replies. This is the forum if you want a database of information that goes back years (2015) in an digestible format from people who’ve lived what you’re going through without having to give up any privacy yourself.
If this is something top of mind for you, please reach out. Any of us would happy to talk.
Khaled
