The biomedicalisation of reproductive ageing: reproductive citizenship and the gendering of fertility risk

"It was not an accident": Women's experiences of renewing motherhood at 40

In recent decades, there has been an increase in motherhood at an advanced age that has raised several medical and social concerns. We conducted a qualitative interview study, guided by Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis, to focus on the motivations and experiences of Belgian women who 'renewed' their motherhood later in life, meaning they had one or several children and then (at least 10 years later) had another child at the age of 40 or older. We focused on ten women's experiences of motherhood later in life, as well as on the way they managed social norms and expectations regarding family building and the appropriate life course. We identified two main themes. The first theme describes the participants' encounters with social norms that challenged their decision to reproduce and parent later in life, and how they managed and anticipated criticism, surprise, disbelief and incomprehension about their renewed motherhood in various ways. The second theme shows how these women talked about taking responsibility as a (renewed) mother of advanced age. For them, responsible motherhood involved making thoughtful reproductive choices, attending to the range of needs of their children, and making extra efforts to safeguard the social and emotional wellbeing of their youngest children, thereby seeking to reduce potential harm resulting from these reproductive choices. This study provides insight into these women's self-conception and their interactions with prejudiced social views of motherhood and family building.

Reproduktives Timing. Neue Formen und Ambivalenzen zeitlicher Optimierung von Fortpflanzung und ihre ethischen Herausforderungen

Der Beitrag befasst sich mit dem Zusammenhang von Fortpflanzung, Zeit und gutem Leben. Angebote der Reproduktionsmedizin und Konzeptionen des guten Lebens in der Zeit beeinflussen einander wechselseitig, wobei diese Wechselwirkung durch implizite oder explizite normative Setzungen und Erwartungen von angemessener Zeitlichkeit gekennzeichnet ist. Wir erörtern zunächst die Bedeutung von Zeit für Lebenslauf und Elternschaft aus einer soziologisch-sozialpsychologischen Perspektive. Fortpflanzungsmedizin kann die Spielräume für Elternwerden und für lebenszeitliche Autonomie vergrößern, aber im Kontext gesellschaftlicher Optimierungs- und Effizienzimperative auch gegenteilige Auswirkungen haben und Heteronomie verstärken. Insgesamt ergeben sich daraus veränderte Formen von Anpassung und Selbstbestimmung, neue Dilemmata und Ambivalenzen der zeitlichen Optimierung von Elternschaft. Vor diesem Hintergrund erläutern wir, wie die Ethik der Fortpflanzungsmedizin von einer interdisziplinären, das Leben in seinem zeitlichen Verlauf in den Blick nehmenden Forschung profitieren könnte.

The 'good' of extending fertility: ontology and moral reasoning in a biotemporal regime of reproduction

Since the emergence of in-vitro fertilization (IVF), a specific set of technologies has been developed to address the problem of the 'biological clock'. The medical extension of fertility time is accompanied by promissory narratives to help women synchronize conflicting biological and social temporalities. This possibility also has a transgressive potential by blurring one of the biological landmarks - the menopause - by which reproductive lives are organized and governed. These new ways of managing, measuring and controlling reproductive time have renewed debates on the age limits of motherhood and the moral legitimacy of medical intervention into age-related fertility decline. Building on Amir's feminist concept of biotemporality, this paper questions what happens when the ontological foundations of age-limited motherhood are disrupted by technologies which allow fertility to be extended. It discusses the reconfigurations of the ontological boundaries of the facts of life in the light of literature on reproductive technologies and temporality. Through the Swiss experience, the paper shows how medical experts are drawn into negotiating the ontological boundaries of age-limited motherhood along the binaries of the normal/pathological and the biological/social. Questioning the purpose of medical interventions in what are seen as facts of life, they produce different configurations of moral reasoning where what is natural undergoes shifts which both reinforce the normative order and subvert it.

The making of 'old eggs': the science of reproductive ageing between fertility and anti-ageing technologies

This article proposes going back in the history of reproductive medicine to shed light on the role of assisted reproductive technology (ART) in the making of 'old eggs'. Focusing on two key technologies - egg donation and cytoplasmic transfer - both of which contributed significantly to the production of scientific knowledge about reproductive ageing, the article suggests that ART can be analysed as 'in-vivo models' playing a pivotal role in the shift from age as a demographic variable to ageing understood in biological terms. It will shed light on the role of ART in locating age in the eggs and producing a cellular understanding of fertility decline. It argues that ART not only offers new means of reconfiguring the biological clock by extending fertility, but also reconfigures the biology of reproductive ageing itself. This becomes both the target and the means for new technological interventions, imaginaries and norms, anchored in women's bodies and a more plastic biology, and thereby illuminates hitherto underexplored aspects of the encounter between the science and technology of reproduction and anti-ageing.

Speculative feminism and the shifting frontiers of bioscience: envisioning reproductive futures with synthetic gametes through the ethnographic method

Scientists are developing a technique called in vitro gametogenesis or IVG to generate synthetic gametes for research and, potentially, for treating infertility. What would it mean for feminist concerns over the future of reproductive practice and biotechnological development if egg and sperm cells could be produced in laboratory conditions? In this article, I take on the question by discussing the emerging technique of IVG through the speculative feminist analysis of ambiguous reproductive futures. Feminist cultural and science studies scholars have explored the transformative effects of biomedicine on reproduction through science fiction novels and other cultural products. I theorise the speculative and visionary in biomedicine in the context of ethnographic methodology by drawing on ‘thought experiments’ conducted with stem cell scientists as shared acts of future-oriented contemplation. I develop the figure of SF proposed by Donna Haraway to investigate how science facts and speculative fabulation together shape futurities of reproduction. I propose including shifting frontiers in feminist thinking of the SFs in bioscience. Biomedical research aims to shift the borders between what is known and not known in reproductive biology, subsequently raising new technical, ethical and political issues in terms of stratified reproduction. The article shows that synthetic gametes are anticipated to intensify selective procreation. Simultaneously, IVG is seen to forge new biogenetic relationships and possibilities for non-normative reproduction and kin-making. Following Haraway, I argue that by ‘staying with the trouble’ of these biotechnological visions, feminist speculative analytics on technoscience offers a valuable tool to envision more hopeful and equal futures together with scientists.

Fertility and digital technology: narratives of using smartphone app 'Natural Cycles' while trying to conceive

Fertility awareness apps, which help to identify the 'fertile window' when conception is most likely, have been hailed as 'revolutionising' women's reproductive health. Despite rapidly growing popularity, little research has explored how people use these apps when trying to conceive and what these apps mean to them. We draw on in-depth, qualitative interviews, adopting a critical digital health studies lens (a sub-field of science and technology studies), to explore the experiences of cisgender women and partners with one such app, Natural Cycles, in the context of their daily lives. We found that many women valued the technology as a 'natural', inobtrusive alternative to biomedical intervention, and a means of controlling and knowing their bodies, amid a dearth of fertility-related education and care. Yet this technology also intervened materially and affectively into the spaces of their lives and relationships and privileged disembodied metrics (temperature) over embodied knowledge. Meanwhile, app language, advertising and cost have contributed to characterising 'typical' users as white, heterosexual, affluent, cisgender women without disabilities. In the context of neoliberal shifts towards bodily self-tracking, technologies appealing as novel, liberating and 'natural' to individuals who can access them may nevertheless reproduce highly gendered reproductive responsibilities, anxieties and broader health and social inequalities.

Biologically infallible? Men's views on male age-related fertility decline and sperm freezing

Trends in people having children later in life and increasing evidence of male age-related fertility decline (ARFD) has led some to propose sperm freezing as a suitable response. However, little consideration has been given to how men might respond to such a proposal, and there has been a paucity of empirical data to inform such a consideration. This paper arises from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with men (n = 25) who do not have children but want or expect to have them in the future. Data on men's perceptions of male ARFD and sperm freezing are presented and discussed in accordance with theoretical and conceptual tools relating to reproductive masculinity, biomedicalisation, gendered risk perception and meanings of sperm and masculinity. It suggests that that men's overall lack of concern regarding male ARFD and resistance towards ideas of sperm freezing result not only from a lack of exposure to evidence regarding male ARFD but are also shaped by ideals of reproductive masculinity, and may indicate resistance towards the idea of reproductive control. It argues that these positions perpetuate a gender unequal politicisation of ARFD and perpetuate particular gendered subjectivities relating to culpability and responsibility for guarding against risks of ARFD.