This paper theoretically locates and empirically examines the concept of alternatives to (biological) reproduction. By looking at the period right before in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) was invented in Britain (1978), this paper explores the idea of how individuals whose bodies, which in medical terms were uncapable of producing their own biological children, were meant to be advised, and hence what other reproductive futures could have been possible if ‘hope’ technologies like IVF would not exist. To make these connections, I draw on radical feminist perspectives of the time, such as by S. Firestone (1970) and A. Rich (1977). Their critique informs how against the borders of the nuclear family’s ideals about biological relatedness and procreation, the alternatives to (biological) reproduction emerged and became gendered not only with respect to procreation, but also and perhaps even more importantly with respect to when one ‘failed’ to procreate. I analyse 160 chapters/articles published between 1950 and 1980 in handbooks for childless couples and their family doctors, and in professional journals for family doctors, i.e. Family Planning, Practitioners, BMJ, and the Lancet. Through my analysis, I show that as early as in 1950s hope in technological progress to cure infertility and believe that couples should seek advice nurtured the desire to have biological children. This desire was further embraced in 1960s through artificial insemination and hormonal treatments, rather than adoption, as the major alternatives to achieve and control biological reproduction. However, as the women’s liberation movement challenged the pronatalist and oppressive nature of male-dominated reproductive health in 1970s, voluntary childlessness, which in 1950s was largely seen as a deviant lifestyle, now became appropriated – yet through the boundaries of nuclear family – as a way for practitioners to empower especially infertile women to find a new meaning in life when no other biological alternatives were available. While my findings illustrate that the needs of biological nuclear family were interlinked with how alternatives to (biological) reproduction were appropriated in medical advice before IVF, I argue that the concept of alternatives should be seen as a pathway to study reproduction, parenting, and relatedness beyond the boundaries of biological kin-making.

Yuliya Hilevych works on the sociological and historical study of reproduction, social relations and individual agency, and population politics in a comparative perspective of Western and Eastern Europe. After receiving her PhD from Wageningen University in the Netherlands in 2016, Yuliya is currently a Newton International Fellow (British Academy) at the Faculty of History, and an affiliated researcher in the Reproductive Sociology Group (ReproSoc) at the University of Cambridge. Previously, Yuliya held research positions in a United Nations project at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) and at Radboud University in the Netherlands. In her current project “The ART of Conception Before Assisted Reproductive Technologies: Infertility Identities in Britain, 1950-1980”, Yuliya studies the emergence of alternatives to (biological) parenting before the invention of IVF (1978) in Britain.

NA