Infertility and non-traditional family building on screen

The science and the lived experience of pregnancy disruption, infertility and non-traditional family building

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