MRes/PhD Anthropology

Advancements in assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) have enabled a variety of "new" family forms - from trans parenthood to solo motherhood using donor sperm (Faircloth and Gurtin 2018). And yet, access to these technologies remains troublingly unequal. For many people hoping to conceive via ARTs, structural, social, practical, and ideological "areas of constraint" intersect, limiting their ability to do so (Inhorn 2003).

In England, LGBTQ+ women must overcome significant areas of constraint to become parents via ARTs. For example, to access IVF (in-vitro fertilisation) through the NHS (National Health Service), they must self-fund up to twelve cycles of IUI (intrauterine insemination). Due to this prohibitive financial requirement, some female same-sex couples pursue a non-medical route to parenthood instead - inseminating each other with donor sperm at home rather than at a licenced fertility clinic. As this route is not recognised (or regulated) by the state, these women are exposed to potential health risks and have precarious legal status as parents.

Based on eighteen months of ethnographic fieldwork in London, my doctoral project will explore how women negotiate love, intimacy, and reproduction in a society that devalues queer lives (see Hirsch and Wardlow 2006). I will focus on couples who are trying to conceive to attend to the affective experience of being in a liminal space between wanting children and having them. This will enable me to explore how multiple areas of constraint shape (and often re-route or suspend) these women's hopes for the future and their sense of self (Mamo 2007). I will also focus on female same-sex couples who have adopted or conceived via ARTs to explore the status of "biology" in queer mothering more broadly.