New family settings and their subjective implications: assisted reproduction and female monoparental family

Abstract

This article discusses the meaning of motherhood in contemporary history, viewing the emergence of new technologies of assisted reproduction (RA). This text examines the contemporary family, no longer as a unit or as a unique model of structure, and takes into consideration that, nowadays, there are many family arrangements, it is becoming more common to have families composed of single parents. Assisted reproduction is analyzed from the symbolic meanings related to procreation, especially to desire and to the membership, understood under the light of psychoanalysis and in its interfaces with the anthropology, sociology and reproductive medicine. Motherhood is questioned, either as destination, or as women’s project. In conclusion, we endorse the importance of unstandardizing and manicheist discussions about the modes of family formation and its implications on individual and collective subjectivities.