"Provides rich new ethnographic material on a little-known population, the Bedouin of the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. It positions such marginal populations in the broader theoretical context of modernization and health and demographic transitions."--Allan G. Hill, Harvard University With an average of over nine children per family, older cohorts of Bedouin in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon have one of the highest fertility rates in the world. Many married couples in this pastoral community are close relatives--a socially advantageous practice that reflects the deep value Bedouins place on kinship. To outsiders, such family norms can seem disturbing, even premodern. They attract assumptions of Arab "backwardness," poverty, and sexism. Remarkably, Fertile Bonds flips these stereotypes. Anthropological demographer Suzanne Joseph shows that in this particular group, prolific birth rates coincide with moderate death rates and high levels of nutrition. Despite broader class differences between Bedouins and peasants, members of Bekaa Bedouin society rely heavily on kinship ties, sharing, and reciprocity and experience a high degree of social and demographic equality. This story, unfamiliar to many, is one that is fading as traditional nomadic livelihoods give way to encapsulation within the state. With the help of this surprising, nuanced study--one of the first of its kind in the Middle East--knowledge of such marginalized pastoral groups will not vanish with the disappearance of their way of life. Joseph’s book expands our understanding of peoples far removed from consolidated government control and provides a broad analytical lens through which to examine demographic divides across the globe. .

A portrait of a group of Bedouins in the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, a population with the highest fertility rate in the world.

"In Family Bonds, Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Bartholet raises profound questions about the meaning of family and the way society shapes options for the infertile. Illumined by the author's compelling personal story, the book challenges the societal policies that help shape adoption, infertility treatment, surrogacy, and other new parenting arrangements." "Family Bonds will encourage and enlighten all who struggle with infertility and the decision whether to pursue treatment, adoption, or other parenting options. It will compel the attention of doctors, lawyers, child welfare workers, and policymakers." "In her poignant and controversial book, Bartholet examines policies that leave children without homes and would-be parents without children. She questions the wisdom of driving women to spend years in infertility treatment while pushing them away from adoption. She talks about transracial and transnational families, single and older-parent families. She forces us to think about our goals for the family of the future." "Uniquely qualified to write this book, Bartholet is a recognized expert on civil rights and family law who has raised one child born to her, endured her own struggle with infertility, and recently adopted as a single parent two children born in Peru."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Welcomed as liberation and dismissed as exploitation, egg freezing (oocyte cryopreservation) has rapidly become one of the most widely-discussed and influential new reproductive technologies of this century. In Freezing Fertility, Lucy van de Wiel takes us inside the world of fertility preservation—with its egg freezing parties, contested age limits, proactive anticipations and equity investments—and shows how the popularization of egg freezing has profound consequences for the way in which female fertility and reproductive aging are understood, commercialized and politicized. Beyond an individual reproductive choice for people who may want to have children later in life, Freezing Fertility explores how the rise of egg freezing also reveals broader cultural, political and economic negotiations about reproductive politics, gender inequities, age normativities and the financialization of healthcare. Van de Wiel investigates these issues by analyzing a wide range of sources—varying from sparkly online platforms to heart-breaking court cases and intimate autobiographical accounts—that are emblematic of each stage of the egg freezing procedure. By following the egg’s journey, Freezing Fertility examines how contemporary egg freezing practices both reflect broader social, regulatory and economic power asymmetries and repoliticize fertility and aging in ways that affect the public at large. In doing so, the book explores how the possibility of egg freezing shifts our relation to the beginning and end of life.

The book that you hold in your hands is the second in a series. The two titles in the series are the following: Genetic Influences on Human Fertility and Sexuality: Theoretical and Empirical Contributions from the Biological and Behavior Sciences Edited by Joseph Lee Rodgers, David C. Rowe, & Warren B. Miller Published by Kluwer Academic Press, 2000 The Biodemography of Human Reproduction and Fertility Edited by Joseph Lee Rodgers & Hans-Peter Kohler Published by Kluwer Academic Press, 2002 The series has published chapters by researchers who study human fertility, from a particular perspective: Biodemography. We welcome your interest and participation in this developing subfield. Or, perhaps, biodemography may be better referred to as a "superfield. " Because biodemography so naturally crosses interdisciplinary boundaries, and because its application draws together researchers from disparate disciplines, it may well be more appropriate to consider that biodemography subsumes a number of other disciplines, rather than the other way around. In this preface, we will describe our own efforts and those of many others to promote and develop the study of human fertility, using methods, models, and theories from both biological and demographic domains. In December, 1997, 25 participants from three different countries gathered in Tucson, Arizona for a small conference with the title "Genetic Influences on Fertility-Related Processes. " That conference represented a fascinating blending of research from two apparently separate domains.

A critical analysis of white, working class North Americans’ motivations and experiences when traveling to Central Europe for donor egg IVF Each year, more and more Americans travel out of the country seeking low cost medical treatments abroad, including fertility treatments such as in vitro fertilization (IVF). As the lower middle classes of the United States have been priced out of an expensive privatized “baby business,” the Czech Republic has emerged as a central hub of fertility tourism, offering a plentitude of blonde-haired, blue-eyed egg donors at a fraction of the price. Fertility Holidays presents a critical analysis of white, working class North Americans’ motivations and experiences when traveling to Central Europe for donor egg IVF. Within this diaspora, patients become consumers, urged on by the representation of a white Europe and an empathetic health care system, which seems nonexistent at home. As the volume traces these American fertility journeys halfway around the world, it uncovers layers of contradiction embedded in global reproductive medicine. Speier reveals the extent to which reproductive travel heightens the hope ingrained in reproductive technologies, especially when the procedures are framed as “holidays.” The pitch of combining a vacation with their treatment promises couples a stress-free IVF cycle; yet, in truth, they may become tangled in fraught situations as they endure an emotionally wrought cycle of IVF in a strange place. Offering an intimate, first-hand account of North Americans’ journeys to the Czech Republic for IVF, Fertility Holidays exposes reproductive travel as a form of consumption which is motivated by complex layers of desire for white babies, a European vacation, better health care, and technological success.