Last Chance Babies: Interpretations of Parenthood in an In Vitro Fertilization Program

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Abstract
In this article I describe interpretations of parenthood that emerge in the context of an in vitro fertilization (IVF) program in an urban hospital. Through the notion of “odds,” which is used to communicate the likelihood of a successful pregnancy, patients and physicians negotiated a “high‐tech” fertilization, issues of medical expertise and authority, and the status of the patient's knowledge and experience of her own body. I suggest that while in vitro fertilization may be technologically innovative, it is conceptually conservative in upholding existing cultural assumptions about parenthood, sex, and marriage. In melding a cultural approach to kinship with an examination of the “contexts of meaning” in a medical setting, I seek to illuminate the cultural effects of medical technology, the rhetorical determinants of social relationships, and ideas about kinship in the United States.

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