REPRO-SCAPES

The proliferation of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ARTs) has contributed to some of the major transformations in the Western kinship model over the past few decades. The new possibilities of reproduction, in-vitro fertilization, gamete donation, and surrogacy, i.e. “embodied progress” (Franklin, 1997) have raised new social dilemmas. How can we understand procreation, family, parenthood and relatedness in families that are not heterosexual, not nuclear, not genetic and not traditionally gendered?

Through their challenge of the traditional kinship system, solo individuals and same-sex couples who use ARTs moreover question: a) the construction of sex on which the gender binary is built; b) the normative way of reproduction where sexed bodies are affixed to gender identities that are tethered to reproductive experiences, and are tied to parenting roles (O´Reilly 2021) and c) traditional, biogenetic understandings of kinship and relatedness. The existence of sperm and egg donors and surrogates represents its own threat to the traditional kinship system. Where do these genetic parents fit and how are they made ‘un-kin’ (Payne 2023)? And how does donor offspring experience these relations?
This project aims to analyse, first, the inter-relationship of the biological, social, political, ethical, legal and ideological relations between ARTs and new family-forms, and how those relations shape these families’ experiences. Second, it aims to explore the ways in which these new families challenge dominant ideologies, thereby creating emergent masculinities and femininities as well as other non-dualistic ways of being and parenting.

This project focuses on these questions in a Danish context and is part of a larger ERC project called ‘REPROSCAPES’, which explores these questions in an Spanish, Israeli and Canadian context too.