The article discusses the representations of sterility and desire for children among men that go to a human reproduction ambulatory looking for family planning information and methods or looking for sterility treatment. These data are compared with those of another research with women that went to the same ambulatory looking for sterility treatment. The article shows, among other things, how the sterility hurts both masculinity and feminility, but in different ways. And how paternity is conceived as a plan for the future, that allows for the possibility of change; while maternity is conceived as the realization of a dream always existent in the feminine past.
Paternity; Masculinity; Sterility; Gender