From a comparative perspective, human life histories are unique and raising offspring is unusually costly: humans have relatively short birth intervals compared to other apes, childhood is long, mothers care simultaneously for many dependent children (other apes raise one offspring at a time), infant mortality is high in natural fertility/mortality populations, and human females have a long post-reproductive lifespan. These features conspire to make child raising very burdensome. Mothers frequently defray these costs with paternal help (not usual in other ape species), although this contribution is not always enough. Grandmothers, elder siblings, paid allocarers, or society as a whole, help to defray the costs of childcare, both in our evolutionary past and now. Studying offspring care in a various human societies, and other mammalian species, a wide range of specialists such as anthropologists, psychologists, animal behaviorists, evolutionary ecologists, economists and sociologists, have contributed to this volume, offering new insights into and a better understanding of one of the key areas of human society.

"Rooted in historical, site-based, narrative, and political accounts, Full Surrogacy Now is the seriously radical cry for full gestational justice that I long for. This kind of gestation depends on realizing the implications of knowing that we all actually, materially, make one another, and that this labor continues to be exploited, extracted, and alienated-unequally-at every turn in Capitalism and Patriarchy. Full of brilliant, generative, and also shamelessly biting critique of both bourgeois and communist tracts, feminist and otherwise, Lewis's voice is unique and bracing. I need it; it fills my whole self with reimagined possibilities for making oddkin who are not property. Lewis set out to write an immoderate, utopian, partisan, anti-authoritarian communist defense of surrogates and surrogacy in ramifying registers of meanings and practices, and she has succeeded. Lewis asks the necessary questions, 'Can we parent politically, hopefully, nonreproductively-in a comradely way?' Can we become full surrogates for and with each other? In a book full of fierce demystifications and sharp dissections of injustice masquerading as humanitarianism, nonetheless Lewis convincingly and radically affirms: 'Everywhere about me, I can see beautiful militants hell-bent on regeneration, not self-replication.'" - Donna Haraway

This collection examines enduring and topical questions in sexual and reproductive health in a range of contemporary Asian cultures. Beliefs and practices surrounding conception, pregnancy, birth, and confinement are studies in culturally specific contexts in Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Indonesia. Important and widely applicable health issues are also addressed, including the perception and management of HIV/AIDS, experiences of menopause and the interaction of cosmopolitan ("western'') medicine with traditional healthcare.

The feeding of human milk to socially and biologically unrelated infants is not a new phenomenon, but the Euroamerican values of individualism have generated expectations that mothers are individually responsible for feeding their own infants. Using a bio-communities of practice framework, this dynamic new analysis explores the emotional and material dimensions of the growing milk sharing practice in the Global North and its implications for contemporary understandings of infant feeding in the US. Ranging widely across themes of motherhood, gender and sociology, this is a compelling empirical account of infant feeding that stimulates new thinking about a contentious practice.

Nighttime for many new parents in the United States is fraught with the intense challenges of learning to breastfeed and helping their babies sleep so they can get rest themselves. Through careful ethnographic study of the dilemmas raised by nighttime breastfeeding, and their examination in the context of anthropological, historical, and feminist studies, this volume unravels the cultural tensions that underlie these difficulties. As parents negotiate these dilemmas, they not only confront conflicting medical guidelines about breastfeeding and solitary infant sleep, but also larger questions about cultural and moral expectations for children and parents, and their relationship with one another.

With reproductive medical technologies becoming more accessible, assisted donor conception is raising new and important questions about family life. Using in-depth interviews, Petra Nordqvist and Carol Smart explore the lived reality of donor conception and offer insights into the complexities of these new family relationships.

"Birth in the Age of AIDS" is a vivid and poignant portrayal of the experiences of HIV-positive women in India during pregnancy, birth, and motherhood at the beginning of the 21st century. The government of India, together with global health organizations, established an important public health initiative to prevent HIV transmission from mother to child. While this program, which targets poor women attending public maternity hospitals, has improved health outcomes for infants, it has resulted in sometimes devastatingly negative consequences for poor, young mothers because these women are being tested for HIV in far greater numbers than their male spouses and are often blamed for bringing this highly stigmatized disease into the family.
Based on research conducted by the author in India, this book chronicles the experiences of women from the point of their decisions about whether to accept HIV testing, through their decisions about whether or not to continue with the birth if they test HIV-positive, their birthing experiences in hospitals, decisions and practices surrounding breast-feeding vs. bottle-feeding, and their hopes and fears for the future of their children.

"Birth in the Age of AIDS" is a vivid and poignant portrayal of the experiences of HIV-positive women in India during pregnancy, birth, and motherhood at the beginning of the 21st century. The government of India, together with global health organizations, established an important public health initiative to prevent HIV transmission from mother to child. While this program, which targets poor women attending public maternity hospitals, has improved health outcomes for infants, it has resulted in sometimes devastatingly negative consequences for poor, young mothers because these women are being tested for HIV in far greater numbers than their male spouses and are often blamed for bringing this highly stigmatized disease into the family.
Based on research conducted by the author in India, this book chronicles the experiences of women from the point of their decisions about whether to accept HIV testing, through their decisions about whether or not to continue with the birth if they test HIV-positive, their birthing experiences in hospitals, decisions and practices surrounding breast-feeding vs. bottle-feeding, and their hopes and fears for the future of their children.

The expectation for fathers to be more involved with parenting their children and pitching in at home are higher than ever, yet broad social, political, and economic changes have made it more difficult for low-income men to be fathers. In It's a Setup, Timothy Black and Sky Keyes ground a moving and intimate narrative in the political and economic circumstances that shape the lives of low-income fathers. Based on 138 life history interviews, they expose the contradiction that while the norms and expectations of father involvement have changed rapidly within a generation, labor force and state support for fathering on the margins has deteriorated. Tracking these life histories, they move us through the lived experiences of job precarity, welfare cuts, punitive child support courts, public housing neglect, and the criminalization of poverty to demonstrate that without transformative systemic change, individual determination is not enough. Fathers on the social and economic margins are setup to fail.

Focusing on the key themes of power, kinship, and technological innovation, this volume offers a set of carefully argued studies that emphasize the importance of ethnographic method, as well as anthropological theory, to current debates about the reproductive processes of humans, animals, and plants. Reproducing Reproduction addresses these debates in a range of sites in which reproduction is being redefined and argues persuasively for a renewed appreciation of the centrality of reproductive politics to cultural and historical change. In chapters on abortion, assisted conception, biodiversity conservation, artificial life sciences, adoption, intellectual property, and prenatal screening, Reproducing Reproduction contends that ideologies of class, nation, health, gender, nature, and kinship have reproductive models at their core. Including prize-winning essays by Charis Cussins and Stefan Helmreich, this volume will be of great interest to a wide audience in the social sciences and health technology fields.

"I am grateful to William Marsiglio for having done this book. . . The bibliography alone, wonderfully interdisciplinary, including some classics but brought right up to date, makes the book indispensible. Want to know what is known about men and birth control, men and childbirth, men and abortion? This is the place to begin your research."
--"American Journal of Sociology"

In what ways do men think about and express themselves as procreative beings? Under what circumstances do they develop paternal identities? What is their involvement with partners during the pregnancy and delivery process, and how do they feel about it?

In Procreative Man, William Marsiglio addresses these and other timely questions with an eye toward the past, present, and future. Drawing upon writings ranging from sociology to biomedicine, Marsiglio develops a novel framework for exploring men's multifaceted and gendered experiences as procreative beings. Addressing such issues as how men feel about their limited role in the abortion decision and process, how important genetic ties are for men who want to be fathers, and men's reactions to infertility, Marsiglio shows how men's roles in creating and fathering human life is embedded within a rapidly changing cultural and sociopolitical environment.

The most comprehensive analysis of men and procreation, this theoretically informed work challenges us to expand our vision of fatherhood.

Did you know that...The "contemporary" fashion of living together before marriage is far from new, and was frequently practiced in earlier days...Self-divorce, although never legal, was once a commonplace occurrence...Marriage is more popular today than in the Victorian era...Marriage in church was not compulsory in England and Wales until the mid-18th century. These are just a few of the fascinating, and often surprising, revelations in For Better, For Worse, the most comprehensive treatment to date of the history of marriage in a major Western society. Using fresh evidence from popular courtship and wedding rituals over four centuries, Gillis challenges the widely held belief that marriage has evolved from a cold, impersonal arrangement to a more affectionate, egalitarian form of companionship. The truth, argues Gillis, lies somewhere in between: conjugal love was never wholly absent in preindustrial times, while today's marriages are less companionate than is commonly believed. Gillis also illustrates, in rich detail, the perpetual tension between marital ideals and actual practices. This social history of the behavior and emotions of ordinary men and women radically revises our perspective on love and marriage in the past--and the present.

In the decades it takes to bring up a child, parents face challenges that are both helped and hindered by the fact that they are living through a period of unprecedented digital innovation. In Parenting for a Digital Future, Sonia Livingstone and Alicia Blum-Ross draw on extensive and diverse qualitative and quantitative research with a range of parents in the UK to reveal how digital technologies characterize parenting in late modernity, as parents determine how to forge new territory with little precedent or support. They chart how parents often enact authority and values through digital technologies since "screen time," games, and social media have become both ways of being together and of setting boundaries. Parenting for a Digital Future moves beyond the panicky headlines to offer a deeply researched exploration of what it means to parent in a period of significant social and technological change.

Emerging technologies in reproductive science won't just change the ways we become parents-they'll play a key role in the evolving definition of "family." Traditional family structures are adapting to make room for children conceived in previously unimaginable ways. Whole industries and internet-enabled communities are being built around reproductive technologies. And there's more change coming as science continues to move forward. Combining intimate personal stories with cutting-edge research, Reconceptions invites readers to reconsider their own ideas about parenthood and embrace a new vision of the meaning of family. In 2012, Rachel Lehmann-Haupt, an award-winning journalist, chose to begin a family on her own as a single mother by choice. In the years since her son was born, Rachel's interest in collaborative reproduction has only grown-leading her to search for pioneers in reproductive science and the different permutations of families that this science is making possible. In Reconceptions, she shares intimate stories from the bleeding edge of society's redefinition of family-including her own experience of creating a new kind of tribe with her son's "dosies," or donor siblings, and their parents. In these pages, readers will meet: Tyra, the egg donor and professional surrogate who doesn't want kids of her own, but stays in touch with several of the families she's helped in the conception of their children. Sam, the single father by choice who worked with a surrogate and donor egg to conceive his son who he is now raising with his girlfriend. Rob and Scotty, the gay couple whose egg donor is now a friend and fixture at family social gatherings. The author's Facebook group of mothers who conceived their children with the same sperm donor-and how the group served as a much much-needed support system through the worst of the COVID pandemic. Reconceptions offers a compelling vision of what advances in reproductive science mean for the definition of family in the 21st century and beyond, and imparts a modern story for anyone looking to better understand their own familial relationships-no matter what their family looks like.

Reproduction has entered a new ice age: the ability to cryopreserve reproductive cells, tissue and embryos are fundamentally changing our understanding of what it means to be a reproductive citizen. This book explores the ways in which visions of desirable reproductive futures entangle with advances in freezing technologies, with the authors situating their discussions of cryo-fertility within the Scandinavian region, asking: * How does cryopreservation help mobilize particular understandings of reproductive time, reproductive rights and reproductive autonomy? * What values are embedded within Scandinavian laws that seek to regulate cryo-technologies? * How are frozen states enacted in clinical settings and how do the women and men who freeze imagine the preservation of reproductive parts? These questions demand a collaborative approach. The authors empirically cut across the arenas of bioethics/law, practices/experiences, and culture/commerce in order to pin down often complex and far-reaching answers.

Pulitzer prizewinner Carl Degler has written the first general history of women in America for our generation. The book brings into historical perspective one climactic question: How is woman's right to equality of opportunity going to be reconciled with the demands of the family? The modern family, Degler writes, has been shaped by women's search for greater autonomy within the family. "At Odds" shows how that evolution took place, beginning in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Transnational Reproduction traces the relationships among Western aspiring parents, Indian surrogates, and egg donors from around the world. In the early 2010s India was one of the top providers of surrogacy services in the world. Drawing on interviews with commissioning parents, surrogates, and egg donors as well as doctors and family members, Daisy Deomampo argues that while the surrogacy industry in India offers a clear example of "stratified reproduction"-the ways in which political, economic, and social forces structure the conditions under which women carry out physical and social reproductive labor-it also complicates that concept as the various actors in this reproductive work struggle to understand their relationships to one another. The book shows how these actors make sense of their connections, illuminating the ways in which kinship ties are challenged, transformed, or reinforced in the context of transnational gestational surrogacy. The volume revisits the concept of stratified reproduction in ways that offer a more robust and nuanced understanding of race and power as ideas about kinship intersect with structures of inequality. It demonstrates that while reproductive actors share a common quest for conception, they make sense of family in the context of globalized assisted reproductive technologies in very different ways. In doing so, Deomampo uncovers the specific racial reproductive imaginaries that underpin the unequal relations at the heart of transnational surrogacy.

An account of a Black anthropologist's year of fieldwork in a Southern community offers in-depth analyses which reveal a South untouched by the civil-rights movement.

A detailed story of how social science contributed to gay rights gains in the courts. For most of American history, public opinion was strongly opposed to gay rights. Marriage equality had negligible public support throughout the 1970s-1980s. Yet, starting in the 1990s, American opinion toward marriage equality changed more than any other attitude in the history of American public opinion. In Rainbow after the Storm, Michael J. Rosenfeld explains how attitudes toward marriage equality changed so much, and how public opinion change drove change at the ballot box and in the courts. As Rosenfeld shows, in three crucial same-sex marriage trials, the supporters and opponents of marriage equality faced off. Rosenfeld describes the struggles of the same-sex couples who, with few resources at their disposal, and against formidable state and religious opponents, sued for the right to marry and eventually won. The first comprehensive analysis of the marriage equality movement in the U.S., The Rainbow after the Storm tells the stories of key individuals, the court battles, and the society-wide explanations for the rapid liberalization of attitudes toward gay rights that made same-sex marriage the law of the U.S. sooner than almost anyone thought was possible.

How do women in Niger experience pregnancy and childbirth differently from women in the United States or Europe? Barbara M. Cooper sets out to understand childbirth in a country with the world's highest fertility rate and an alarmingly high rate of maternal and infant mortality. Cooper shows how the environment, slavery and abolition, French military rule, and the rapid expansion of Islam have all influenced childbirth and fertility in Niger from the 19th century to the present day. She sketches a landscape where fear of infertility generates intense competition between communities, ethnicities, and co-wives and creates a culture where concerns about infertility dominate concerns about overpopulation, where illegitimate children are rejected, and where the education of girls is sacrificed in the name of avoiding shame. Given a medical system poorly adapted to women's needs, a precarious economy, and a political context where it is impossible to address sexuality openly, Cooper discovers that it is little wonder that pregnancy and birth are a woman's greatest pride as well as a source of grave danger.

The expectation for fathers to be more involved with parenting their children and pitching in at home are higher than ever, yet broad social, political, and economic changes have made it more difficult for low-income men to be fathers. In It's a Setup, Timothy Black and Sky Keyes ground a moving and intimate narrative in the political and economic circumstances that shape the lives of low-income fathers. Based on 138 life history interviews, they expose the contradiction that while the norms and expectations of father involvement have changed rapidly within a generation, labor force and state support for fathering on the margins has deteriorated. Tracking these life histories, they move us through the lived experiences of job precarity, welfare cuts, punitive child support courts, public housing neglect, and the criminalization of poverty to demonstrate that without transformative systemic change, individual determination is not enough. Fathers on the social and economic margins are setup to fail.

Pregnant Pictures makes a vital contribution to the study of the social meanings of photographs by locating photographic images of pregnancy and bringing them into dialogue with contemporary visual theory, feminist work on the body, and current debates over the politics of reproduction. The volume collects over 100 photographs of pregnant women, the most complete photo archive of its kind in existence, including:
* medical photographs and family photographs since the turn of the century
* art photographs and advertisements for maternity clothing from the 1930s to the present
* photos from lay childbirth manuals from 1950 to present.
Sandra Matthews and Laura Wexler accompany the photos with an insightful analysis that provides the opportunity to rethink, in fresh terms, important issues surrounding the representation of women's bodies.

'As informative as it is poetic' Dolly Alderton 'Compassionate, funny and beautifully written' Daisy Buchanan ------------------------------ Every woman will experience the panic years in some way between her mid-twenties and early-forties. This maddening period of transformation and personal crisis is recognisable by the myriad of decisions we make - about partners, holidays, jobs, homes, savings, friendships - all of which are impacted by the urgency of the single decision that comes with a biological deadline, the one decision that is impossible to take back; whether or not to have a baby. But how to stay sane in such a maddening time? How to know who you are and what you might want from life? How to know if you're making the right decisions? Raw, hilarious and beguilingly honest, Nell Frizzell's account of her panic years is both an arm around the shoulder and a campaign to start a conversation. This affects us all - women, men, mothers, children, partners, friends, colleagues - so it's time we started talking about it with a little more candour. WHAT READERS ARE SAYING - 'Loved this book! Highly recommend for any woman (or man!) during the weird time in your 20s' ***** - 'Those panicky feelings of being a 24-30 something put into words' ***** - 'This book brings forth a sigh of relief. Excellent book that really taps into what so many of us are thinking and feeling, but not saying' *****

Over the past hundred years, population policy has been a powerful tactic for achieving national goals. Whether the focus has been on increasing the birth rate to project strength and promote nation-building-as in Brazil in the 1960s, where the military government insisted that a "powerful nation meant a populous nation, " - or on limiting population through contraception and sterilization as a means of combatting overpopulation, poverty, and various other social ills, states have always used women's bodies as a political resource. In Reproductive States, a group of international scholars-specialists in population and reproductive politics of Japan, Germany, India, Egypt, Nigeria, China, Brazil, the Soviet Union/Russia, and the United States-explore the population politics, policies and practices adopted in these countries and offer reflections on the outcomes of those policies and their legacies. The essays in this volume focus on the context that stimulated nations to develop demographic imperatives regarding population size and "quality," and consider how those imperatives became unique sets of priorities and strategies. They also illuminate how these nations crafted their own policies and practices, often while responding to United Nations- and U.S.- driven population goals, tactics, and interventions. The global perspective of this volume shines light on national specificities, including change over time within a nation, while also capturing interconnections among various national politics and discourses, including evolving constructions of the key and complex concept of "overpopulation." The first volume to survey population policies from key countries on five continents and to interweave gender politics, reproductive rights, statecraft, and world systems, Reproductive States will be an essential work for scholars of anthropology, women and gender studies, feminist theory, and biopolitics.