Emily Jackson, Professor at LSE Law School, recommends seven books and films that illuminate changing social contexts around fertility, the history of treatments like in vitro fertilisation (IVF) and what infertility and fertility treatment is like for those experiencing it.
Fertility treatments like in vitro fertilisation (IVF) are extraordinary scientific breakthroughs, and they raise interesting and complex issues for law and ethics. But a factual account of how IVF or egg freezing works, and the challenges these practices might pose for regulation are necessarily incomplete without also understanding what it is like to be a patient.
Empirical interview-based research by sociologists and anthropologists has expanded our knowledge about the impact fertility treatment has on patients and their families. Infertility can be a lonely experience, and novels and films which bring this experience to life will resonate with people who have “been there”, and can also help others to understand what their friends, colleagues and family members have been going through. Below is a selection of scholarly and artistic works that enrich our understanding of fertility and infertility.
For anyone who is interested in where science might take reproduction in the future, I’ve been working with the creative agency The Liminal Space on a public engagement project titled The New Facts of Life. More information is available here.
First published in 1997, this ground-breaking book presented the results of the first ethnographic study of women and couples undergoing IVF in its early days. Through vivid first-person accounts, which continue to have considerable resonance today, Franklin explains how the “IVF treadmill” cannot give women the “closure” they anticipate they will get from having “tried everything”. For many women, IVF instead turns into an obstacle course, and it can become increasingly difficult to give up and stop treatment.
Motherhood on ice: the mating gap and why women freeze their eggs. Marcia Inhorn. NYU Press. 2023.
This book tells the stories of 150 American women who have frozen their eggs. When it was reported that tech companies like Apple and Google were planning to offer egg freezing to their employees, a common criticism was that employers should be making it easier for women to have children, rather than encouraging them to undergo invasive medical procedures in order to preserve their fertility. But there is now a considerable body of evidence, including from Inhorn’s research, that women do not freeze their eggs in response to family-unfriendly workplaces. Rather, their principal motivation is what Inhorn describes as the “mating gap”, which results in accomplished women encountering men who are not yet willing to commit to parenthood. As many have observed, this “mating gap” has been exacerbated by the “swipe right” approach to modern dating.
Written by a professor at Harvard Business School, this very readable book investigates the commercialisation of fertility treatment, and the growth of the fertility industry. Huge profits can be made from selling reproductive technologies – along with additional “add on services” – to people who are struggling to conceive, and Spar’s book was one of the first to acknowledge that we need to pay more attention to the business model of IVF provision.
Although not about fertility treatment, this groundbreaking book explored how pregnant women navigate complex choices about genetic testing in pregnancy. Rapp interviewed hundreds of people, including patients and providers, who had experience of prenatal testing, memorably describing the women who are faced with these new and challenging choices as “moral pioneers”.
Magpie. Elizabeth Day. Harper Collins. 2021.
Fertility issues form the backdrop of what The Guardian described as a “tense, ultimately cathartic psychological drama”. Its protagonist, Marisa, is trying for a baby with her partner, but all is not going to plan. This novel is a great read, and Day has also written very movingly about her own experiences of fertility treatment and pregnancy loss.
Joy. Ben Taylor. Wildgaze/Pathé and Netflix. 2024.
This film, written by Jack Thorne, Rachel Mason and Emma Gordon and directed by Ben Taylor, tells the story of the three pioneers who created the first IVF baby, Louise Brown, who was born in Oldham in July 1978: Bob Edwards (the Cambridge scientist who eventually won the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 2010), Patrick Steptoe (the Oldham obstetrician who died in 1988) and Jean Purdy (the often forgotten nurse and embryologist who died in 1985, at the age of 39). Before Louise Brown’s birth, more than two hundred women underwent this experimental new treatment which had never worked, and the film also brings to life their hopes and disappointments.
Now that IVF is routine, and more than 12 million IVF babies have been born worldwide, it seems extraordinary that Edwards, Steptoe and Purdy were shunned by the medical establishment and denied funding from the Medical Research Council, in part because it was believed that overpopulation was a more pressing problem.
Private Life. Tamara Jenkins. Likely Story and Netflix. 2018.
The Guardian review described this film’s portrayal of IVF as “brutally accurate, instantly, wincingly recognisable to anyone who’s been there”. Tamara Jenkins’ movie tells the story of two New Yorkers in their forties undergoing fertility treatment, and trying to navigate the adoption process. It not only vividly illustrates the “IVF treadmill”, where there is always something else to try, but it also portrays how isolating infertility can feel, and the pressures it can place on relationships.
Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.I
Read an article in LSE Research for the World magazine by Emily Jackson from 2022, Taking the pressure off: giving women time to start a family and watch a related video, How long do eggs really keep? The reality of fertility treatment in the UK.
Enjoyed this post? Subscribe to our newsletter for a round-up of the latest reviews sent straight to your inbox every other Tuesday.
