Rethinking Male Involvement in Reproduction

Focusing on the Practice of Role Categories in Men Who Confronted Prenatal Testing

Abstract

Gender studies have considered only women, not men, as parties involved in the reproduction process. However, with the increase in novel reproduction related medical technologies, men’s involvement in reproduction is being reaffirmed. The frame of argument（self-body-self-determination）that gender studies rely on can only inadequately discuss this situation. The elucidation of men's reproductive experiences is a contemporary issue that gender studies should address.

Therefore, this paper focuses on prenatal testing as an example of new medical technology. Based on the analysis of interviews with ten men who underwent/considered this test, this paper clarifies the “linguistic resources” and “role categories” men relied on to indicate their “being a party” to reproduction. It found that the “linguistic resources” were “ourselves,” “my child,” and “our child,” and the men involved themselves in reproduction by practicing “parental role” among multiple role categories.

As a result, this paper derived two characteristics of men's reproductive experiences: (1)Male subjectification process in reproduction is anticipating and becoming involved in the future parental role. This can be called an indirect process. (2)The main rhetoric of male subjectification in reproduction, that is, the practice of parental role, contains patriarchal nuances in the structure of the argument, independent of individual men's intentions.