This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. Each year, tens of thousands of children are conceived with donated gametes (sperm or eggs). By some estimates, there are over one million donor-conceived people in the United States and, of course, many more the world over. Some know they are donor-conceived. Some do not. Some know the identity of their donors. Others never will. Questions about what donor-conceived people should know about their genetic progenitors are hugely significant for literally millions of people, including donor-conceived people, their parents, and donors. But the practice of gamete donation also provides a vivid occasion for thinking about questions that matter to everyone. What is the value of knowing who your genetic progenitors are? How are our identities bound up with knowing where we come from? What obligations do parents have to their children? And what makes someone a parent in the first place? In Conceiving People: Identity, Genetics and Gamete Donation, Daniel Groll argues that people who plan to create a child with donated gametes should choose a donor whose identity will be made available to the resulting child. This is not, Groll argues, because having genetic knowledge is fundamentally important. Rather, it is because donor-conceived people are likely to develop a significant interest in having genetic knowledge and parents must help satisfy their children's significant interests. In other words, because a donor-conceived person is likely to care about having genetic knowledge, their parents should care too.

The delivery of high quality and equitable care for both mothers and newborns is complex and requires efforts across many sectors. The United States spends more on childbirth than any other country in the world, yet outcomes are worse than other high-resource countries, and even worse for Black and Native American women. There are a variety of factors that influence childbirth, including social determinants such as income, educational levels, access to care, financing, transportation, structural racism and geographic variability in birth settings. It is important to reevaluate the United States' approach to maternal and newborn care through the lens of these factors across multiple disciplines. Birth Settings in America: Outcomes, Quality, Access, and Choice reviews and evaluates maternal and newborn care in the United States, the epidemiology of social and clinical risks in pregnancy and childbirth, birth settings research, and access to and choice of birth settings.

Comforting and intimate, this “girlfriend” guide to getting pregnant gets to the heart of all the emotional issues around having children—biological pressure, in-law pressures, greater social pressures—to support women who are considering getting pregnant. Trying to get pregnant is enough to make any woman impatient. The Impatient Woman’s Guide to Getting Pregnant is a complete guide to the medical, psychological, social, and sexual aspects of getting pregnant, told in a funny, compassionate way, like talking to a good friend who’s been through it all. And in fact, Dr. Jean Twenge has been through it all—the mother of three young children, she started researching fertility when trying to conceive for the first time. A renowned sociologist and professor at San Diego State University, Dr. Twenge brought her research background to the huge amount of information—sometimes contradictory, frequently alarmist, and often discouraging— that she encountered online, from family and friends, and in books, and decided to go into the latest studies to find out the real story. The good news is: There is a lot less to worry about than you’ve been led to believe. Dr. Twenge gets to the heart of the emotional issues around getting pregnant, including how to prepare mentally and physically when thinking about conceiving; how to talk about it with family, friends, and your partner; and how to handle the great sadness of a miscarriage. Also covered is how to know when you’re ovulating, when to have sex, timing your pregnancy, maximizing your chances of getting pregnant, how to tilt the odds toward having a boy or a girl, and the best prenatal diet. Trying to conceive often involves an enormous amount of emotion, from anxiety and disappointment to hope and joy. With comfort, humor, and straightforward advice, The Impatient Woman’s Guide to Getting Pregnant is the bedside companion to help you through it.

An award-winning scientist, in this urgent, thought-provoking and meticulously researched book, shows how chemicals in the modern environment are changing--and endangering--human sexuality and fertility on the grandest scale.

Experts estimate that nearly 60 percent of all U.S. pregnancies--and 81 percent of pregnancies among adolescents--are unintended. Yet the topic of preventing these unintended pregnancies has long been treated gingerly because of personal sensitivities and public controversies, especially the angry debate over abortion. Additionally, child welfare advocates long have overlooked the connection between pregnancy planning and the improved well-being of families and communities that results when children are wanted. Now, current issues--health care and welfare reform, and the new international focus on population--are drawing attention to the consequences of unintended pregnancy. In this climate The Best Intentions offers a timely exploration of family planning issues from a distinguished panel of experts. This committee sheds much-needed light on the questions and controversies surrounding unintended pregnancy. The book offers specific recommendations to put the United States on par with other developed nations in terms of contraceptive attitudes and policies, and it considers the effectiveness of over 20 pregnancy prevention programs. The Best Intentions explores problematic definitions--"unintended" versus "unwanted" versus "mistimed"--and presents data on pregnancy rates and trends. The book also summarizes the health and social consequences of unintended pregnancies, for both men and women, and for the children they bear. Why does unintended pregnancy occur? In discussions of "reasons behind the rates," the book examines Americans' ambivalence about sexuality and the many other social, cultural, religious, and economic factors that affect our approach to contraception. The committee explores the complicated web of peer pressure, life aspirations, and notions of romance that shape an individual's decisions about sex, contraception, and pregnancy. And the book looks at such practical issues as the attitudes of doctors toward birth control and the place of contraception in both health insurance and "managed care." The Best Intentions offers frank discussion, synthesis of data, and policy recommendations on one of today's most sensitive social topics. This book will be important to policymakers, health and social service personnel, foundation executives, opinion leaders, researchers, and concerned individuals. May

THE LANGUAGE OF FERTILITY provides a unique program for conscious conception that includes the Whole Person Fertility Program, offering exercises and visualizations for uncovering and exploring family histories, beliefs, and emotions that can affect fertility--and much more. 7 illustrations.

The first fertility-boosting guide to feature the cutting-edge research results on fertility from the Nurses’ Health Study More than 6 million women in the United States alone experience infertility problems User-friendly, medically approved advice clearly explained in 10 nutritional guidelines from two of Harvard Medical School’s top voices in nutrition