1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910821837103321

Autore

Bühler Nolwenn

Titolo

When reproduction meets ageing : the science and medicine of the fertility decline / / Nolwenn Bühler (University of Lausanne, Switzerland)

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Bingley, England : , : Emerald Publishing, , [2021]

©2021

ISBN

1-83909-746-9

1-83909-748-5

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (249 pages)

Collana

Emerald studies in reproduction, culture and society

Disciplina

304.632

Soggetti

Fertility, Human - Social aspects

Family planning

Human reproduction - Age factors

Human reproductive technology

Fertility, Human

Feminist theory

Social Science - Feminism & Feminist Theory

Medical sociology

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Includes index.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction: A question of age -- Chapter 1. Natures and cultures: divisions, entanglements and reconfigurations -- Chapter 2. The science of population and the quest for natural fertility: what age becomes in statistics -- Chapter 3. From age to ageing: arts and the science of 'old eggs' -- Chapter 4. When age matters: the statistics and biology of fertility decline in clinical choreographies -- Chapter 5. Ageing eggs, ageless mothers? Egg donation and the extension of fertility -- Chapter 6. Eggs for ever or the prospect of regeneration -- Conclusion: rethinking the materialisation of age through the lens of its political implications.

Sommario/riassunto

What is really biological about the "biological clock" and how can we account for its embodied reality from a feminist perspective? Addressing long-standing questions about the articulation of the



biological and the social in the making of bodies and identities, this book questions the nature of reproductive ageing, a taken for granted "fact of life" at the core of reproductive biomedicine. Opening the black box of the biological, it makes a way between essentialism and constructivism with the aim of accounting for its materiality, while also illuminating its political implications. Since the 1970s, alarming discourses about declining fertility and the difficulties of balancing work and family have flourished in Western countries, putting women's reproductive age and the fertility decline to the centre of public and medical attention. Reproductive biomedicine constitutes a specific domain invested with hopes for technological and medical answers and a new market for fertility extension technologies, such as social egg freezing, is developing. By following the biological-social entanglements (or the naturecultures) of age-related infertility in the science and medicine of reproduction, this study explores how age materializes and documents what happens when reproduction meets ageing. Deeply transdisciplinary, it questions what is fixed about the biology of the fertility decline in a way which adds complexity to debates about the biomedicalization of reproductive ageing.