A survey of non-traditional family-making suffers from a ‘feminism-lite’ lack of focus

By Amy Walters, Australian National University

Over the past few years, a flurry of insightful books have examined the meaning of reproduction and family beyond blood, heteronormativity and the nuclear unit.

In 2022, journalist Gina Rushton published The Most Important Job in the World, a reflection on how her experience covering reproductive health and abortion – and a diagnosis of endometriosis – shaped her ambivalence about becoming a mother.

Last year, Alexandra Collier’s brilliant memoir Inconceivable: Heartbreak, bad dates and finding solo motherhood chronicled her path to single motherhood through sperm donation. And in their respective memoirs, authors Dani Shapiro, Sarah Dingle and Lauren Burns explore the impact of discovering, as adults, they were conceived through sperm donation.

Sydney-based journalist Marina Kamenev departs from this personally inflected approach in her book-length investigation Kin. A survey of non-traditional family-making, it canvasses experiences of surrogacy and donor conception by infertile couples, gay and lesbian parents, and single mothers by choice.

Kamenev’s main aim is to demonstrate how the nuclear family has been displaced as a result of changing social norms and the alternative approaches enabled by reproductive technology. She also considers the social and ethical implications of emerging reproductive technologies such as gene editing and ectogenesis (an artificial womb).

The book is divided into ten chapters. Themes include “rainbow families” (focusing on gay and lesbian parents), “online mating” (examining informal arrangements outside of a clinic) and “the baby carriers” (centring on surrogacy).

While this structure appears logical, Kamenev’s integration of the histories of reproductive technologies and evolving laws around them is often hard to follow.

She is also fond of an anecdote where a succinct historical summary would suffice. Do we really need a historical tour of the materials used to make condoms to appreciate the struggles women went through to access the Pill? Is rehashing Bill Clinton’s infidelity necessary to demonstrate the nebulousness and hypocrisy of traditional family values?

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