About this site

Welcome to my site. My friends and I created this to share some of my work and - more importantly - to invite an exchange of ideas.


I've been a sociologist for a long time. and ventured into a number of different fields over the years: birth and midwifery (which I still think of as my home base); the new genetics and reproductive technologies; medical sociology; bioethics; issues in disability; adoption; race; and now food studies too. Some of you might know my work in one of these areas, others in a different area. What would be really interesting would be to have people talk, with each other and with me, across areas. I've tried, with some success over the years, to talk to midwives about genetics; to encourage people who do new reproductive technologies to think about home birth; to have bioethicists pay more attention to what medical sociology can offer; to get people in Food Studies thinking where midwifery issues overlap with their concerns. These are invariably the most fun and stimulating conversations I've ever been a part of. Connecting people, connecting ideas, weaving the webs that pull us together - nothing could make me happier. So this site, a gift from my friends, is my place to do this kind of weaving.


We've grouped my work by area - but please, if you're here because you have gotten anything useful out of my work in one area, do poke around for a minute in another. Bring your insights and wisdom and experience to a new place, a new issue. Let's see what we can weave together.


- Barbara Katz Rothman

Creating Eggs for Older Women: And for what problem is this the solution?


Another news headline out of the repro-science labs: they can --  maybe eventually, sorta, possibly -- get viable eggs from postmenopausal women.   Asked to chime in on the 'social implications' I have to first wrap my head around why women would want to become mothers in their 50's and 60's.  Is it because we've made it so hard to have kids in our 20's and 30's, when our bodies are most ready for it?  So -- call me crazy -- but might it not make more sense to solve that social problem rather than try to introduce a technological fix?


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