The Pressure to Boost Your Fertility and Conceive "Naturally" Is BS — Here's Why

From posting an unfiltered Reel on Instagram to 86'ing processed foods, there are endless ways in which going au naturel is considered applause-worthy. But when it comes to getting pregnant, it's not always possible to go the old fashioned route. Just ask the 15.4 percent of women and 12.8 percent of men in the US who have had some sort of fertility problem, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Despite this statistic, we continue to put boosting fertility "naturally" on a pedestal. Take Kourtney Kardashian's May Instagram Q&A on her experience with in vitro fertilization (IVF) prior to conceiving her now 7-month-old son Rocky Thirteen with husband Travis Barker. The reality star explained how, after a year of trying to conceive through five failed rounds of IVF, her "body relaxed." According to E! News, the 45-year-old wrote, "I believed in God's plan for my life. Lots of prayers for whatever was meant to be for us. Also lots of optimizing my health. I know how hard it is to feel like you're not trying, but believing in God's plan and saying your prayers is so powerful."

Jessica Ryniec, MD, is an OB-GYN and reproductive endocrinology and infertility specialist in Boston.

As wonderful as it is that things worked out for the Kardashian-Barker family, the reality TV star does a huge disservice to the many people struggling to get pregnant and who might actually require assisted reproductive technology (ART) to make their family goals a reality. Minimizing the necessity for fertility treatment also undermines a crucial movement to preserve our right to access it, which is increasingly under threat from politicians.

Following the 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade, Republican lawmakers and candidates have declared a full-blown war on reproductive rights — not only a pregnant person's right to terminate a pregnancy but access to IVF and birth control as well. And the stigma that surrounds ART is only exacerbated by the fact that organizations like the Catholic church consider reproductive technology immoral.

In addition to the pressures of public policy and religious doctrine, people who are struggling to conceive are often offered insensitive, overly generalized advice that echoes Kardashian's sentiment, like "just relax," or "it'll happen when it's meant to," "go on a vacation and get drunk," or "have you tried cutting out gluten/sugar/dairy?" Even if the person means well, this type of exasperating rhetoric fails to acknowledge that there are often very real medical circumstances that must be addressed in order for some people to conceive. These can range from endometriosis (a condition in which uterine tissue grows outside of the uterus), male factor infertility, or one partner previously undergoing voluntary sterilization (one of the main driving forces behind my and my husband's IVF journey).

Not to mention that when you face fertility challenges, you're already really freaking hard on yourself. You try to do all the things to optimize your wellness while simultaneously worrying that even a bit of understandable, unavoidable anxiety is too much. You'd be hard pressed to find someone diagnosed with infertility who isn't exploring stress management techniques like meditation, deep breathing, acupuncture, or yoga. They may also be pulling out all the stops to eat nutrient-dense meals and buying supplements to enhance their overall health. In other words, encouraging someone who's struggling to conceive to boost their fertility "naturally" is beyond insulting because, more often than not, they're already trying to do that. They also already understand that lifestyle and dietary measures can support but not serve as a magic bullet for conception.

This campaign promoting natural conception without any medical intervention undoubtedly stems from the persistent stigma around infertility. Even though 2.3 percent of all infants born in the U.S. every year are conceived using ART, per the CDC, and infertility is an actual medical diagnosis, fertility treatment is still seen as an unconventional — and sometimes lesser — route to growing your family.

Jessica Ryniec, M.D., an OB-GYN and reproductive endocrinology and infertility specialist in Boston, believes that it's still considered taboo to need fertility treatment because we didn't talk about infertility for so long, and people usually sought care privately, if at all. "It's [considered] different [from] the norm," she explains. "But in reality, people seek medical care for things that are different [from] the norm every day — needing eyeglasses, braces, blood pressure medications, et cetera, so why should needing fertility treatment be different?"

Of course, it doesn't help that "natural" is a hot, aspirational buzzword at the moment, not only in terms of fertility but also in regard to how you might deliver your child, the supplements you take, the food you eat, and more. But, as Dr. Ryniec explains, using or idealizing the word "natural" can make needing assistance seem abnormal, which in turn can make people feel more shame and blame themselves for needing it. "It feeds the stigma, and it leads to a lot of misunderstanding about what fertility treatment actually is or can be," she says.

"Natural" is not even a medical term — it's a social one, which is why Dr. Ryniec says that she tries to use "spontaneous" or "unassisted" in her practice when describing conception that occurs without fertility treatment.

Given comments like Kardashian's and the seemingly ubiquitous hype around enhancing your fertility through non-medical means, people often can't help but feel like they're falling short by looking to medicine for help. But, as Dr. Ryniec reminds her patients, an infertility diagnosis isn't a reflection of who you are as a person. Pregnancy through ART can be every bit as magical as unassisted conception. Personally, I feel so grateful to have been able to pursue parenthood this way. After all, given just how brave you need to be in order to navigate both fertility treatment and the BS stigma that comes with it, it's fair to say that growing your family with a little help from science is even more awe-inspiring.

Maressa Brown is a journalist, author, and astrologer. Her areas of expertise include writing, reporting, and editing lifestyle, pop culture, and parenting content that's both conversational and substantive. In addition to contributing to PS, she writes for a variety of consumer-facing publications including InStyle, Parents, and Shape, and was previously an editor at Cosmopolitan and CafeMom.