Book description
This book examines, through a multi-disciplinary lens, the
possibilities offered by relationships and family forms that challenge
the nuclear family ideal, and some of the arguments that recommend or
disqualify these as legitimate units in our societies. That children
should be conceived naturally, born to and raised by their two young,
heterosexual, married to each other, genetic parents; that this
relationship between parents is also the ideal relationship between
romantic or sexual partners; and that romance and sexual intimacy ought
to be at the core of our closest personal relationships - all these
elements converge towards the ideal of the nuclear family. The authors
consider a range of relationship and family structures that depart from
this ideal: polyamory and polygamy, single and polyparenting, parenting
by gay and lesbian couples, as well as families created through current
and prospective modes of assisted human reproduction such as surrogate
motherhood, donor insemination, and reproductive cloning. Daniela
Cutas is Research Fellow in Practical Philosophy at the Department of
Health, Ethics and Society, Maastricht University, the Netherlands, as
well as at the Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of
Science, Gothenburg University, Sweden Sarah Chan Research Fellow in
Bioethics and Law, and Deputy Director of the Institute for Science,
Ethics and Innovation, University of Manchester, UK.
