Incipient Infertility: tracking eggs and ovulation across the life course

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dc.contributor.authorRoberts, Celia
dc.contributor.authorWaldby, Catherine
dc.date.accessioned2023-05-09T01:34:54Z
dc.date.available2023-05-09T01:34:54Z
dc.date.issued2021
dc.date.updated2022-02-13T07:17:53Z
dc.description.abstractTracking in/fertility—through ovulation biosensing, menstrual and perimenopausal apps, and ovarian reserve testing—is becoming increasingly commonplace amongst relatively privileged women in the Global North. Taking place on and through platforms comprised of devices, bodies, and discourses, such self-tracking articulates forms of in/fertility and reproductive futures that are, we argue, closely entwined with emerging forms of biomedical capitalization. While reproductive medicine focused on the creation of children has been entwined with corporate interests since the development of in vitro fertilization in the 1980s, fertility as an asset, or future value, is increasingly targeted by the new innovation sectors as a specific capacity, separable from reproduction per se, in which women should invest if they are not to fall prey to incipient infertility. Synthesizing our separate empirical work in this field, this paper theorizes the connections between the emergence of self-tracking logics and cultures, the burgeoning of consumer-oriented, clinical services, and contemporary social anxieties around fertility decline. Even in countries such as Australia and the United Kingdom, where birth rates are stable, (some) women’s fertility is being refigured as precious and vulnerable, something to be tracked, documented, and attended to in the name of individual future happiness and fulfilment. Women with enough financial and cultural capital are encouraged to monitor their periods, come to know their ovulation patterns, and become aware of their ovarian reserve, and, importantly, to act prudently on such knowledge to safeguard their reproductive futures.en_AU
dc.description.sponsorshipResearch for this article was supported by an Australian Research council grant FT100100176.en_AU
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen_AU
dc.identifier.issn2380-3312en_AU
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1885/289936
dc.language.isoen_AUen_AU
dc.provenanceLicensed to the Catalyst Project under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives licenseen_AU
dc.publisherCatalysten_AU
dc.relationhttp://purl.org/au-research/grants/arc/FT100100176en_AU
dc.rights©Celia Roberts and Catherine Waldby, 2021en_AU
dc.rights.licenseCreative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs Licenseen_AU
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/en_AU
dc.sourceCatalysten_AU
dc.titleIncipient Infertility: tracking eggs and ovulation across the life courseen_AU
dc.typeJournal articleen_AU
dcterms.accessRightsOpen Accessen_AU
local.bibliographicCitation.issue1en_AU
local.bibliographicCitation.lastpage25en_AU
local.bibliographicCitation.startpage1en_AU
local.contributor.affiliationRoberts, Celia, College of Arts and Social Sciences, ANUen_AU
local.contributor.affiliationWaldby, Catherine, College of Arts and Social Sciences, ANUen_AU
local.contributor.authoremailrepository.admin@anu.edu.auen_AU
local.contributor.authoruidRoberts, Celia, u1069549en_AU
local.contributor.authoruidWaldby, Catherine, u1005432en_AU
local.description.notesImported from ARIESen_AU
local.identifier.absfor441007 - Sociology and social studies of science and technologyen_AU
local.identifier.absfor441010 - Sociology of genderen_AU
local.identifier.absseo280123 - Expanding knowledge in human societyen_AU
local.identifier.absseo200207 - Social structure and healthen_AU
local.identifier.ariespublicationa383154xPUB24999en_AU
local.identifier.citationvolume7en_AU
local.identifier.doi10.28968/cftt.v7i1.34614en_AU
local.identifier.uidSubmittedBya383154en_AU
local.publisher.urlhttps://catalystjournal.org/en_AU
local.type.statusPublished Versionen_AU

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