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Making connections: family and relatedness in clinics of assisted conception in Italy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 January 2016

Monica Bonaccorso
Monica Bonaccorso*
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge, Department of Social Anthropology, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RF. E-mail: [email protected]
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Summary

This article explores contemporary notions of Italian kinship—procreation, the family, biological and social relatedness—as they are shaped by programmes of gamete donation (these are programmes that require the use of third-party egg and semen to achieve conception). The research was carried out in Italian clinics of assisted conception and presents the views of heterosexual couples suffering from impaired infertility. The overall material reveals the power of kinship as a cultural form.

Type
Articles
Information
Modern Italy , Volume 9 , Issue 1: Special Issue: gender and the private sphere in Italy since 1945 , May 2004 , pp. 59 - 68
Copyright
Copyright © Association for the study of Modern Italy 

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References

Notes

1. Since the 1980s, and especially during the 1990s, social anthropologists have become increasingly interested in medical technologies, in particular in America and in Great Britain. As a result the existing literature is mostly dominated by a Euro-American perspective. See Daniels, Ken and Haimes, Erica, Donor Insemination: International Social Science Perspectives , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998; Edwards, Jeanette, Franklin, Sarah, Hirsch, Eric, Price, Frances and Strathern, Marilyn (eds), Technologies of Procreation: Kinship in the Age of Assisted Conception, Routledge, London, 1999; Franklin, Sarah, Embodied Progress: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception, Routledge, London, 1997; Franklin, Sarah and Ragoné, Helena, Reproducing Reproduction: Kinship, Power and Technological Innovation, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 1998; McNeil, Maureen, Varcoe, Ian and Yearley, Steven (eds), The New Reproductive Technologies, Macmillan, London, 1990; Novaes, Simone, ‘Giving, Receiving, Repaying: Gamete Donors and Donor Policies in Reproductive Medicine’, Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care, 5, 4, 1989, pp. 639–657; Novaes, Simone, ‘The Medical Management of Donor Insemination’, in Daniels, and Haimes, (eds), Donor Insemination; Frances Price, ‘Having Triplets, Quads or Quines: Who Bears the Responsibility?’, in Stacey, Meg (ed.), Changing Human Reproduction, Sage, London, 1992; Frances Price, ‘Conceiving Relations: Egg and Sperm in Assisted Conception’, in Bainham, Andrew, Pearl, David and Pickford, Ros (eds), Frontiers of Family Law, Wiley, Chichester, 1995; Ragoné, Helena, Surrogate Motherhood: Conception in the Heart, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1994; Ragoné, Helena, ‘Chasing the Blood Tie: Surrogate Mothers, Adoptive Mothers and Fathers’, American Ethnologist, 23, 2, 1996, pp. 352–365; Stacey, Meg, Changing Human Reproduction, London, Sage, 1992; Stanworth, Michelle, Reproductive Technologies, Oxford, Polity Press, 1987.Google Scholar

2. For an overall view see Bonaccorso, Monica, ‘The Traffic in Kinship: Assisted Conception for Infertile Heterosexual Couples and Lesbian and Gay Couples in Italy’, unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Cambridge, 2000; and ‘Strategies in (Private) Clinics of Assisted Conception’, in Unnithan, Maya (ed.), Reproductive Change, Medicine and the State: Ethnographic Explorations of Agency in Childbearing, Berghahn, Oxford, 2004.Google Scholar

3. See Ragoné, , Surrogate Motherhood and ‘Chasing the Blood Tie’; Davis-Floyd, Robbie and Dumit, Joseph, Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno-Tots , Routledge, New York, 1998 for other perspectives.Google Scholar

4. These are couples undergoing programmes of gamete donation; they are a self-selected group. Any generalization about their attitudes and choices are therefore of a very specific kind.Google Scholar

5. As will become apparent throughout the article these couples are quite ‘conventional’ (they define themselves as such) and heavily invoke ideas of ‘normalcy’. A paradoxical finding is that some of the most conventional couples choose the most unconventional ways (i.e. programmes of gamete donation) to have children (for a full account see Bonaccorso, ‘The Traffic in Kinship’).Google Scholar

6. All names have been changed.Google Scholar

7. This view, which strongly emerges from couples choosing gamete donation, contrasts with the view of infertile couples who refuse gamete donation (and instead adopt) and with the view of couples with no experience of or stake in the programmes. For the latter, the aim of a marriage is not a child (even though a child may be very much desired) but love, care, and mutual support.Google Scholar

8. The language of ‘wanting’ is used also by couples who opt out of gamete donation and by couples with no direct experience of the technologies. It is also used by ‘Alltown’ people, as Jeanette Edwards quotes: ‘you want children. And all your own dreams and aspirations are put on to that child’, ‘Imperatives to Reproduce: Views from North-West England on Fertility in the Light of Infertility’, in Dunbar, Robin, (ed.), Reproductive Decisions: Biological and Anthropological Perspectives , Macmillan, London, 1995, pp. 230–247, p. 236.Google Scholar

9. Erica Haimes distinguishes family configurations created ‘through the simple cases of AIH [artificial insemination by husband] and IVF between husband and wife [in which] all three elements of the “normal family” are satisfied … the conventional form of two parents-plus-children is satisfied and the genetic composition begs no questions since the social, nurturing parents are also the genetic parents’ and those family configurations created ‘from the range of families-by-donation … AID [artificial insemination by donor] and IVF with donor sperm and IVF with donor egg [in which] the child is not genetically linked to both parents’, ‘Recreating the Family? Policy Consideration Relating to the “New” Reproductive Technologies’, in McNeil, Varcoe and Yearley, (eds), The New Reproductive Technologies , pp. 154–172, p. 164. Such distinction, which I find fundamental, is not made by everyone. Franklin, Embodied Progress for example, leaves the reader with a basic, and fundamental, question unasked: are couples undertaking treatment with their own or with donated gametes? Google Scholar

10. See, for instance, the book by Italian bioethicist Mori, Maurizio, La fecondazione artificiale: una nuova forma di riproduzione umana , Laterza, Rome–Bari, 1995.Google Scholar

11. The logic of genetic relatedness which sustains programmes of gamete donation must be understood per se and in its intrinsic contradiction. Ragoné, for instance, points this out in relation to surrogacy: ‘while genetic relatedness is clearly one of the primary motivations of couples’ choice of surrogate motherhood, this view is something of a simplification unless one also acknowledges that surrogacy contradicts several cultural norms, not the least of which it involves procreation outside marriage’ (‘Chasing the Blood Tie’, p. 362).Google Scholar

12. Ragoné, , Surrogate Motherhood , p. 114 Google Scholar

13. See Haimes, , ‘Recreating the Family?’; and Stacey, Changing Human Reproduction. Google Scholar

14. Inseminazione eterologa is how artificial insemination by donor is described in Italian medical language. It is also used in Spanish and German. In contrast to the English term ‘donor insemination’, inseminazione eterologa does not semantically recall sperm donation, as it does not recall the idea-presence of a male donor.Google Scholar

15. The notion of normalization is notably and extensively used by Chris Cussins who has carried out ethnographic research in American clinics of assisted conception. As she points out, the notion of normalization ‘incorporates both “normal” and “normative” ’, ‘Producing Reproduction: Techniques of Normalization and Naturalization in Infertility Clinics’, in Franklin, and Ragoné, , Reproducing Reproduction , p. 67.Google Scholar

16. See also Edwards, Franklin, Hirsch, Price and Strathern, , Technologies of Procreation ; Strathern, Marilyn, After Nature: English Kinship in the Late Twentieth Century , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992.Google Scholar

17. The fact that couples choosing gamete donation rely on, and even reinforce, existing conception/procreative narratives is meaningful to the anthropologist because of their particular significance as cultural constructs. This argument was begun by Malinowski, and such relevance has been further argued by Sarah Franklin who writes: ‘Conception stories not only tell us where we came from—they tell us who we are, how we are related to others, what our kinship obligations are, and how we are situated in patterns of inheritance and descent’, ‘Making Sense of Misconception: Anthropological Perspectives on Unexplained Infertility’, in Stacey, , (ed.), Changing Human Reproduction, p. 80; and by Edwards, Jeanette, Born and Bred: Idioms of Kinship and New Reproductive Technologies in England , Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2000.Google Scholar

18. I am using Edoardo's account as an example of the kind of variations couples may suggest, but which to me do not represent a turning point. Rather, Edoardo's account, like others, seems to confirm couples’ need to normalize gamete donation practices with reference to a known repertoire.Google Scholar

19. See Parliament, European, Bioethics in Europe Report , Directorate general for research (Directorate B) Stoa Programme, 1992; Gunning, Jennifer and English, Veronica, Human in-Vitro Fertilisation: A Case Study in the Regulation of Medical Innovation, Dartmouth, Aldershot, 1993.Google Scholar

20. See D'Andrade, Roy, Strauss, Claudio and Quinn, Naomi, Human Motives and Cultural Models , Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992; Strauss, Claudia, A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1997.Google Scholar

21. The debate within the discipline is quite rich, see Edwards, , Born and Bred ; Strathern, Marilyn, Reproducing The Future: Anthropology, Kinship and the New Reproductive Technologies , Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1992; Strathern, , After Nature ; Schneider, David, American Kinship: A Cultural Account, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1980, 1968; Wolfram, Sibyl, In-laws and Out-Laws: Kinship and Marriage in England, Croom Helm, London, 1987, to cite only a few.Google Scholar