Monstrous Motherhood – Women on the Edge of Reproductive Age

ABSTRACT

Women using reproductive technologies to extend the period they can procreate challenge nature and culture, and traverse the boundary between what is considered normal and abnormal. In other words, women inhabit the potentialities of reproductive change found in Margrit Schildrich's figure of the monstrous. Haraway and Dumit's implosion method is a useful vehicle for following women who are on the edge of reproductive age through legislation, the media, and the fertility clinic, revealing how maternal age is disciplined and (re)configured. While older women who conceived naturally are viewed as acceptable mothers, those who used technological assistance are perceived with uneasiness. The dichotomy of the natural and the unnatural is especially prevalent as an ordering principle in legislation, but it is (re)configured in media reports and clinical settings where a youthful appearance mental attitude and behaviour, can mitigate age. While the discussion about an age limit for parenthood is important, the nature-based ideas that are central to regulating women's bodies but not men's should be challenged. The way that moral boundaries emerge calls for legislation, media perceptions, and clinical practices to be adjusted to include new modes of ordering that are less repressive of women, their bodies, and their reproductive lives.

KEYWORDS:

• Monstrosity
• reproduction
• motherhood
• age
• reproductive technologies
• nature

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Independent Research Fund Denmark: [Grant Number 95-26112].

Notes on contributors

Stine Willum Adrian

Stine Willum Adrian is an Associate Professor in Techno-Anthropology at Aalborg University. Her publications draw on her numerous ethnographic studies on reproductive technologies of life and death, and she is specialized in interdisciplinary feminist technoscience.

Charlotte Kroløkke

Charlotte Kroløkke is Professor in Cultural Studies. She publishes on feminist cultural analyses of reproductive technologies and works in the interdisciplinary field of feminist science studies.

Janne Rothmar Herrmann

Janne Rothmar Herrmann is Professor with special responsibilities in health law and technology at the University of Copenhagen. She publishes on reproductive law and reproductive rights in both legal and interdisciplinary journals.