Intermediate Year 30 CATS 3 Terms

Introduction Takes something apparently ordinary and routine – having and bringing up children – and renders it strange Reproduction generates anxiety and various institutions seek to govern it Media representations sensationalise reproduction Ordinary people are getting on with having and raising children in increasingly diverse ways Transformations addresses changing practices and discourses about reproduction Mainly UK based but with some international perspectives Informed by feminist approaches

Key Questions Why do women have children? Why do men have children? Who needs children? Do we have a right to be parents? To adopt, to infertility treatment? How do narratives of class, ‘race’/ethnicity, age, sexuality, (dis)ability inform ideas about who’s ‘fit’ to parent? Why is late motherhood so frowned on? To what extent does femininity rely on motherhood? What’s the dominant construction of ‘good fathering’? Where does the ‘breast is best’ narrative leave mothers who don’t want to or can’t breast-feed?

Parenting: Genetic Gestational Social Link between biological and social parenting can’t be assumed Why does separation of the two generate such anxiety?

What do the new reproductive technologies mean? - are contraceptive technologies neutral or do they re/produce wider social norms and inequalities? - what’s at stake in the abortion debate? - Is IVF a modern miracle or a usually unsuccessful risk? - Does testing in pregnancy increase or decrease pregnant women’s anxieties? - Is genetic testing a valuable application of science or a Frankenstein-like horror?

Practicalities Be prepared for a lot of participation, in lectures and seminars, with structure and support Group project in term 2 culminating in minute presentation to class Group project lays foundations for assessed work Standard choice of assessment All core readings electronic Have a look online: demicstaff/wrightc/home/teaching/transform demicstaff/wrightc/home/teaching/transform Ask current students

Thanks for listening… Any questions?