Romancing the sperm : shifting biopolitics and the making of modern families
by Diane Tober
Language: English
New Brunswick, Camden, and Newark, New Jersey : Rutgers University Press, [2019].
xv, 220 pages ; 23 cm.
ISBN: 0813590787 ; 0813590795
Summary: The 1990s marked a new era in family formation. Increased access to donor sperm enabled single women and lesbian couples to create their families on their own terms, outside the bounds of heterosexual married relationships. However, emerging "alternative" families were not without social and political controversy. Women who chose to have children without male partners faced many challenges in their quest to have children. Despite current wider social acceptance of single people and same sex couples becoming parents, many of these challenges continue. In Romancing the Sperm, Diane Tober explores the intersections between sperm donation and the broader social and political environment in which "modern families" are created and regulated. Through tangible and intimate stories, this book provides a captivating read for anyone interested in family and kinship, genetics and eugenics, and how ever-expanding assisted reproductive technologies continue to redefine what it means to be human.
Available: https://www.amazon.com/Romancing-Sperm-Shifting-Biopolitics-Families/dp/0813590795
Subjects:
- Artificial insemination -- Social aspects
- Families
- Single mothers
- Lesbian mothers
- Human reproductive technology -- Social aspects
Mediated kinship : gender, race and sexuality in donor families
by Rikke Anassen
Language: English
London ; New York : Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2019. ©2019.
198 p.
ISBN: 9781351233439 ; 1351233432
Summary: Illustrating the fascinating intersections of online media and new kinship, this book presents a study of the increasing numbers of single women and lesbian couples reproducing by using donor sperm. It explores how they connect with each other online, develop intimate digital communities and, most importantly, locate their children’s hitherto unknown biological half-siblings, throughout the world. The author discusses how these new families - consisting of only mothers - engage in extended families involving large numbers of ‘donor siblings’. The new families challenge previous understandings of kinship, and provide illustrations of how norms of gender, sexuality and family are challenged, negotiated and maintained in contemporary times. A crucial study of contemporary formations of family, gender and race, Mediated Kinship discusses the racial aspects of the world’s largest sperm bank exporting Danish sperm (termed ‘Viking sperm’), and explores the narratives of whiteness and imagined racial superiority that circulate among mothers, as well as the racialisations accompanying commercial online sperm sales. By analysing contemporary families of donor-conceived children in the context of legislation, reproduction technologies and online media, the book will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in race and ethnicity, whiteness, gender, sexuality, kinship and the sociology of the family.
Available: https://www.amazon.com/Mediated-Kinship-Sexuality-Routledge-Sociology/dp/0815377959/
Subjects:
- Lesbian couples as parents
- Children of gay parents
- Single mothers
