Gender Equality in Family-Building Benefits

In a 2017 study by the Fertility Network UK on the male experience with infertility, men reported feeling excluded and marginalized by the attention and focus directed toward their female partners. Men perceived a lack of emotional support services provided by health care professionals and the fertility clinics they encountered.

In the study, Susan Seenan, chief executive of Fertility Network said the following:

Men are half of the fertility equation; when they cannot create a family they long for without medical help they suffer and struggle physically and mentally just as women do, yet our major new survey with Leeds Beckett University shows that men's needs are far too often ignored, with support scarce before, during and after fertility treatment. This is unacceptable; we hope this survey will challenge the silence around male infertility and facilitate more male support groups.

Benefits Supporting Men

Today, the optics on family-building benefits offered by companies look quite different from when my wife and I were trying to build our family. Paternity leave, which is a new benefit trend, allows men to take the same or similar leave available to women once the baby is born. Many companies offer attractive, if not competitive, paternity leave packages to convince prospective talent to choose their company over another. Companies understand that a benefit with personalized clinical advocacy and emotional support for both the patient and the partner is essential.

This means that the woman is getting the support she needs, and now the male partner is too. Employers are now offering benefits that include emotional support for men, like our new WIN for HIM program. At our company, the addition of benefits for men was driven, in part, by my experience of not having the support I needed when my wife and I were trying to conceive.

The move to provide fertility and infertility benefits, including emotional support benefits, for men is a tectonic shift away from assuming that male-factor infertility is silent, or non-existent, and toward offering equal assistance for both men and women.

The ability to plan ahead for a family has also come a long way, with services men can draw from to start their family planning early. Men can now test their sperm and benefit from behavioral health and clinical advocacy without leaving their own homes. At-home sperm testing allows men to get information without visiting a medical facility, something few men want to do, and to avoid any sense of shame or occlusion when seeking help.

The emotional process of going through infertility is very real for both men and women. Employers who are supporting the modern family's efforts to cope with infertility understand that they have a unique ability to make the family-building journey less stressful for those involved.

A benefits package that covers a wider swath of needs for today's employee population makes a company both attractive to talent and illustrates that the company is a partner in the employee's personal journey, as much as in the professional journal. The value of this type of support is immeasurable for employees who are seeking the highest level of assistance when planning a family.

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Peter Nieves serves as the chief commercial officer for WINFertility.