Paper short abstract:

Based on fieldwork in Austria I look at how the relationship between spouses undergoing infertility treatment shapes the treatment process and vice versa. Assisted reproductive technology is explored as a family-building technology and as a social practice of relatedness.

Paper long abstract:

Among the kinds of social relatedness affected through assisted reproductive technology (ART) anthropologists and other social scientists have primarily focused on child-parent relationships, in particular on motherhood. Far less attention has been paid to child-father relations and the relationships between the partners seeking infertility treatment.

Drawing on the notion of relatedness proposed by J. Carsten and others I look at how the relationship between Austrian spouses undergoing infertility treatment shapes the treatment process and how in turn it is shaped by it. My presentation thus is about child-parent-relatedness, however only insofar as in the context of ART it becomes meaningful and operative for the sense and practices of relatedness between spouses. Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in Austria it explores ART as a family building technology in the sense that - irrespective of succeeding in actually having a baby in the end or not - infertility treatment becomes employed to create the imagination of a family. As the intended parents conjointly pursue the quest for a child which they have together they strive for the actualisation of this imagination - modelled on an ideology of the "nuclear" family consisting of father, mother and children and living together in mutual love and care. In this connection ART is highlighted as a social practice of relatedness, which in the configuration of the family, brings together the relatedness of child-parent and the relatedness of spouse-spouse. It is shown that putting ART into clinical practice entails not only "kinship work", but also "partnership work".