Virtual connections: Technologies of reproduction, culture, and the growth of love in some contemporary fiction

Abstract

Synopsis It has been nearly twenty years since Barbara Katz Rothman wrote The Tentative Pregnancy: Prenatal Diagnosis and the Future of Motherhood , and somewhat longer since Nancy Wainer Cohen and Lois J. Estner wrote Silent Knife: Cesarean Prevention and Vaginal Birth after Cesarean . Effective contraception has been with us for 40years; IVF technology is now more reliable, especially in younger women. Contraception, antenatal testing, fertility treatments and Caesarean section are powerful and potentially life-saving technologies for shaping the experience of pregnancy and birth. Their use continues to grow even while the disadvantages are now familiar. The effects on social and psychological experience of the families who make use of or are affected by them are, however, still unfolding. This article considers the fiction and autobiographical writing of four contemporary women writers of a range of nationalities and ethnicities, Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Vaasanthi, Rachel Cusk, and Lionel Shriver. It argues that fiction and autobiography can provide a nuanced account of the experiential complexities of technologically managed pregnancy, which can add to our understanding of the affect of these now nearly indispensable technologies on the interpersonal.