Beyond the body: Social, structural, and environmental infertility

Martina Yopo Díaz and Loreto Watkins

Social Science & Medicine, 2025, vol. 365, issue C

Abstract: Infertility is often thought of as a disease of the male or female reproductive system defined by the failure to achieve a pregnancy after 12 months or more of regular, unprotected sexual intercourse. However, as fertility rates rapidly decline worldwide, we observe that the inability to conceive and have children stems not only from anatomical, physiological, or genetic conditions within the body but also from social, structural, and environmental conditions in society. Drawing on a wide array of international and interdisciplinary scholarship, this article rethinks infertility by focusing on the social, structural, and environmental conditions hindering the ability of individuals and couples to have children and become parents. We argue that accounting for infertility requires transcending its biomedical understanding as an individual disease located within the body and address the complex connections between the inability to conceive and the collective and structural dimensions of the environments where people's lives unfold. In doing so, we also emphasise that assisted reproductive technologies are important but not sufficient to tackle the diversity of contemporary infertility experiences. Accomplishing this also requires collective action ranging from family policies improving childcare facilities and parental leave to environmental policies reducing exposure to pollution and toxicity. By rethinking infertility beyond the body, this article contributes new perspectives for understanding the inability to have children, tackling reproductive inequalities, and advancing reproductive justice.

Keywords: Infertility; Reproduction; Stratified reproduction; Social infertility; Structural infertility; Environmental infertility; Reproductive justice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117557

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