Creating Children, Creating Parents, 29 - 30 April 2024

Between 2015-2019, around 348,000 babies born in the UK (just over one-third of babies born in that period) were the result of an unplanned pregnancy. In the same period, the number of IVF treatment cycles carried out in the UK comes to a remarkable similar number: roughly 348,800. It is striking just how strongly sheer chance – whether social, biological, or economic in character – continues to shape family-making in contemporary society. Many prospective parents identify themselves as such for many years while undergoing assisted reproductive interventions or grappling with the administrative processes of adoption; but many others find out quite suddenly that they have become parents, and must quickly re-imagine the shape of their lives and their understanding of themselves in light of this new role. Research in reproductive ethics has tended to focus on creating children. Philosophy of parenthood has mostly been concerned with the other half of this equation: the creation of parents. This conference brings the two fields together with other perspectives in the humanities and social sciences, to ask how our understanding of the nature of parenthood and associated social practices interacts with our views of the ethical and practical nature of procreative projects. Our speakers are: Herjeet Marway (University of Birmingham), Elselijn Kingma (King's College London), Kathryn MacKay (University of Sydney), Grace Halden (Birkbeck), Fiona Woollard (University of Southampton), Teresa Baron (University of Nottingham), and Giulia Cavaliere (King's College London).

Location:

29 April, 10 am - 5 pm: Monica Partridge, E07.

30 April, 9 am - 1 pm: Monica Partridge, D12.

Free registeration. All are Welcome!

Please click here to register.

Contact: Teresa Baron