Overview

Each year hundreds of children around the world are born to lesbian mothers who conceived through alternative insemination. This unique form of family-making creates families with no legal or psychological father, and challenges some of our most basic assumptions about what it means to be a family. How and why do lesbians use insemination to build their families? How best could it be protected by law? Is it a feminist issue? Is insemination the ultimate in lesbian liberation or a sell-out to nuclear family norms? How are race, class, and human engineering involved? Drawing on legal findings and personal interviews, as well as medical and psychoanalytic research, sociologist Amy Agigian looks at the impact and potential of this form of reproduction. Baby Steps is the first in-depth discussion of the issues and questions raised by lesbian insemination, and the book has been designed to serve the interests of general readers and health care providers as well as teachers and students in women's studies, gay and lesbian studies, sociology, legal studies, and bioethics.

Full Product Details

9780819566300

Table of Contents

Reviews

Patriarchy is a longstanding, durable institution and this book exhilarates any reader--heterosexual or lesbian--who is weary of living under its mantle.--Robbie Pfeufer Kahn, author of Bearing Meaning: The Language of Birth Patriarchy is a longstanding, durable institution and this book exhilarates any reader--heterosexual or lesbian--who is weary of living under its mantle.--Robbie Pfeufer Kahn, author of Bearing Meaning: The Language of Birth Baby Steps is a fascinating study into the world of lesbian alternative insemination. Agigian brings into focus the institutional discrimination that has been perpetrated against lesbian families, and justly argues that such reactions require radical revision. ----Dr. Ruth McNair, Senior Lecturer, Department of General Practice, University of Melbourne

Patriarchy is a longstanding, durable institution and this book exhilarates any reader--heterosexual or lesbian--who is weary of living under its mantle. -- Robbie Pfeufer Kahn, author of Bearing Meaning: The Language of Birth

Patriarchy is a longstanding, durable institution and this book exhilarates any reader--heterosexual or lesbian--who is weary of living under its mantle. --Robbie Pfeufer Kahn, author of Bearing Meaning: The Language of Birth Patriarchy is a longstanding, durable institution and this book exhilarates any reader--heterosexual or lesbian--who is weary of living under its mantle. --Robbie Pfeufer Kahn, author of Bearing Meaning: The Language of Birth Baby Steps is a fascinating study into the world of lesbian alternative insemination. Agigian brings into focus the institutional discrimination that has been perpetrated against lesbian families, and justly argues that such reactions require radical revision. -- --Dr. Ruth McNair, Senior Lecturer, Department of General Practice, University of Melbourne

Patriarchy is a longstanding, durable institution and this book exhilarates any reader--heterosexual or lesbian--who is weary of living under its mantle. --Robbie Pfeufer Kahn, author of Bearing Meaning: The Language of Birth

Author Information

Amy Agigian is an associate professor of sociology at Suffolk University in Boston where she is also a founder and director of the Center for Women's Health and Human Rights.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available