Cultural and Critical Responses to Solo Motherhood by Choice

This book considers the growing popularity of solo motherhood via gamete donation and how this type of “cyborg conception” is narrated in medicine, bioethics, fiction, and memoir. It identifies solo mothers as radical women who exist in a space beyond binarity (male/female dual-rearing dynamic) and heteronormative discourse; solo mothers represent, among other diverse family constructions (such as same-sex couples and throuples), a critical intervention in the dominant narrative of the nuclear family which defines the “ideal” reproductive model. This book combines memoir and scholarly research to present a deeply nuanced and rigorous overview of the solo motherhood phenomenon. Grace Halden is a Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Birkbeck College, University of London, UK. She specialises in reproductive health, reproductive technologies, assisted reproduction (IUI and IVF), donor conception, and bioethics. Her work is interdisciplinary and sits in the juncture between literary studies and medical humanities. Grace is also a solo mother by choice and a professional member of the Donor Conception Network (DCN). She has won several funding grants for her donor conception work (two funded by the Wellcome Institute) and is published widely in the field.