This chapter provides an overview of milestones in reproductive technologies and milestones in medically assisted conception, imaging, and diagnostic tests – what is available, what is involved, and what remains controversial. Research on how technology has influenced the biological and psychological experience of pregnancy is reviewed and social impact of reproductive technologies on individuals, couples, and the broader community is discussed.

While conception, pregnancy and childbirth are ‘natural’ events for most, for some the process is more complicated, medicalised, and marked by unexpected or difficult events. This chapter examines the experience of pregnancy when high investment is juxtaposed with high risk. The impact of a history of infertility, conception involving ART, pregnancy loss is examined in depth as well as evidence regarding the most effective ways to support parents who experience perinatnal loss.

Freud shows that dreams, via the process of element-by-element analysis, can be inserted into the occupations of dreamers’ waking mental life, of which dreams, as analyzed, represent an improvement for the dreamer. It is less clear that dreams themselves accomplish that outcome, that they fulfill a wish. Freud does not offer any grounds independent of the analysis itself that dreams arise for that purpose. Counterarguments he proposes, like that dream analyses could not arrive at the conclusions they do without the tracks’ having been laid down beforehand, do not salvage the argument.

To try to situate the apparent gap within Freud’s thought and to investigate its implications for his larger program, the next three chapters examine to what degree similar weaknesses appear in his treatment of other subjects.

Men’s attitudes to reproductive decision making and their psychosocial and relational adjustment during the transition to parenthood have received limited theoretical and research attention. This chapter explores the transition to parenthood from the perspective of fathers and evaluates the extent to which psychological theories that were developed in the context of traditional views of women and femininity apply. The chapter reviews research on how fathers come to terms with the reality of pregnancy, develop a relationship with the unborn baby, and restructure their work and social networks in anticipation of becoming a parent. Challenging contexts for fatherhood, changing gender role expectations and tendencies of services to marginalise or ignore father needs are discussed.

This chapter synthesises psychological theory and research on how women adapt to pregnancy – the changes in their own bodies, the developing baby within, the integration of a maternal identity, and the renegotiation of relationships with partners, and others. Challenging pregnancy contexts are examined: unplanned pregnancies, disability, ‘off-time’ pregnancies, and the chapter concludes with an overview of psychological wellbeing during pregnancy, and different orientations to motherhood.

This chapter examines the first three months after birth, integrating the experiences of mothers and fathers. There is emphasis on understanding the newborn infant, a detailed review of evidence on sleeping and settling, and an examination of the impact of becoming a parent on identity and the couple relationship. Different cultural practices during the ‘first 100 days’ are discussed. The chapter concludes with an overview of research on psychological wellbeing, including perinatal mood disorders.

‘I’m no longer someone's door mat.

I’m still respectful and treat people well, however, I view

female manipulation in a dim light and

don't take that nonsense anymore.’ (Men's group participant, 2019)

Women are frequently portrayed as invisible, victimised or lacking the powers that are commonly associated with men. They may be perceived as deprived of structural and institutional powers or relegated to playing supportive roles to dominant males (Bowles & Babcock, 2008). In the constructed binary of public and private spheres of influence, a woman is ordinarily located in private ‘domesticated’ and interpersonal spaces sealed off from the ‘authoritarian’ public, male, and therefore influential spaces (Nelson, 1974).

By slightly shifting one's perception of power towards diverse understandings of influence and control, one may come to appreciate the female capacity for social influence that does not depend on the structural institutional sources of authority usually associated with male power (Jordan, 2017). Female power has been described as social relational influence (Nelson, 1974). This latter author describes women as keenly interested in ‘male matters’ and she presents evidence that women's influence transcends ‘domestic affairs’. She references ethnographic data of Middle Eastern contexts that recorded gender segregated women's command and frequent dominance of the communication networks of males among other performances of exclusive female power. Her data suggest that female influence may overshoot the so-called public private divide by shaping female and male discourses (Nelson, 1974).

It was never my intention to become a specialist male-focused psychotherapist. I was not looking to engage with manhood and did not feel ‘called’ to respond to men as a special therapeutic population. In fact, what I was most conscious of as a psychotherapist was the strong feelings of ambivalence towards my chosen profession. My emotional connection with the discipline of psychology lacked the intimacy and purpose that could make me thrive and enjoy the challenges that come with work. The relationship was so poor that I had reached the stage of acceptance that this insecure professional attachment would continue in a loveless state of tolerance in which I would remain unloved and insignificant. My appointment as manager of a local university counselling centre halfway through 2008 gave me decision making powers to expand the therapeutic offerings to include group psychotherapy. Small groups of youth were responsive to a series of attempts at representing a ‘whole self’ as part of culture building and ‘tone setting’ during the initial phases of group psychotherapy. I recall the ‘circle of balance', a visual tool of circles symbolising the overlapping major life areas that require integration and careful balancing. Colleagues’ responses to group psychotherapy ranged from lukewarm to receptive. However, clients’ embracing of their change agent status as participant-healers in group psychotherapy had radical repercussions for my professional destiny.

Fast forward many years and a psychotherapy model, an organic one nogal, had emerged, centralising local views of personhood as the foundation from where psychotherapy with men proceed. Following the accidental men's group in which only young university males attended, trying out personhood as a therapeutic cultural formulation continued almost exclusively with male clients. Unsure about what I was doing, I never thought of the term ‘cultural formulation’ because at the time I could not articulate the gap of culture or the dislocation of time and place of psychotherapy intake procedures. I was merely unconsciously lessening my own discomfort with mainstream psychotherapeutic culture of doing small talk ‘to get to the presenting problem’. Not establishing an initial clienttherapist bond in a more human-, holistic-, and authentically client-centred manner felt jarring.