Productive Paradoxes of the Assisted Reproductive Technologies in the Context of the New Kinship Studies

Abstract

This article argues that the paradoxical, domain-crossing qualities of the assisted reproductive technologies have made them exceptionally productive in the “new kinship studies” in a number of different ways. First, the assisted reproductive technologies have collapsed the separations—between nature and culture, home and work, love and money, the domestic and the economic—that have been foundational to the conception of “modernity.” Second, they have been used creatively to generate a diverse array of new forms of kinship and kin-making around the globe. Third, their domain-crossing proclivities have made them a model and “platform” for “enterprising up” reproduction in the new bioindustrial complex. Finally, cross-cultural differences in religious, cultural, and national regulations concerning the reproductive technologies have generated complex and shifting global patterns in the commercialization and stratification of reproduction that reflect tensions between the reproductive liberties and opportunities these technologies support and the reproductive injustices they so often entail.

Being questioned as parents: An interview study with Swedish commissioning parents using transnational surrogacy

“…As suggested by McKinnon, ‘Which ties will be constituted as “real” or “natural” are being questioned with assisted reproductive technology’ (2015:9). Thus, the many different legal processes described by the commissioning parents in the present study corroborate what other researchers have found: parenthood is socially constructed and what constitutes kinship is under constant change (Thompson, 2005).…”

Hegemony and Heteronormativity: Homonormative Discourses of LGBTQ Activists About Lesbian and Gay Parenting

“…This is the case, for instance, for the Italian regulation on assisted reproductive technologies (Legge 20 maggio 2004) that restricts fertility treatments to those situations-stable heterosexual couples-in which non-natural reproduction is allowed, because it serves to reproduce the normal acceptable family (Parolin & Perrotta, 2012). New assisted reproductive technologies deconstruct the association between biology and kinship, showing that they can be an object of choice (Hayden, 1995;McKinnon, 2015). The limits of nature cannot be taken for granted, and kinship needs to be conceived as flexible and moldable by human engagement (Carsten, 2004).…”

Searching for ‘relations’ using a DNA linking register by adults conceived following sperm donation

“…People want a 'child of their own' and this leads them to explore the option of using a donor. By using donor conception, the child is not theirs in a strictly biological sense -(s)he may not be genetically related to the future parentsbut the child is theirs in the sense they have taken steps to instigate her/his existence, they 'intend' to parent (McKinnon, 2015). Thus, as Strathern (1992) notes, reproductive technologies create a new convention: a distinction between social and biological parenting that does not straightforwardly supersede the importance of biological links but instead displaces them to another domain.…”