The childhood wish for parenthood when it remains unfulfilled in adult life causes pain to a couple and imposes a strain on their relationship. For a woman's failure to conceive may be rooted in an early unsatisfactory relationship to her mother. The new fertility techniques restore hope to these patients but may not be successful for such women and may also bring new emotional problems in their wake. Spontaneity in sexual relations is constrained, and transference to the doctors who administer techniques, giving or refusing permission for normal sexual intercourse, repeats infantile submission to the powerful parents of the past. Two clinical illustrations are given.