In this powerful book, Elizabeth Bartholet attempts to make sense of the worlds of adoption and fertility treatment by combining a moving personal narrative with compelling policy analysis. Family Bonds is conveniently available at a time when more children than ever are waiting to be adopted and when infertility treatment is becoming an increasingly popular, sophisticated, and expensive technology.
New perspectives in interpreting contemporary family and reproductive - haviour of Mediterranean Europe 1. THE NEW GEOGRAPHY OF FERTILITY AND THE FAMILY IN EUROPE The countries of southern Europe have begun to reduce conjugal fertility at a later date compared to most other nations in the west. This has been - plained by means of the category of delay: the backwardness of the pr- esses of accumulation and economic development being seen as the cause of the maintaining of the reproductive models of the past. Moreover, the inf- ence of the Catholic Church in Italy, Spain and Portugal is supposed to have delayed the processes of secularisation, rendering difficult the changes in mentality necessary for assuming modern patterns of reproductive behaviour not only for fertility, but also for the variables which are strictly linked to it, such as sexuality, contraception and abortion (Livi Bacci, 1977; Lesthaeghe and Wilson, 1986). 1. 1. The trends of very low fertility Now the panorama is very different. Since the mid-seventies, southern Europe has been washed by the tide of a lowest-low fertility (i. e. , TFR under 1. 5 for several a prolonged period, Billari et al. , 2003), which in some areas 1 has reached and maintained scarcely imaginable levels for years on end. Conversely, other areas of Europe, where fertility started to fall many d- ades earlier than in the regions of the sourth, have recovered or maintained considerably higher levels of fertility, often close to replacement level.
These four papers supplement the book Contraception and Reproduction: Health Consequences for Women and Children in the Developing World by bringing together data and analyses that would otherwise be difficult to obtain in a single source. The topics addressed are an analysis of the relationship between maternal mortality and changing reproductive patterns; the risks and benefits of contraception; the effects of changing reproductive patterns on infant health; and the psychosocial consequences to women of controlled fertility and contraceptive use.
The birth of the first test tube baby in 1978 focused attention on the sweeping advances in assisted reproductive technology (ART), which is now a multi-billion-dollar business in the United States. Sperm and eggs are bought and sold in a market that has few barriers to its skyrocketing growth. While ART has been an invaluable gift to thousands of people, creating new families, the use of someone else’s genetic material raises complex legal and public policy issues that touch on technological anxiety, eugenics, reproductive autonomy, identity, and family structure. How should the use of gametic material be regulated? Should recipients be able to choose the “best” sperm and eggs? Should a child ever be able to discover the identity of her gamete donor? Who can claim parental rights? Naomi R. Cahn explores these issues and many more in Test Tube Families, noting that although such questions are fundamental to the new reproductive technologies, there are few definitive answers currently provided by the law, ethics, or cultural norms. As a new generation of "donor kids" comes of age, Cahn calls for better regulation of ART, exhorting legal and policy-making communities to cease applying piecemeal laws and instead create legislation that sustains the fertility industry while simultaneously protecting the interests of donors, recipients, and the children that result from successful transfers.
Statistics show that over two million couples will experience some type of infertility issue when they try to become pregnant. However, when you are one of those two million, you feel completely alone and believe that no one can truly understand what you are going through. This honest and revealing book documents one couple's long and arduous journey to become parents from the eyes of the author. The longer this process took, the more emotional and difficult things became, and the more the author relied on this journal to sort out all the emotions she was having. She never expected that this journal would last for years, hundreds of hormone shots and pills, blood draws, surgical procedures, terrorist attacks, international flights and the most emotional and financial roller coaster that she had ever been on. But she and her husband were desperate to become parents, to have their own child to love, to hug, to experience life with. By sharing their experience, this book offers insight into the emotional, physical and sociological effects infertility has on a couple's relationship, their families, friends and themselves as individuals. It also provides in-depth detail of popular infertility treatments, domestic and international adoption processes.
In the Age of Revolution, how did American women conceive their lives and marital obligations? By examining the attitudes and behaviors surrounding the contentious issues of family, contraception, abortion, sexuality, beauty, and identity, Susan E. Klepp demonstrates that many women--rural and urban, free and enslaved--began to radically redefine motherhood. They asserted, or attempted to assert, control over their bodies, their marriages, and their daughters' opportunities. Late-eighteenth-century American women were among the first in the world to disavow the continual childbearing and large families that had long been considered ideal. Liberty, equality, and heartfelt religion led to new conceptions of virtuous, rational womanhood and responsible parenthood. These changes can be seen in falling birthrates, in advice to friends and kin, in portraits, and in a gradual, even reluctant, shift in men's opinions. Revolutionary-era women redefined femininity, fertility, family, and their futures by limiting births. Women might not have won the vote in the new Republic, they might not have gained formal rights in other spheres, but, Klepp argues, there was a women's revolution nonetheless.
Presents data on a wide range of topics based on personal interviews with a national sample of women 15-44 years of age in the U.S. It is organized around the central theme of pregnancy & its determinants & consequences. Contents: children ever born & total births expected; wanted & unwanted births; sexual intercourse; marriage & cohabitation; contraceptive use; fecundity, infertility, & sterilization operations; breastfeeding, maternity leave, & child care; adoption, stepchildren, & foster children; health insurance coverage; family planning & other medical services; cigarette smoking; HIV testing; pelvic inflammatory disease; & sex educ.
