Infertility Narratives

I want to shed light on the ways in which infertility is talked about, addressed, narrated in cultural texts. The parenthood mandate declares fertility as healthy, normal and natural, and infertility as unhealthy, abnormal and unnatural. It can be considered a disease, a medical condition – which has advantages (e.g. that health insurance should cover treatments), and directly connects to the right to bodily integrity and health, thus its treatment is a human rights issue.

On the other hand, infertility as disease also plays into the parenthood mandate and can enforce the shaming and stigmatization of affected people.

My project aims to draw attention to these delicate matters and asks how cultural texts so far talk about infertility – in novels and short stories, TV-series and films, memoirs and on the stage. 

If it is our goal to de-stigmatize infertility and to encourage a more open, less shame-suffused discourse about it, then we must narrate it broadly and with all its facets.