‘Family planning’ is a long-established social norm explored through our research about pregnancy prevention (abortion and contraception); assisted conception the interactions between parenting culture and reproductive technologies; and in our programme of discussions. Our research has also always recognised that parenting culture works to ‘extend parenting backwards’, to include pregnancy and also the ‘pre-conception period’, raising some important problems. We have continually drawn attention to how pregnancy (and the time pre-conception) become subject to the impulse of parental determinism. This happens through claims about just how much the time before birth determines outcomes for both individuals and society, and our research has explored the consequent growth of risk discourse based around promoting medicalised and moralised rules about pregnancy. You can catch up on discussion about this from our events on Policing Pregnancy.
Read on:
The 1967 Abortion Act fifty years on: Abortion, medical authority and the law revisited
Constructing abortion as a social problem: “Sex selection” and the British abortion debate
In the Pregnancy research theme:
-
- After Choice: FASD and the ‘managed woman’ (collaborative project)
- Drinking During Pregnancy (study)
- The Construction of Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) in British Newspapers (study)
- Policing Pregnancy (events)
- Assessing Child Welfare under the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act: the New Law (study)
- Abortion research by CPCS Associates