Infertility and Non-Traditional Family Building on Screen

By Dr Rebecca Feasey, Bath Spa University

Overview

Description

This playlist focuses primarily on factual programming as it looks at the science and the lived experience of pregnancy disruption, infertility and non-traditional family building, be it through assisted reproductive treatments and technologies, third-party assisted conception or adoption. The programmes are routinely clear and coherent about the statistics as they relate to the likelihood of a couple being diagnosed with infertility (1 in 7 in the UK), a woman’s chance of experiencing miscarriage (1 in 4 in the UK), the success rate for a single round of IVF (less than 1 in 5) and the number of children who are in need of adoption in the UK each year (15,000). That said, some of the celebrity-themed documentaries encourage the common misconception, routinely played out in the broader entertainment arena, that having a successful pregnancy outcome is ‘just a matter of commitment and will’ .

Curator

Dr Rebecca Feasey, Bath Spa University

Subject

  • TV studies, Media Studies

Keywords

Factual programmes, infertility, pregnancy, reproductive technologies, family, motherhood

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