Second Revision Workshop

1. Second Revision Workshop Transformations, Week 22

2. Workshop Aims • Continue to draw connections across the module • Provoke refinements in your revision strategies • Think through the remaining topics – some key points • Discuss strategies in the exam room The Exam When? 2pm Monday 9June Where? Rootes Restaurant Area

3. Topic by Topic Revision 1 • Work in small groups on one of the following topics: Infant Feeding; Adoption; Timing Parenthood; Contraception; Abortion; Infertility; IVF & Gamete Donation; Reprogenetics; Surrogacy • Identify which module concepts are particularly relevant from the following list (2 slides). Then try to come up with three bullet points that reflect major issues/learning points for this topic that you would need to keep in mind when revising it. Can you think of any authors/studies relevant to this topic? • You won’t remember everything – don’t worry, it’s not a test; it’s an opportunity.

4. Key Module Concepts • Reproduction (obviously). Biological reproduction and social relations of reproduction, daily and generational reproduction, embodied work • Gender divisions of labour in reproduction, gender essentialism, binaries • Civic/cultural vs. ethnic nationalism and link to state policies • Reproductive Rights • ‘Foetal rights’ • Fertility rates, primary and secondary infertility, medical and social infertility, voluntary and involuntary childlessness, childfree by choice • New Reproductive Technologies, inc. IVF, surrogacy, reprogenetics, gamete donation • Ethics: of gamete donation, of genetic screening • Saviour Siblings • Parenting - biological or genetic - gestational [mitochondrial?] (mother only) - social - public and private

5. Module Concepts continued • Nuclear family, heteronormativity, normal/abnormal, moral panics • Femininity and Motherhood; Masculinity and Fatherhood, gendered identities, reified identities, intersectionality • ‘to father’ = to reproduce genetically; ‘to mother’ = to reproduce socially • Social birth (precedes actual birth) • Timing Reproduction – biological time / social time • ‘Fitness’ to parent, gendered discourses of ‘good’ parenting (and ‘bad’) • Eugenics, disability rights and reproduction • Possessive Individualism re claims over reproductive potential, stakeholders in reproductive capacity • Psychoanalysis and the ‘reproduction of mothering’ • Recombinant or Reconstituted families • Race, ‘racialization’ and the politics of reproduction • Surrogacy – partial and full, commercial & altruistic • Adoption – inc. transracial, transnational, lesbian and gay

6. Strategies in the Exam Room • Scenario 1: Your time management has gone awry and there’s only 10 minutes left when you’re only half way through your planned answer to the last question. • What do you do now, and what could you have done earlier? • Scenario 2: You got started ok but now your mind’s gone blank and you feel you can’t remember anything. • What do you do now, and what could you have done earlier?

7. Topic by Topic Revision 2 • Work in small groups on a different one of the following topics: Infant Feeding; Adoption; Timing Parenthood; Contraception; Abortion; Infertility; IVF and Gamete Donation; Reprogenetics; Surrogacy • From what you can recall about each topic, identify which module concepts are particularly relevant from the list. Then try to come up with three bullet points that reflect major issues/learning points for this topic that you would need to keep in mind when revising it, together with relevant authors/research.

8. Infant Feeding • Infant Feeding highly contested, linked to discourses of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mothering; risk; corporate power; identity/autonomy • History more complex than shift from mother’s breast-milk to formula: wet nursing; feeding animal milk (high IMR) • Formula developed from 1860s, by 1940s safe & popular in North • Costly and less safe in South campaigns for regulation (Nestle) • UK BFR in decline in 20thc, rises from 1970s, in 2010 81% of new mothers breastfeed at birth, only 1% EBF at 6 months • What shapes a mother’s choice about how to feed her infant? (social class; maternal age; embodied experience; support systems) • Breast-feeding advocacy promotes ‘Breast is best’ discourse: yes it is for infant health, environment; depends for family budget, convenience, mother’s health; no for mother-baby bonding • How do we support women to breastfeed without essentialising women and without stigmatizing those who don’t want to / can’t?

9. Adoption • Legal process transferring family belonging & legal rights & responsibilities from birth parent(s) to adoptive parents • Fewer babies available for adoption in UK than in past, main ‘source’ is children living in state institutions • Media controversy: recognise need to protect children but anxiety about children being removed from birth parents • Campion: Adoptive parents have to be extraordinary as social workers seek to ‘compensate’ children • 2005, 2007 UK legislation sought to impose equality - limited  • Transracial adoption: a practical solution or failing (black) children ‘given’ to white families and growing up confused? • Transnational adoption: a practical solution or new colonialism as minority world imports majority world babies?

10. Timing Parenthood • Timing of fatherhood not seen as controversial as timing of motherhood – why? • Decision to become a mother (or try to become a mother) depends on a range of social and interpersonal factors, as well as biological capacities. Best social time and best biological time may differ • Both younger and older mothers find themselves subject to negative stereotypes as a result of their perceived deviation from reproductive norms • The women negotiate those norms in ways which simultaneously reinforce them and disrupt them • Lived experiences of older and younger mothers deviate substantially from the ideologically driven representations

11. Contraception • Hormonal contraceptives have ended the necessary link between heterosex and reproduction • Debate continues as to whether this liberates women or whether it subjects them to contraceptive technologies with health risks and side effects • Contraception is still mainly seen as women’s responsibility, and all the recently developed methods work through women’s bodies– can be seen as positive and negative • Differences between women are important when it comes to accessing contraception, and the spectre of eugenics lingers – need to consider who is encouraged to use which method; who are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ users

12. Abortion • A very contested issue • Debate is frequently articulated in terms of competing rights (woman / foetus) • Alternative pro-choice argument mobilizes concept of women’s bodily autonomy • UK’s limited access to abortion granted on grounds of safeguarding women’s health, not right to choose • Abortion policy / practice tells us about normative ideas of what constitutes a ‘good mother’ and the ‘right’ kind of reproduction • The right not to have to choose abortion is as significant as the right to choose • There is tension between feminists and disability activists over abortion • Disability activists and anti-abortion groups may take same position but for different reasons

13. Infertility • Definitions of infertility are contested – not a static condition, medicaldefinitions structure treatment but infertility is socially experienced • Some causes of infertility are easily preventable (STIs) • Most infertility is undiagnosed but typically assumed to be the woman’s ‘fault’. IVF/ICSI bypass infertility they don’t cure it • Miscarriage may be normal but is not experienced as such • Experiences of infertility can be very traumatic (not least because of gendered expectations of parenthood, esp. motherhood) • Important to consider infertility from a global perspective – issues of reproductive health care; social impacts of infertility; gender relations • Feminists have focused on infertility to challenge normative ideas about what a ‘proper’ woman is and to emphasiseneed for primary reproductive health care / bodily autonomy etc.

14. IVF and Gamete Donation • IVF, fertilisation in glass, is a NRT in high demand, replaced IUI/DI for straight couples, success increasing but most cycles fail • Tightly regulated in UK, access on NHS rationed, unevenly • IVF affirms & disrupts normative reproductive categories and it’s meaning is context-specific • Gender division of labour in IVF very uneven towards women • Opposed by some feminists & non-feminists, on different grounds (bears heavily on women / interfering with ‘nature’) • Those using IVF face difficult choices about fate of ‘spare’ embryos • IVF a pre-requisite for other NRTs (ICSI; PGD; gestational surrogacy) and may use donor gametes • Donated eggs and sperm are not parallel bodily goods: eggs scarcer, harder to donate and donor motivations gendered • Where gametes can be traded for treatment is donation really a free choice?

15. Reprogenetics • Health, illness, the body and wide variety of traits and characteristics increasingly conceptualised in genetic terms • Controversy around reproductive genetics – status of the embryo; anxieties around ‘design’; links between reproductive genetics and stem cell research; ethics of creating saviour siblings • Reprogenetics privileges having a genetically related child • Genetic testing of prospective parents and of embryos in utero and pre-implantation likely to continue to expand, creating new choices, possibilities, dilemmas and responsibilities • Raises important ethical questions about what a life worth living is (re: exclusion of embryos with disabilities etc.) • UK likely to pioneer Mitochondrial replacement, creating new category of (female) DNA donor

16. Surrogacy • Term ‘surrogacy’ incorporates a wide range of practices / reproductive relationships (full/partial; commercial/altruistic, using DI, using IVF etc.) • Biological ‘facts’ are deployed in highly problematic ways in resolving / making sense of surrogacy arrangements • Practice of surrogacy raises concerns about commodification of women / babies; commercialization of reproduction; exploitation of (some) women; fragmentation of parenthood • Surrogate mothers typically of lower social status than ‘commissioning’ mothers (and fathers) • Some women who practice surrogacy prefer full surrogacy, where have no genetic relationship to child • How do we recognise the agency of surrogates and their contribution to family diversity whilst also paying attention to inequalities that shape their surrogacy practice?

17. Finally… • Best of luck with your revision and the exam • Wehope you’ve enjoyed the module • We’ve really valued your engagement 