PhronesisWe apply the Displacement Framework to infertility and involuntary childlessness, introducing the concept of a prospective ground state: S°_parent is an anticipated identity configuration — biological parenthood, biographical continuity, an imagined family unit, and the social role of parent — that infertility prevents from being realized. Unlike most displacement from an established S°, infertility grief is grief for what was expected, making it structurally distinctive.
Nine formal propositions are derived covering: S°_parent as prospective identity ground state, medical infertility as externally imposed D(ξ_parent), IVF/ART cycles as false return gradients whose failures deepen accumulated Φ (formalized as a sunk-cost basin depth function), the 'just one more cycle' dynamic as wrong-attractor maintenance, monthly cycle reactivation as cyclic D(ξ) without recovery (a 28-day displacement forcing term), disenfranchised grief as social invisibility compounding D(ξ), ambiguous loss structure (neither present nor absent child) as a barrier to grief processing modeled as a bimodal potential landscape, adoption as alternative S°_parent construction, and childfree identity as S°_self reorientation rather than failure.
The framework provides a unified account of why infertility grief is cyclically reactivated, why treatment can function as a wrong attractor of false hope maintenance, and why the decision to stop treatment is cognitively and ethically extraordinary.