Imagining the Future of Motherhood: the Medically Assisted Extension of Fertility and the Production of Genealogical Continuity

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the ways in which the genealogical model is mobilized, challenged and / or reinforced in imaginaries related to the possibility of medically assisting the extension of female fertility and the making of older mothers. By focusing on public discourses on egg donation and egg freezing procedures, it shows firstly how oocytes may become active and visible elements in the production of genetic continuity in the female line, in contrast with genealogical thinking based on the importance of the male line. Secondly, it identifies two ambivalent figures, ‘the grandmother mother’ and the ‘radiant forties mother’, revealing the anxieties and hope associated with the extension of female fertility. It results from the analysis that gender and age are two crucial components of the genealogical model that need to be studied together when it comes to the extension of fertility time.