This 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.
Original language
English
Publisher
Emerald Group Publishing
Number of pages
240
ISBN (print)
9781839091162
Publication status
Published - Sept 2021
Series
Emerald Studies in Reproduction, Culture and Society