Fertility and Value-Rationality
I'm in the middle of working on the last two term papers that I will ever write. I cannot express the joyous celebration that will ensue when I'm done! Anyway, I'm using these two papers to investigate a topic that I'm heavily leaning towards for a dissertation topic - the value of children and assisted reproductive technology. I've been trying for quite some time to find a case study that would serve as a window into the way we as Americans imagine our worlds through the way we organize our families. In others words, how are our deepest moral commitments and guiding assumptions about reality displayed in the choices we make when we live out our lives in the context of the family?
Assisted reproductive technology (ART) embodies -- at least to me -- the nearly full triumph of rationality and market economics into the once sacred arena of the family. Of course, as Weber articulated, 'rationality' is usually not all that rational. I see the fertility choices that people make as endowed with what Weber called 'value rationality' - a type of rationality that is expressive and draws upon the symbolic meaning of an act.
I haven't yet done all the work to figure out exactly what the symbolic nature of ART tells us or what exactly it means for those who choose it. But, I wanted to share this quote from an article I am in the middle of reading, because I think it wonderfully captures the cultural and individual contradictions inherent in ART:
Adults who support the use of new technologies to bear children sometimes say that biology does not matter to children, that all children need is a loving family. Yet, biology clearly matters to the adults who sometimes go to extreme lengths -- undergoing high risk medical procedures; procuring eggs, sperm or wombs from strangers; and paying quite a lot of money -- to create a child genetically related to at least one of them. In a striking contradiction, these same people will often insist that the child's biological relationship to an absent donor father or mother should not really matter to the child. Elizabeth Marquardt - "The Revolution in Parenthood"
What I'm questioning -- sociologically -- is what kind of vision of the good life under girds the system of ART and supports the choices of those who turn to it for their fertility intentions? What does the inability to see and/or acknowledge the contradiction involved tell us about the way people think about children? Family? Society?
7 comments:
Mair,
Regarding the biological part of the quote... I would be interested to find out if criminal behavior, or for that matter, any undesirable trait, is passed along genetically in DNA.
Wouldn't that shoot a hole in the nurture vs. biology study?
This probably does not relate to what you are attempting, but interesting nonetheless.
Greg'ry,
An interesting question, you raise. First, I have to say that -- as a sociologist -- I give preference to nurture in explanations of behavior. While I think there are certain biological predispositions inherent in all of us, I think these are usually given far too much weight in explanations of behavior. I think that the social context in which we are reared has a lot more influence on us than our biology.
That said, your question does relate to my topic in one very interesting way. While these couples (who undergo ART) claim that biology doesn't matter, they also (at times) go to extraordinary lengths to obtain eggs from women who they think are biologically superior. There's the famous story of the advertisements in the Yale student newspaper offering upwards of $10,000 for an egg "donation" from women who are 5'10", thin, have high GPA's, blond hair and are athletic. So, what these parents are banking on is that these genetic traits will be passed on to their offspring.
This raises two important issues. 1) As pointed out in the quote I posted, if biology doesn't matter to the child, why does it matter to the parents? 2) What happens when the child they end up with isn't what they paid for? There is no guarantee that their child will grow-up to be 5'10", skinny, smart and athletic. If that doesn't happen, the consumer mindset through which the child was created may have severe implications for the way the child is treated. There's no getting your money back here.
We've had a couple of conversations about this sort of thing before. I find the contradiction here really interesting. That snippet you quote nails on the head my bafflement with some people who use/advocate ART. It's not that I think it's awful and shouldn't be available; I'm just confused about why it's so popular and why other options, like adoption, are passed by in favor of ART and some kind of biological connection to your offspring. Everyone points out how expensive adoption can be, but most ARTs make it look like a positive bargain. So why are people willing to part with some much money and so many painful procedures and side effects to get a child? I guess I've never been in their shoes, but I'm still interested. Keep us posted!
The value difference between ART and adoption is immaterial. The choice is between raising a child that is yours (at least partly) vs. raising someone else's. It seems like there is a giant difference there, something that would be very difficult to put a price on. Either biological connectedness is important to someone or it isn't, and I don't think that people who find it important are coming to that conclusion after some rational analysis, that seems like a fairly base type reaction to me. I can't imagine that too many people are very contemplative about that choice, once they decide connectedness is important.
Does that make sense?
I think all of the comments raised so far get at what I see as the central question here: how is it that, in a time when family arrangements are more diverse and anti-natalism is more prevalent than at any time in human history, people – particularly the people you would least expect – resort to extraordinary means to procure something like a traditional family? Never before do you have less consensus on normative family arrangement; never before do you have more people who are “childless by choice.” Also, like never before, do you have people willing to go to extraordinary means to achieve a “traditional” family.
Greg’ry, e.a.p., and jackscolon all hint at what I see as going on: we privilege biology as somehow meaningful in an unprecedented way. Some how and for some reason, people think that biology “means something” or “tells us something” or accounts for or explains certain things in a way that cultural norms cannot. Somehow, having a child that is biologically related to you in meaningful in a way that it hasn’t been before. That is not a taken for granted part of human existence; there is some cultural mechanism that leads to that being mistaken for a taken for granted.
There is also an interesting story to tell about why that need for biological children has become pathological for a not insignificant number of people precisely at the time when familial norms are all but gone and children aren’t seen as desirable by many. It isn’t a coincidence that all of this – the privileging of biology, the loss of familial norms, the devaluing of procreation, and the rise of ART – arise at the same time. They are all legitimated by the same cultural assumptions and I think that is what is interesting to get at.
J. Morgan -
I'm wondering if you could expound more on what you mean when you say that the desire for a biological child has become pathological? I'm not sure I would call it pathological.
I think you raised very interesting questions - and I'm not sure at this point how to address them. I think that the common factor may have something to do with cultural features like individualism, secularism, etc. But, I think it also has to do with the locus of authority - for instance, we privilege medicine and science rather than theology and philosophy as guiding frameworks for our lives.
I would say that it is pathological, in a way. Aren't some of these decisions to have a child through ART flying in the face of biology, if nature predisposes a couple toward natural sterility? And doesn't some sterility stem from the result of past sexual activity, which results in STDs that inhibit procreation, and, in some instances, from abortions?
Not that people who have undergone such traumas don't deserve to have their own kids; but we live in a time where choices are divorced from consequences, and I find it disturbing that a person can sow all the wild oats s/he wants in his/her youth, dispose of any "by-products," and then go to a lot of trouble, expense, and pain later on to have a biological descendent without realizing the reason it's so hard to have one naturally is a natural result of past decisions, and no one points that out.
Furthermore, in a number of traditional fertility treatment procedures (if my understanding is correct), quite a lot of eggs are fertilized, and the "best" or most viable one is selected for gestation, while the rest of the still viable embryos are frozen. What happens to them? Are they used for testing? Stem cell research? Thrown out with the trash? Do they remain frozen in stasis forever? Which is itself a morally problematic question.
Lastly, there are hundreds upon thousands (okay, millions) of needy and unwanted children. I agree with J. Morgan that in a time when an idea of family has blown into ashes and dust, people have begun to cling to the notion of biological descent as one of the only denotative factors of filial relationship. A hundred thirty years ago people were lining up to yank kids off the Orphan Train in the West and give them a home (not always a great one, but a home). Even thirty to forty years ago, with a nuclear family structure still largely in place and supported by the social norm, adoption of children who were completely non-related, as well as adoption of nieces, nephews and cousins was fairly common. Now people want their "own" kids, and they even get, in some cases, to play at "building their own kid." I think, like Mair said, it has a lot to do with secularism and individualism (aka selfishness), and like J. Morgan said, it's a resultant pathological trend. It's also a denial of the joy of the unexpected (or miracle), which is sad.
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