Contemporary concern about climate change has been accompanied by a resurgence in questions about what part human numbers play in environmental degradation and species loss. What does population mean, and how is this concept being put to use at a moment when the urgency of climate change seems to elevate the appeal to/of numbers? What role has and should kinship play in understanding “population”? Through a discussion of three recent books—Adele Clarke and Donna Haraway’s edited collection Making Kin Not Population, Michelle Murphy’s The Economization of Life, and Jade Sasser’s On Infertile Ground—this book review essay grapples with the place of human numbers in our understanding of the connections between human reproduction, kinship, and environmental issues. This essay engages most closely with the chapters by Clarke and Haraway in Making Kin, setting out concerns about their turn to (over)population through the analytical insights, historical perspectives, and empirical data of Murphy and Sasser. By putting these three books in dialogue with one another, this essay argues that responsibility for limitations on one’s ability to make kin lies within a heteronormative, White supremacist, capitalist political-economy and its inherent structures of inequality rather than in individual (decision) making.

Based on fieldwork with people involved in the environmental movement in Scotland, this article describes the connections they made between the future of reproduction and the future of the environment. While we are used to thinking of Euro‐American kinship in terms of the passing on of biogenetic substances, in this case an ecological ethic of reproduction, which places the emphasis on considering the kinds of environments into which children will be born, is more salient. An ecological ethic of reproduction urges (potential) parents to consider whether it is responsible to bring future generations into a world with stretched and unequally distributed resources and in which the accumulated consequences of human actions may be altering not only the natural world, but also the ability to reproduce at all.

The birth of Louise Brown, the world’s first ‘test-tube baby’, has come to signify the moment at which technologically assisted human reproduction became a re ality. This was a highly mediated and visible reality, as this article explores through the example of a British television documentary about Louise Brown broadcast when she was just six weeks old, ‘To Mrs Brown… A Daughter’ (Thames Television, 1978). In the article, I discuss the programme alongside data from an interview with its producer, Peter Williams. Williams sought to convince the public that IVF was morally acceptable and to cultivate sympathy for the infertile through this film. I will consider how he went about this by focusing on the programme’s visual presentation of Louise Brown, Peter Williams’ aims in making the film and his sympathetic relationship with the ‘pioneers’ of IVF, gynaecologist Patrick Steptoe and physiologist Robert Edwards. I will conclude with a discussion of the political implications of this film and how it contributed to the normalisation of IVF at a pivotal moment in its history.

This article examines how the British press represented Patrick Steptoe and Robert Edwards in the story of the birth of the first ‘test-tube baby’, Louise Brown. In 1978, the British press represented the birth of Louise Brown as both a success and a source of hope. The main pairs of protagonists in this story were Steptoe and Edwards and Lesley and John Brown, who metonymically represented British science and infertile couples, respectively. In the dominant ‘success’ narrative of the birth of Louise Brown as depicted in the British press in 1978, Edwards and Steptoe seemed to embody ‘British’ values of industriousness, perseverance, altruism, ingenuity and teamwork. Thus, their success was simultaneously a British success. With Louise Brown’s birth, in-vitro fertilization came to stand for the potential happiness of infertile people and a bright future for British science and industry.

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The birth of Louise Brown, the first baby born through in vitro fertilisation (IVF), in England in 1978 attracted worldwide media attention. This article examines how the contemporary British news media framed this momentous event. Drawing on the example of the Daily Mail’s coverage, it focuses on the way in which the British press depicted Louise’s parents’ emotions, marital relationship and social class in a context of political and economic crisis and resurgent social conservatism. The British press framed the Browns as ordinary and respectable, noting their work ethic, family orientation and moral values. The article argues that the human-interest angle that the press used to represent this story created a dominant narrative in which IVF was simply a means of helping married heterosexual couples have babies and that this established a frame for subsequent depictions of IVF, as well as contributing to its rapid normalisation.

This article considers the significance of maternal bonding in people's perceptions of the ethics of surrogacy. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Scotland with people who do not have personal experience of surrogacy, it describes how they used this 'natural' concept to make claims about the ethics of surrogacy and compares these claims with their personal experiences of maternal bonding. Interviewees located the maternal bond in the pregnant woman's body, which means that mothers have a 'nine-month head-start' in bonding with their children. While this valorises it, it also reproduces normative expectations about the nature and ethic of motherhood. While mothers are expected to feel compelled to nurture and care for their child, surrogate mothers are supposed to resist bonding with the children they carry. This article explores how interviewees drew on the polysemous nature of the maternal bond to make nuanced claims about motherhood, bonding and the ethics of surrogacy.

This article considers the significance of maternal bonding in people's perceptions of the ethics of surrogacy. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Scotland with people who do not have personal experience of surrogacy, it describes how they used this 'natural' concept to make claims about the ethics of surrogacy and compares these claims with their personal experiences of maternal bonding. Interviewees located the maternal bond in the pregnant woman's body, which means that mothers have a 'nine-month head-start' in bonding with their children. While this valorises it, it also reproduces normative expectations about the nature and ethic of motherhood. While mothers are expected to feel compelled to nurture and care for their child, surrogate mothers are supposed to resist bonding with the children they carry. This article explores how interviewees drew on the polysemous nature of the maternal bond to make nuanced claims about motherhood, bonding and the ethics of surrogacy.