Description
Book SynopsisThis book explores the empirical manifestations of the paradoxical features of reproductive technologies and provides in-depth understandings of solo motherhood through assisted reproduction and by recognising the complex experiences and the lived realities of forming donor-conceived families.
The author offers insights into how single women 'do' family, identity and kinship and how the choice to create life as a solo mother is continuously rationalised. She uncovers how established, societal cultural narratives are adopted, negotiated and transformed in the processes of decision-making and fertility treatment. The book draws on science and technology studies, feminist theory, kinship- and family studies and identity theory, and reveals how aspects of bio-genetic and social connections (nature-culture) take on varying meanings when kinship and familial relations - are created through assisted reproduction.
Through the lens of solo mother families, the book covers broader sociological questions including; how donor conception challenges existing and endemic kinship ideas and practices and what kinds of individual, social and legal responses have been prompted by advances within medically assisted reproduction.
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Puzzling Paradoxes of Nature Vs Nurture
Chapter 1. Creating Life as a Solo Mother: An Emerging Phenomenon?
Chapter 2. Theorizing Reproductive Technologies: Negotiating Nature and Nurture in Kinship and Identity Making
Chapter 3. Getting Access to Fertility Treatment: Governing the ‘Natural Order of Life’
Chapter 4. Revising Life Biographies: A Choice by Design and Not by Chance
Chapter 5. Undergoing Fertility Treatment: Reworking Boundaries of ‘Natural Processes’
Chapter 6. Forming Donor-Conceived Families: The Complex Interplay of Biogenetic and Social Ties
Chapter 7. Choosing and Relating to the Donor: Managing Complex Kinship Boundaries
Chapter 8. Conclusion: Strategies for Life
Appendix 1. Conducting the Study: Research Design and Methodology
Appendix 2. Glossary on MAR
