Inmaculada de Melo-Martín, Monash Bioethics Review

The chapters in this volume, knowledgeably edited by Françoise Baylis and Carolyn McLeod, aim at addressing some of the ethical issues raised by these alternative ways of becoming parents. In the process, the authors tackle important issues regarding the value of parenting, the duties that parents have when engaging in these alternative forms of family-making, and the obligations of states to those who want to use these means and to the children created and adopted.

Review here.

Sara Goering, Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal

This fascinating anthology focuses on the question of how we make families, and how bionormative assumptions shape or distort our collective thinking about parenting, children’s welfare, and state obligations to parents and children. The editors are primarily interested in the question of whether parents’ moral responsibilities toward children differ for children produced through assistive reproductive technologies (ART) compared to children brought into the family via adoption. As the editors point out, inthe realm of ART, most of the philosophical literature has been focused on parental autonomy and rights to assistance in reproducing, while the
adoption literature is almost entirely focused on the protection of children. The anthology does an excellent job of exploring this disconnect, and probing assumptions about moral responsibilities within family-making.

Review here.

Vida Panitch, International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics

As a recently tenured academic in my mid-thirties, I have been asking myself several interrelated questions on a fairly continuous loop: Do I want kids, and what is the value of having them? If I do want kids, should I bear them, or should I adopt them? […] Anyone grappling with such questions must immediately welcome this impressively comprehensive collection of essays, artfully edited by Françoise Baylis and Carolyn McLeod. Indeed, anyone who shares at least one of these interests, personally or professionally, will appreciate the volume’s breadth of insight.

Review here.

Maureen Sander-Staudt, Hypatia

This diverse and internally responsive collection examines the goods of parenting, reasons to critique and affirm bionormativity, personal and state responsibilities associated with the act of becoming a parent, as well as some of the more contested practices of ART. It thus turns away from mothering per se to wider questions of social and parental obligations for child welfare (and other moral goods) in an age of expanding reproductive technology.

Review here.