Imperatives to Reproduce: Views from North-west England on Fertility in the Light of Infertility

Abstract

Chapter shows that ideas of having children = very complex. People make sense of fertility in ways that belie simplistic notions of biological needs / social imperatives.\rIn discussing different reasons / rationales, they explore biological, social and personal imperatives to reproduce. In doing so, explore wider contexts, such as class, gender, kinship and community, within which reproductive decisions are embedded and which are reproduced through human behaviour. \r(245) The decision to have a child is not a self-contained event