THE CLOCK TICKER’S REPRIEVE tells the stories of five women who freeze their eggs and chronicles how it affects their lives.

"Why are American women freezing their eggs? Motherhood on Ice answers this question through the stories of more than 100 women who pursued fertility preservation. Egg freezing is women's technological solution to the mating gap-or the lack of eligible, educated, and equal partners who are ready for marriage and parenthood"--

In US security culture, motherhood is a site of intense contestation--both a powerful form of cultural currency and a target of unprecedented assault. Linked by an atmosphere of crisis and perceived vulnerability, motherhood and nation have become intimately entwined, dangerously positioning national security as reliant on the control of women's bodies. Drawing on feminist scholarship and critical studies of security culture, Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz explores homeland maternity by calling our attention to the ways that authorities see both non-reproductive and "overly" reproductive women's bodies as threats to social norms--and thus to security. Homeland maternity culture intensifies motherhood's requirements and works to discipline those who refuse to adhere. Analyzing the opt-out revolution, public debates over emergency contraception, and other controversies, Fixmer-Oraiz compellingly demonstrates how policing maternal bodies serves the political function of securing the nation in a time of supposed danger--with profound and troubling implications for women's lives and agency.

Every year, American universities publish glowing reports stating their commitment to diversity, often showing statistics of female hires as proof of success. Yet, although women make up increasing numbers of graduate students, graduate degree recipients, and even new hires, academic life remains overwhelming a man's world. The reality that the statistics fail to highlight is that the presence of women, specifically those with children, in the ranks of tenured faculty has not increased in a generation. Further, those women who do achieve tenure track placement tend to report slow advancement, income disparity, and lack of job satisfaction compared to their male colleagues. Amid these disadvantages, what is a Mama, PhD to do? This literary anthology brings together a selection of deeply felt personal narratives by smart, interesting women who explore the continued inequality of the sexes in higher education and suggest changes that could make universities more family-friendly workplaces. The contributors hail from a wide array of disciplines and bring with them a variety of perspectives, including those of single and adoptive parents. They address topics that range from the level of policy to practical day-to-day concerns, including caring for a child with special needs, breastfeeding on campus, negotiating viable maternity and family leave policies, job-sharing and telecommuting options, and fitting into desk/chair combinations while eight months pregnant. Candid, provocative, and sometimes with a wry sense of humor, the thirty-five essays in this anthology speak to and offer support for any woman attempting to combine work and family, as well as anyone who is interested in improving the university's ability to live up to its reputation to be among the most progressive of American institutions.

Today all politics are reproductive politics, argues esteemed feminist critic Laura Briggs. From longer work hours to the election of Donald Trump, our current political crisis is above all about reproduction. Households are where we face our economic realities as social safety nets get cut and wages decline. Briggs brilliantly outlines how politicians’ racist accounts of reproduction—stories of Black “welfare queens” and Latina “breeding machines"—were the leading wedge in the government and business disinvestment in families. With decreasing wages, rising McJobs, and no resources for family care, our households have grown ever more precarious over the past forty years in sharply race-and class-stratified ways. This crisis, argues Briggs, fuels all others—from immigration to gay marriage, anti-feminism to the rise of the Tea Party.

This book explores the arguments, appeals, and narratives that have defined the meaning of infertility in the modern history of the United States and Europe. Throughout the last century, the inability of women to conceive children has been explained by discrepant views: that women are individually culpable for their own reproductive health problems, or that they require the intervention of medical experts to correct abnormalities. Using doctor-patient correspondence, oral histories, and contemporaneous popular and scientific news coverage, Robin Jensen parses the often thin rhetorical divide between moralization and medicalization, revealing how dominating explanations for infertility have emerged from seemingly competing narratives. Her longitudinal account illustrates the ways in which old arguments and appeals do not disappear in the light of new information, but instead reemerge at subsequent, often seemingly disconnected moments to combine and contend with new assertions. Tracing the transformation of language surrounding infertility from “barrenness” to “(in)fertility,” this rhetorical analysis both explicates how language was and is used to establish the concept of infertility and shows the implications these rhetorical constructions continue to have for individuals and the societies in which they live.

In this book Tober explores the intersections between sperm donation and the broader social and political environment in which "modern families" are created and regulated. The book provides information on family and kinship, genetics and eugenics, and how ever-expanding assisted reproductive technologies continue to redefine what it means to be human.

A fascinating investigation into the lucrative, minimally regulated, fast-growing industry of egg freezing, from a young reporter on a personal journey into the world of cutting-edge reproductive medicine “An engaging and groundbreaking book.”—Toni Weschler, MPH, author of Taking Charge of Your Fertility Ovaries. Most women have two; journalist Natalie Lampert has only one. Then, in her early twenties, she almost lost it, along with her ability to ever have biological children. Doctors urged her to freeze her eggs, and Lampert started asking questions. The Big Freeze is the story of Lampert’s personal quest to investigate egg freezing, as well as the multibillion-dollar femtech industry, in order to decide the best way to preserve her own fertility. She attended flashy egg-freezing parties, visited high-priced fertility clinics, talked to dozens of women who froze their eggs, toured the facility in Italy where the technology was developed, and even attended a memorial service for thousands of accidentally destroyed embryos. What was once science fiction is now simply science: Fertility can be frozen in time. Between 2009 and 2022, more than 100,000 women in the United States opted to freeze their eggs. Along with in vitro fertilization, egg freezing is touted as a way for women to “have it all” by conquering their biological clocks, in line with the global trend of delaying childbirth. A generation after the Pill, this revolutionary technology offers a new kind of freedom for women. But does egg freezing give women real agency or just the illusion of it? A personal and deeply researched guide to the pros, cons, and many facets of this wildly popular technology, The Big Freeze is a page-turning exploration of the quest to control fertility, with invaluable information that answers the questions women have been afraid to ask—or didn’t know they should ask in the first place.

The ebook edition of this title is Open Access, thanks to Knowledge Unlatched funding, and freely available to read online. This book explores the experiences of some of the pioneering users of social egg freezing technology in the UK and the USA.

When Reproduction meets Ageing questions the nature of reproductive ageing and reproductive biomedicine.