Diverse Pathways to Parenthood

Damien W. Riggs is a professor in psychology at Flinders University and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. He is the author of over 200 publications in the areas of gender, family, and mental health, including Working with transgender young people and their families: A critical developmental approach (Palgrave, 2019). He is a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society and a psychotherapist who specialises in working with transgender and non-binary young people.

"With its focus in diverse and complex stories of pathways not only to parenthood but to production and kinship, this book reflects qualitative research in critical kinship studies at its finest. Drawing on decades of collaborative research in the new book and in a highly pedagogical fashion, Damien Riggs explores and explains urgent and timely topics for practitioners in reproductive and family care by pointing to both conventions and resistances in time of ”new” family forms and increasing use of ARTs. Equally importantly, by reading across several topics not usually analyzed together (such as infertility and reproductive loss, kinship with animals and across generations, straight and queer parenting), Riggs provides strong arguments for why attention not only to norms and deviances, but gender, sexuality and culture remain at the core of kinship and thus of critical kinship studies." --Ulrika Dahl, Professor of Gender Studies, Uppsala University

• 1. Introduction: Reproducing our selves through storiesSection I: Imaginations2. Planning for a possible future: Transgender people and fertility preservation3. Dreams of motherhood: Women in heterosexual couples planning for a first child4. Animal companions as kin: The significance of animals to women of diverse sexualitiesSection II: Interruptions5. Assisting reproduction: Heterosexual women’s experiences with infertility and fertility-related challenges6. A profound grief: Heterosexual women’s experiences of pregnancy loss7. Disenfranchised grief: Foster parent experiences of an unplanned placement terminationSection III: Conceptions8. Donor conception: Creating new possibilities?9. Baby desired, travel required: Negotiating international commercial surrogacy arrangements10. Conception narratives: Journeys to family for adoptive and foster parentsSection IV: Reproductions11. Wearing the pants?: Men’s accounts of becoming fathers12. An act of resistance: Lesbian women becoming parents13. Generations: Parent views on becoming grandparents14. Conclusion: From stories to practice