Technology, women’s careers, and fertility

My regular readers will know how I just love the occurrence of unintended consequences in social sciences. A while back, two professors in bio-medical ethics wrote an opinion piece in a Dutch newspaper, based on such an unintended consequence. And: it is also related to my future thesis!

With women giving birth at increasingly higher ages, an increased number of women (and often their partners) are confronted with reproductive challenges. Of course, this can be related to women increasingly choosing to postpone childbirth in order to be able to invest in their careers. Perfectly legitimate (again: of course) and a good development in many respects, but an unintended consequence of these career developments, is the increased demand for assisted reproduction.

Dolle Mina Baas in eigen buik

Sociology Today: June 12, 2008

It has been a week since I started `Sociology Today‘. I’ve covered newspapers, free magazines found in public transportation, and blogs. All contained news that closely related to three main questions of sociology. It feels like this can indeed be continued indefinitely, but I will not do so on a daily basis. I’ve come to the conclusion that I prefer some more thoughtful posts, rather than these quickies. Perhaps I’ll make it a weekly item.

But for today I selected a public opinion magazine: Vrij Nederland. I found issues on gender inequality and sociobiology, on fertility issues and the supposed increase in social cohesion due to the European Championship.

Today’s Source: Vrij Nederland

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Stefan Brijs – The Angel Maker

How far is a single man willing to push scientific advancement in order to better God? Victor Hoppe is willing to go far, very far. This is the central theme of the book by Stefan Brijs, soon to be translated in English. In English, it will be called `The Angel Maker’, in Dutch ‘De engelenmaker’. The book chronicles the life of Victor Hoppe, a man who the reader learns about when he moves into an old house in the little village of Wolfheim.

The book consists of three parts, all narrating the story from different perspectives. The first part of the book tells the middle part of the life of Victor Hoppe from the perspective of the inhabitants of Wolfheim. These village people only see the strange man coming, and with him he has three little children. The man is a doctor, but never shows himself, nor his children. It takes almost a year before the villagers see the three children for the first time. When asked what happened to the mother of his children, the doctor responded “The children do not have a mother, they never had“. Their names are Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael.

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