Romancing the Sperm : : Shifting Biopolitics and the Making of Modern Families / / Diane Tober.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Rutgers University Press Complete eBook-Package 2019
• VerfasserIn: Tober, Diane,
• Place / Publishing House: New Brunswick, NJ : : Rutgers University Press, , [2018]; ©2019
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (238 p.) :; 1 table, 1 figure (graph)

The 1990s marked a new era in family formation. Increased access to donor sperm enabled single women and lesbian couples to create their families on their own terms, outside the bounds of heterosexual married relationships. However, emerging "alternative" families were not without social and political controversy. Women who chose to have children without male partners faced many challenges in their quest to have children. Despite current wider social acceptance of single people and same sex couples becoming parents, many of these challenges continue. In Romancing the Sperm, Diane Tober explores the intersections between sperm donation and the broader social and political environment in which "modern families" are created and regulated. Through tangible and intimate stories, this book provides a captivating read for anyone interested in family and kinship, genetics and eugenics, and how ever-expanding assisted reproductive technologies continue to redefine what it means to be human.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- Preface -- 1. Murphy Brown and the Lesbian Baby Boom -- 2. Technologies and Politics of Reproduction -- 3. Semen to Go: Choosing Conception Alternatively -- 4. Semen Transactions: Donor Screening and the Regulation of Sexuality -- 5. Grassroots Eugenics and the Fantasy Donor -- 6. Semen as Gift, Semen as Goods: Reproductive Workers and the Market in Altruism -- 7. From "Old Eggs" to "Odysseus's Journey": The Phenomenology of Infertility -- 8. What's Alternative about Family? -- 9. From Murphy Brown to Modern Families -- 10. Conclusion: Toward a New BioPoliTechs of Emerging Families -- Afterword -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- References -- Index -- ABOUT THE AUTHOR