Egg Freezing, Fertility and Reproductive Choice
Negotiating Responsibility, Hope and Modern Motherhood
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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
Baldwin's book draws from an exploratory sociological research study which explored the accounts of 31 female users of "social egg-freezing". Her cohort was comprised of women who were either about to undergo social egg freezing or had attempted or completed the process. The term "social egg freezing" signals the socially constituted nature of this technology and demonstrates how women's use of egg freezing as a form of fertility extension and genetic conservation was inherently socially situated. She investigates the way in which users of this technology determine and negotiate their mothering desires, which are mediated and constrained not only by wider socio-political and market contexts but also by their intimate encounters with (non)reproductive partners. Baldwin reveals pressures and burdens that reproductive technology can place upon women to draw upon and navigate these technologies in the pursuit of greater reproductive choice and control and in the process of family building.