Degree Date

2026

Degree

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Social Work and Social Research

Abstract

Black women are up to twice as likely to experience infertility requiring fertility treatment to conceive, however Black women’s experiences of infertility and seeking medical treatment to become pregnant is sparsely represented in current empirical literature. Research on the topic of infertility and seeking fertility treatments has correlated infertility and fertility treatments with anxiety and depressive symptoms, but few studies have explicitly examined how Black women cope with these experiences. This dissertation study applied a Reproductive Justice lens to explore and understand 15 Black women’s experiences with seeking and receiving fertility treatments, experiences with shared decision-making for treatments to become pregnant, and how they coped during fertility treatments. Findings of this dissertation study show that: 1) participants initially had little education about reproductive health and expectations for fertility treatments, therefore they pursued their own research to fill in gaps in their knowledge, 2) shared decision-making was an evolving process influenced by multiple people and factors, such as the fertility doctor, participants’ partners/spouses, friends, and finances. Participants were more active in decision-making the longer they participated in treatment, and 3) participants coped better while receiving fertility treatment with community supports, such as their partners, friends, and other Black women receiving fertility treatments, as well as using independent coping practices such as prayer. This dissertation argues for more social workers to support Black women who are ii i experiencing fertility treatments, given their layered experiences. Social workers are trained to provide a range of supports, such as psychosocial interventions, assessments, education, and referrals. However, few social workers are trained in understanding the tenets of the Reproductive Justice framework to adequately support this population across settings. Implications from this study support the need for increased social work education on the topic of reproductive health and reproductive justice, more clinical social work training to support individuals, couples and groups experiencing fertility treatments, and the development of more informal and formal spaces for Black women to connect to one another while receiving fertility treatments. Implications support the need for more social workers in fertility practices to provide education and psychosocial support to the fertility patient population.

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