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Accepted Paper:
Reproducing the gay nuclear family
Adi Moreno
Paper short abstract:
ARTs have been evolving to separate procreation and gestation from social parenting. This enables same-sex to resemble to the nuclear family model. My PhD research analyzes this process in Israel. I will discuss norms changes through the assemblage of technology, state regulations and culture.
Paper long abstract:
Assisted Reproduction Technologies take an integral part in family building practices in the recent decades. Researchers have pointed to the ways in which these technologies refract our notions of kinship and relatedness, and enable reconstruction of the family model (Franklin, 1998; Strathern, 1992). These changes are very significant in the lives of same-sex couples. Technological innovation enables limiting the participation of members of the opposite sex in family creation, by purchasing gametes and paying for gestational surrogacy. Same-sex couples thus can achieve procreation without having social ties and commitments towards their procreation collaborators. This potential is however limited by state regulations, availability of technology and the access to funding for the procedure.
The state of Israel was the first to legalize and regulate commercial surrogacy. Current regulations prohibit same sex couples from commissioning surrogacy in the state. At the same time, the state acknowledges surrogacy procedures that were performed by gay couples outside the state borders, and enables providing parenthood decrees to the biological father, and through adoption to the non-biological father.
My research proposes ethnography of Israeli gay men who pursue parenthood through surrogacy. Through in-depth interview and official documentation analysis I discuss the reproduction of the 'New Nuclear Family': a same-sex, couple-based parenting model which closely imitates the model of the heterosexual nuclear family. This case study displays the plasticity and fluidity of social structures, and the importance of social construction in shaping the usage of technology and social relations alike.
Evolving family types and evolving humanity
Session 1 Thursday 8 August, 2013, -