The Reluctant Stork: Science, Fertility, and the Family in Britain, 1943-1960
Abstract
This dissertation is a story of ordinary people the heterosexual married couple, wanting to have a baby who were willing to seek out and undergo medical treatment in order to start a family. Yet, it is also the story of an extraordinary period of public concern over the state of the natural family, and the power of science to transform society. This dissertation tells two related and parallel histories of the 1940s and 1950s. First, it examines the development and expansion of fertility services, which was influenced by patient demand and the cultural climate in Britain. Secondly, it interrogates debates over artificial insemination, which ultimately led to the first government inquiry into assisted reproductive technologies in Britain. Assisted conception posed a threat to the family, but it also encouraged a more fluid definition of family roles, which by 1960 was beginning to take hold. Thus, the developments and debates from 1943 to 1960 laid the groundwork for those that followed in the 1970s and 1980s, when new technologies once again called into question family law and the ethics of human life.
Although popular narratives of reproductive technologies often begin with the birth of Louise Brown in July 1978 the first test tube baby the meaning attached to this term and the practice of assisted conception has a longer history. This dissertation argues that the 1940s and 1950s were a formative period in the development of fertility services including artificial insemination which sparked a seventeen-year-long debate over the meaning of the natural family, and the role of science in human reproduction. This history has largely been neglected, with the focus tending towards the advances made in reproductive technologies in the 1960s and 1970s. This dissertation therefore sheds light on an important period that defined the relationship between science, fertility, and the family.
Although popular narratives of reproductive technologies often begin with the birth of Louise Brown in July 1978 the first test tube baby the meaning attached to this term and the practice of assisted conception has a longer history. This dissertation argues that the 1940s and 1950s were a formative period in the development of fertility services including artificial insemination which sparked a seventeen-year-long debate over the meaning of the natural family, and the role of science in human reproduction. This history has largely been neglected, with the focus tending towards the advances made in reproductive technologies in the 1960s and 1970s. This dissertation therefore sheds light on an important period that defined the relationship between science, fertility, and the family.