Redefining Our Reproductive Identities with Aurelie Athan

Women Without Kids

Psychologist Aurelie Athan on the emerging concept of "Reproductive Identity." In the episode we discuss:

-How Aurelie defines the concept of “reproductive identity” and how she came to this work

-The different life experiences that help to form our reproductive identity - and how this intersects with other identity markers

-The cultural and social developments that have shifted the narrative about who is “supposed to” have children, and why

-Why the transitions and developmental phases of mid-life have been so unexamined

-Evolving attitudes to the concept of “generatively” - what we are contributing to future generations

-The impact professionally and culturally of women delaying motherhood to prioritize education and personal development

-How not becoming a parent is its own developmental phase psychologically

-The specific factors can help inform our “reproductive orientation” - and why some people are naturally “a-reproductive” (as in a-sexual) with no desire to reproduce

-How to create more space for ambivalence and fluidity in terms of reproductive identity and / or orientation

-The importance of having our self-identity verified by the way we are received in the world

-The importance of creating new language to describe the full spectrum of emerging reproductive identities

-The wider and ongoing implications for the concept of reproductive identity being embraced in the mainstream

Read Aurelie Athan's full paper on Reproductive Identity HERE.

You can pre-order your copy of Women Without Kids: The Revolutionary Rise of an Unsung Sisterhood HERE.