Involuntary childlessness was explained as a narcissistic wound which explains how an individual imbibes the affect effect, as explained in Sense Of Self Model by Olshansky. According to this model, infertility alters one’s sense of self by changing, creating or increasing the individual’s sense by inducing feelings of deficiency, hopelessness, helplessness and shameful feelings.
The individual’s self perception is completely changed and gets affected. Their sense of self, individual identity as male or female gets changed and affected. From a successful person, their identity to a one with flaws and lacks, all of the individual’s future endeveours will then be based on managing this one limitation.
Kikendall’s application of self-discrepancy theory, is another theory that describes identity formation, this theory says that infertility is a personal identity crisis. A woman is faced with a conflict of her ideal sense of self of being a mother to a woman with infertility, a woman who may never be able to become a mother.