Paper short abstract:

Based on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork (2017/2018) in Montenegro, in this paper I explore how the biomedical knowledge about the sex of the foetus might both dispel and create new kind of uncertainties in the lives of parents-to-be and their potential children in the future.

Paper long abstract:

Pregnancy is a life period, where uncertainty regarding future concentrates (Gammeltoft 2013, S160). In Montenegro, some parents-to-be are concerned about the sex of the foetus. This is related to “the idea of men and male offspring as more valuable than women and female offspring” (Kiščenko 2021, 87). Not only in the past, but also nowadays Montenegro is experiencing son preference (Stump 2011, United Nations Population Fund 2012, Muižnieks 2014), because male offspring is expected to inherit the family name, assets and take care of aging parents. To dispel the uncertainty about the sex of foetus, women perform prenatal testing (CVC, Cell-free foetal DNA testing) and ultrasound scan. In some cases, sex-selective abortion is performed, making Montenegro as one of the 10 countries in the world with the most imbalanced sex ratio at birth (United Nations Population Fund 2012).

In this paper, I argue that biomedical knowledge about the sex of the foetus is ambiguous. One the one hand, it might minimize uncertainty that is being associated with certain gender potentiality in the future. On the other hand, as my ethnographic data demonstrates, even when the desired son is being born, different kind of uncertainties might emerge. For example, a woman with two daughters experienced a pressure from her parents-in-law to bear a son. After four aborted female foetuses, she gave a birth to a son, but her relationships with her in-laws did not improve and continued to be tense.