1. Transformations: Gender, Reproduction and Contemporary Society
Intermediate Year
30 CATS
Caroline Wright
Hello everybody! I’m here to talk about my intermediate year module Transformations, so last chance to escape if this isn’t the talk for you!

2. Introduction
Takes something apparently ordinary and routine – having and bringing up children – and shakes it up
Reproduction generates anxiety and various institutions seek to govern it
Media representations sensationalise reproduction
Ordinary people are getting on with having and raising children in increasingly diverse ways
Transformations addresses changing practices
and discourses about reproduction
Mainly UK based, some international focus
Informed by feminist approaches
Offers sociological insight into issues most of
us will deal with
Sociology has a long tradition of shaking things up. This module takes something we might consider ordinary and routine – having and bringing up children – and renders it strange, something to be explained rather than assumed, certainly not natural but embedded in social and cultural values , practices and inequalities.
It soon becomes clear that reproduction generates a lot of anxiety and a range of key institutions seek to govern it (medical, legal, social welfare). The media make much of IVF mix-ups, surrogacy contracts gone wrong, teenage pregnancy, tending to sensationalise reproduction.
 At the same time it’s also clear that many people are getting on with the business of having and raising children in increasingly diverse and creative ways, and as sociologists we’re interested in how they make sense of their experiences.
 So Transformations addresses changing practices and discourses about reproduction, mainly in the UK but with some international perspectives. It takes a gendered approach, mostly framed around feminist perspectives but concerned with men’s lives as well as women’s and with other axes of difference. If you enjoy gendered modules then consider it; it is unapologetically feminist though, so it won’t be for everybody. You’ll also enjoy Transformations if you’re interested in health studies, ethics and the body. Law/Soc students interested in reproductive rights/reproductive justice often take this module, and it’s popular with mature students returning to study, who are often juggling parenting and University.
What students tell me they like best is that we address issues that feel very real to them, now or in the past or future, and to friends and family around them. It stimulates us to think seriously about our reproductive potential, whether and when we want children, what contraception to rely on, if we would consider adoption, how we might make a family in the future if we’re gay, lesbian or trans. It also helps to make sociological sense of difficult issues: abortion, miscarriage, post-natal depression, infertility, whether we’d ever donate our eggs or sperm. Plus module topics are always to the fore in film, TV and celebrity lives, and students enjoy learning to think them through sociologically.

3. Key Questions: Term 1 Why do women have children? Why do
men have children? Who needs children?
Do we have a right to be parents? To adopt,
to infertility treatment?
How do narratives of class, ‘race’/ethnicity, age, sexuality, (dis)ability inform ideas about who’s ‘fit’ to parent?
Why is late motherhood so frowned on?
To what extent does femininity rely on motherhood?
What’s the dominant construction of ‘good fathering’?
Where does the ‘breast is best’ narrative leave mothers who don’t want to or can’t breast-feed?
I’ve put up here some of the key questions that we ask in the first term, to give you an idea, and I’ll just go through the first 4. We start by asking a question that may seem obvious but in fact requires close attention:
Why do women have children? Why do men have children?
Connected to this we ask:
Who needs children? Does needing children give other people the right to make claims over people’s reproductive capacities? Who owns women’s reproductive bodies?
Do we have a right to be parents? To adopt? To infertility treatment? How do narratives of class, ‘race’/ethnicity, age, sexuality and (dis)ability inform ideas about who’s ‘fit’ to parent? For example, why is there a fear of lone mothers? Why do disabled women face assumptions that they won’t want/shouldn’t have children? Should gay and lesbian couples be able to adopt? Should we be able to adopt children from other countries, a la Madonna?
Why does society think nothing of men becoming fathers in their 60s or 70s but frown on new reproductive technologies that might allow women to become mothers in their 50s and 60s?

4. Link between biological and social parenting can’t be assumed
Parenting: Genetic
Gestational
Social
Link between biological and social parenting can’t be assumed
Why does separation of the two generate such anxiety?
We’ll unpick parenting and distinguish four types: social, genetic, gestational. Being a parent by caring for and raising a child, being a parent by providing genetic material; being a mother by bringing a foetus to term in the womb.
It’s often assumed that parents are both biologically and socially related to their children, but changing family forms and new reproductive technologies make this far from inevitable. Think of step-parents, adoptive parents, foster parents, sperm and egg donors, surrogate mothers. We analyse the fears and anxieties that arise when biological and social parenting are separated, for example about the wicked stepmother; the money-grabbing surrogate mother or sperm donor; the child of a lesbian couple with ‘two mummies’.

5. Key Questions: Term 2 What do the new reproductive technologies mean?
- are contraceptive technologies neutral?
- could there / should there be a pill for men?
- what’s at stake in the abortion debate?
- Is IVF a modern miracle or a usually unsuccessful risk?
- Does testing in pregnancy increase or decrease pregnant women’s anxieties?
- Is genetic testing a valuable application of science or a Frankenstein-like horror?
In term 2 we’ll explore and critique the new and not so new reproductive technologies.
 To what extent are contraceptive technologies neutral, or do they re/produce wider social norms and inequalities?
Could there/ should there be a pill for men? Would men take it? Could women trust them to take it?!
What’s at stake in the abortion debate? What’s going to happen to US abortion rights under Trump? Will women in NI succeed in getting abortion rights?
Is IVF a modern miracle helping people realise their dreams of parenthood, or a risky procedure that doesn’t work more often than it does and weighs particularly heavily on women’s bodies and psyches?
Is genetic testing of embryos/foetuses a valuable application of science to help parents have children without devastating disabilities, or is it the slippery slope to eugenics and ‘designer babies’?

6. Practicalities Participatory style of teaching, including
in lectures, with structure and support
Group project in term 2 culminating in presentation to class
Group project is class work and lays foundations for assessed work if you want
You can choose how you are assessed!
All core readings, viewings and listenings are electronic
Lectures are recorded
More about me:
Ask current students!
Now for some Practicalities. I’ll offer structure and support but you’ll be participating from the start, including in lectures, and as a 30 CATS module running across two terms we can really build on this. So at the heart of term 2 is a group project and presentation, so all the module content in week 7 is student-led. This also makes up the class work for the term and lays the foundation for a piece of assessed work if you want it to.
The group project gives you a chance to research what you’re most interested in, including films, TV, ads, and to respond to current events. This year one group did a great analysis of the legacy of slavery when it comes to black women’s reproductive rights; another group looked at men’s involvement in pregnancy and the phenomenon of ‘couvade’ where the father to be experiences symptoms of pregnancy; another did a great analysis of representation of ‘bad mothers’ in Toddlers and Tiaras; Gilmore Girls and Catherine Tate’s ‘Posh Mum’ sketches.
When it comes to assessment you can choose (within reason!): so all by exam, or all by assessed work, or half and half.  
All core readings, viewings, listenings are available electronically for ease of access, and I also record our lectures and they go up on Moodle.
I hope that’s given you some idea of the module and do me if you want more, eg. to look at this year’s Module Handbook. You can find out more about me on my homepage, where I’ve also put this Powerpoint if you want to have another look and for those who couldn’t be here today. And of course asking students who’ve taken the module what it’s really like is highly recommended!

7. Thanks for your attention, I know it’s very intense today
Thanks for your attention, I know it’s very intense today! Any questions? Things you’d like me to go over?