Oh dear

Just for fun, here's some 'bad science' from a fruity American conservative about the pill, fertility and being gay.

Jewish fertility in Israel

No comment on the political implications of this piece by Yoram Ettinger. But it clearly shows how fertility, politics, nationalism and religion can interact with each other in quite dramatic ways.

Fertilität und gesellschaftliche Entwicklung

The Jacobs Foundation has recently funded a large scale project to examine the social, demographic, medical and biomedical context fertility in German-speaking countries. The first meeting of this group will be held in Berlin later this week. I will be be making a presentation entitled 'Differential fertility in Europe: region, education, religion and migration'. I will post this presentation later this week, and write a report about the proceedings of this first meeting.

Debate on IVF

The New York Times has today posed the question: Should the United States move beyond recommended guidelines for fertility treatments to impose stricter regulations on I.V.F. procedures? Should transfers be limited to one embryo at a time?

In order to get closer to an answer, they've enlisted nine experts to discuss the various pros and cons. They all make some interesting points. See it here.

Good news

Some good news published in the BMJ this week. The study, based on a survey of 762 women who experienced miscarriage, has shown that that 83.6% have reported a subsequent pregnancy, and 82% have experienced a live birth. As the authors say, 'Women can be reassured that long term
fertility concerns need not affect their choice of miscarriage management'.

The full text of the paper is available here.

Intelligender

Intelligender, the device that allows you to find the gender of your unborn child at 10 weeks has just gone on sale in New Zealand.

As elsewhere, this has sparked a debate over whether terminations will increase as a result of the child being the 'wrong' gender. This could, as some have argued, be a particularly salient problem in country's which place a very great premium on male offspring.

Momblogs

Another thing I'll be writing a lot about is how parents, prospective parents and the childless use the Web to communicate with each other and share and retrieve information. This piece in today's Wichita Eagle posits some of the reasons why this might be useful.

Korea's fertility problem

A new report from Statistics Korea gives further evidence of the repercussions for fertility of urban women marrying later and later. Nothing new, but all adds to the evidence that suggests the problems of very low fertility in East Asian urban centres is not going to 'go away.'

Fertility 'tourism'

Another good article out recently in Developing World Bioethics examining fertility tourism in Argentina, which is marketed toward wealthy Americans. This is important as most research in this field has concentrated on Eastern Europe and Asia. As the abstract states:

We argue that basic national regulatory mechanisms are required in countries such as Argentina that are marketing fertility services to local and international publics. Specifically, regular oversight of all fertility clinics is essential to ensure that consumer information is accurate and that marketed services are safe and effective. It is in the best interests of consumers, health professionals and policy makers that the reproductive tourism industry adopts safe and responsible medical practices.

Also in that issue is an interesting paper on international surrogacy by Casey Humbyrd, where

It is argued that the only valid objection to international surrogacy is that surrogate mothers may be exploited by being given too little compensation. However, the possibility of exploitation is a weak argument for prohibition, as employment alternatives for potential surrogate mothers may be more exploitative or more harmful than surrogacy. It is concluded that international surrogacy must be regulated, and the proposed regulatory mechanism is termed Fair Trade Surrogacy. The guidelines of Fair Trade Surrogacy focus on minimizing potential harms to all parties and ensuring fair compensation for surrogate mothers.

Fertility rates drop when children are better fed

Just a quick link to a thoughtful piece by Donald Attwood, Professor of Anthropology at McGill.

The good, the cad and the ugly

There's a big story going around based upon the article 'Does the contraceptive pill alter mate
choice in humans?' in Trends in Ecology and Evolution by Alexandra Alvergne and Virpi Lummaa at the University of Sheffield.

As their abstract says:

Female and male mate choice preferences in humans both vary according to the menstrual cycle. Women prefer more masculine, symmetrical and genetically unrelated men during ovulation compared with other phases of their cycle, and recent evidence suggests that men prefer ovulating women to others. Such monthly shifts in mate preference have been suggested to bring evolutionary benefits in terms of reproductive success. New evidence is now emerging that taking the oral contraceptive pill might significantly alter both female and male mate choice by removing the mid-cycle change in preferences. Here, we review support for such conclusions and speculate on the consequences of pill-induced choice of otherwise less-preferred partners for relationship satisfaction, durability and, ultimately, reproductive outcomes.

This is, in some ways, a revisiting of the classic 'cad or dad' question in biological anthropology - are males better off having lots of kids all over everywhere, providing only limited paternal investment but with their genes spread far and wide, OR to have only a small number of offspring and invest heavily to ensure their survival? Does the pill affect how women respond to these different scenarios?

What is also interesting is that, so far, this has been picked up by 112 different news outlets (according to Google News). Of course, this research has been interpreted in all sorts of ways. 'Is the Pill giving geeks an unfair chance?' asks the Toronto Globe and Mail, the the British Daily Mail laments the lack of attraction to the good looking, strong lads of yore. This is all interesting in that it demonstrates how much the media thinks we are interested in these. I think they're probably right. However outrageous their 'analysis' might be, working out why we fall for different types of people is something of near universal interest. If these reports make people stop to think about the processes behind their choices, that can't be a bad thing.

IVF in Norfolk and Suffolk

OK, perhaps not the most overly exciting post title, but this article shows how assisted reproductive technologies (ART) are becoming more and more accessible to a greater number of people.

However, the ridiculous inequalities of the NHS internal market still exist: 'Women in East Anglia are also offered at least three cycles of IVF on the NHS, which is one of the highest rates in the country, compared to some areas which only offer one before it has to be funded privately.'

A bird in the hand...

Some interesting research out of evolutionary biology. According to the team led by Marie-Jeanne Holveck at the Centre of Functional and Evolutionary Ecology in Montpellier, France, 'low-quality' female zebra finches showed a preference for the songs of males of the same quality, and for the male birds themselves. This 'flies against' (sorry) the routine assumption that females automatically prefer indicators of high quality in males.

The full text of the paper is available at Royal Society Proceedings B, while the BBC and the New Scientist have good reports. A video of the experiment can be found here.

Welcome to my world

Hopefully, this blog should be interesting for anyone who's ever stopped to think just why it is we have children in the 21st century.

This is not a political site about being Childfree, pronatalist or anything in between.

The point of this blog is to share my research on some of the fundamental aspects of partnership, family formation and reproduction. This will include discussions of research in anthropology, sociology, demography, history, economics, and media, cultural and religious studies.

I will use this blog to share some of the research from across the discipline that sheds light on our 'reproductive lives'. I will also put my own research and presentations on here.

I strongly believe that academics should communicate their research to as broad an audience as possible. I hope this site will help to do that.