Table 3.

Quotes from the focus group sessions

Natural process & privacy

F6, P4, male. “I looked at it quite loosely. We, my wife and I, just decided on one night while sitting at the couch “lets become parents”. That was it. My wife got pregnant very quickly and we didn’t look at the Internet at all. We just let it happen. That was just it. We didn’t want to let ourselves drive crazy.”

F2, P5, female. “I want to let it go naturally. It is a natural process. It is a choice in your relation, in your life. If I’m so occupied with it in advance, it might become a hyperfocus and the spontaneity gets lost.”

F5, P9, female. “The wish for children is really close. Then you think of your partner, but no one else. I think that such a private moment, the pre-phase, that I don’t have to discuss this with an outsider.”

PCC in social context

F1, P3, female. “When I know that a girlfriend has a pregnancy wish, I explain to her what things she should be aware of. I emphasize that she can do tests to make sure she will have a healthy child. I tell this to everyone, every friend or women that I see in my surroundings of family and friends.”

F5, P12, female. “Well, you could make it a standard kind of care, so your female friends don’t laugh at you when you visit such an office hour but think “wow maybe I should consider that too”. You could make it standard, within the whole package of pregnancy, labour and child welfare.”

F1, P2, female. “I have talked about this a lot with female friends when I wasn’t pregnant yet and when I became pregnant. Questions like: are you pregnant yet? How do you do it? Did you succeed or not? Those kind of conversations.”

The acceptability of opportunistic PCC

F3, P1, female. “I think that it’s hard for healthcare providers to estimate what the right timing is and how to address the issue, because it can be sensitive. That makes this more difficult compared to care during the pregnancy.”

F3, P5, female. “You go the GP with a reason, for example sinusitis and you get antibiotics. The GP could carefully raise: “I don’t know if you are considering children, but know that you should pay attention with this medication or do you have any other questions about that”. That way you create an entry.”

F6, P3, male. “I find it appropriate to raise this subject when side-effect from medication or overweight is discussed. Then I would accept this more compared to raising it out of the blue after a treatment.”