Back to The Beginning
How it Started
Thank you for visiting my website. This website is the successor to my research study website ‘wantedtobeadad.com’. That site was set up in 2012 to help recruit participants for my PhD study examining the lives of involuntarily childless older men. Details of the recruitment process can be found in this chapter and this paper.
Due to Apple withdrawing iWeb it had to be replaced.
I graduated with my PhD from Keele University in January 2016. My doctoral research study explored the experience of involuntarily childless older men and has recently gained much international attention (see the Media page).
My interest in involuntarily childless men is in part due to my own sense of ‘broodiness’ and wish to become a father. I studied that motivation for my MA in Counselling (2008, The University of Manchester) dissertation and discovered there was very little information about men’s experience of childlessness. Intrigued by the absence of the male voice in the research surrounding reproduction I self-funded my MSc to try and find the level of ‘broodiness’ in adults in females and males, non-parents and parents.
The results of my small mixed-methods MSc study found that there was little difference in the desire to become a parent between female and male childless individuals. That study also indicated that for some male participants not becoming a parent had a greater negative effect than reported by the female participants. My study helped me graduate with a Distinction in Research Methods (2009, The University of Manchester).
I successfully applied for a PhD studentship at Keele University in 2010 to study the lived experience of older childless men. A summary of my PhD thesis can be found in the ‘Research’ section of this website. In that section are summaries of my MSc and MA dissertations.
Links to my academic publications can be found in the Writing section of this website. Similarly, there links to Blogs I have written, newspaper, radio, podcasts and YouTube video’s in the Media section. Press releases for research I have been involved in can be found clicking here.
