Egg Freezing, Fertility and Reproductive Choice: Negotiating Responsibility, Hope and Modern Motherhood

Kylie Baldwin
De Montfort University, UK


Product Details
Format:
Paperback
ISBN:
9781787564848
Published:
Publisher:
Emerald Publishing Limited
Dimensions:
224 pages - 152 x 229mm
Series:
Emerald Studies in Reproduction, Culture and Society
List price £20.99 List price €26.99 List price $33.99
Categories:

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access, thanks to Knowledge Unlatched funding, and freely available to read online.

Shortlisted for the Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness Book Prize 2021

Growing numbers of women around the world are now accessing social egg freezing: a fertility extension technology which is enabling some women to extend their fertility and reproductive timelines when faced with age-related fertility decline. This book explores the accounts and experiences of some of the pioneering users of this technology in the UK and the USA.

Drawing on theories and concepts across medical sociology and parenting culture studies, as well as literature from demography, anthropology, law, and bioethics, this book examines women’s motivations and experiences of social egg freezing in the context of debates surrounding reproductive choice and delayed motherhood. The book also delves into the broader sociological questions raised by this technology in relation to the gendered burden of appropriately timed parenthood, the medicalisation of women’s bodies in the reproductive domain and the further entrenchment of the geneticisation of society. It also considers the sexual politics underpinning the timing of parenthood, relationship formation and progression, and the way in which reproductive and parenting ideals, values and expectations can come in to conflict with the biological and relational realities of women’s lives.

Chapter 1. Introduction 
Chapter 2. Contemporary Debates in Social Egg Freezing 
Chapter 3. Timing Motherhood 
Chapter 4. Performing Parenthood 
Chapter 5. Motivations for Social Egg Freezing 
Chapter 6. The Experience of Freezing Eggs for Social Reasons 
Chapter 7. Negotiating Parenthood: Men, Intimate Relationships and Childbearing 
Chapter 8. Conclusion
Kylie Baldwin is Senior Lecturer in Medical Sociology at De Montfort University where she is part of the Centre for Reproduction Research. Her research explores the emergence and use of novel technologies concerned with fertility extension, fertility monitoring and genetic conservation. She has a particular interest in reproductive ageing and older motherhood.

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