Listen up below, or find the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, and Stitcher.
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.
