Inflating Masculinity: Infertile Men's Expansion of Masculine Narratives

Abstract

Male infertility is often framed as a profound threat to masculinity, particularly within patriarchal contexts where fatherhood is central to male identity. Drawing on nine months of qualitative research at a private fertility clinic in Lahore, Pakistan, this article analyzes men's responses to the social, cultural, and emotional disruptions triggered by a clinical diagnosis of male infertility. Interpretive thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with these men revealed that infertility does not simply produce emasculation or sense of loss. Rather, it pushes them to actively intensify and mobilize existing masculine scripts of endurance, provision, religious faith, and alternative pathways to fatherhood. The study employed the term inflating masculinity as an analytical lens to describe the ways these men expanded the boundaries of hegemonic masculinity without destabilizing its underlying logics. Participants reframed invasive medical treatments as tests of endurance, emphasized financial sacrifice as evidence of responsibility, invoked religious interpretations of infertility as divine trials, and, in some cases, reworked adoption as a legitimate expression of paternal authority. These strategies enabled men to maintain alignment with the dominant gender norms while negotiating reproductive disruptions. By grounding the analysis in men's situated narratives, this study empirically contributes to the sociological debates on masculinity and reproduction in non-Western contexts. Primarily, it adds that hegemonic masculinity is not merely challenged by infertility but actively negotiated and intensified through culturally specific practices. Taken together, these dynamics highlight the adaptive and relational nature of masculinity under conditions of reproductive uncertainty.