“I’m not discriminating against you, but…”

Navigating Fertility Assistance as a Fat, Single Woman

Authors

  • Kelsey Ioannoni York University

Keywords:

single mother by choice, artificial insemination, fatphobia, motherhood, fat mothering

Abstract

In this paper, I use an autoethnographic approach to explore the fertility processes I underwent and the difficulties I had in accessing fertility services in an effort to get pregnant as a fat single mother by choice. Here, I outline my experiences at two different fertility clinics, one of which denied me care based on my fatness. I reflect on the difficulties of accessing fertility services as a fat woman, and indeed how fat women are viewed as risky bodies to be deterred from motherhood. I conclude this paper by situating the joyous delivery of my son against the backdrop of being “high risk.”

Metrics

Metrics Loading ...

Author Biography

Kelsey Ioannoni, York University

Kelsey Ioannoni, PhD, (she/her) is a fat solo mom and a sociologist who explores the way that body size, specifically fatness, impacts the ability of fat Canadian women to access healthcare services. Her research interests are centred around the fat body, weight-based politics, and weight-based discrimination. Her current research looks at the ways in which fat Canadian women understand their bodies through the lens of the “obesity epidemic,” and ways in which this lens results in antagonistic relationships with their bodies. These feelings carry over to healthcare spaces where practitioners often hold anti-fat bias, resulting in weight-based discrimination and experiences of fatphobia in healthcare. Further, Kelsey is passionate about investigating the ways in which fat women experience discrimination related to reproductive health and access to reproductive assistance.

References

Ajandi, Jennifer. 2011. “‘Single Mothers by Choice’: Disrupting Dominant Discourses of the Family through Social Justice Alternatives." International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies 2(3/4): 410-431.

Bock, Jane D. 2000. “Doing the Right Thing? Single Mothers by Choice and the Struggle for Legitimacy.” Gender & Society 14(1): 62-86.

Friedman, May. 2014. “Reproducing Fat-phobia: Reproductive Technologies and Fat Women’s Right to Mother.” Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement. 5(2): 27-41.

Hayford, Sarah R., and Karen Benjamin Guzzo. 2015. “The Single Mother by Choice Myth.” Contexts 14(4): 70-72.

Jadva, Vasanti, Shirlene Badger, Mikki Morrissette, and Susan Golombok. 2009. “‘Mom by Choice, Single by Life’s Circumstance…’Findings From a Large Scale Survey of the Experiences of Single Mothers by Choice.” Human Fertility 12(4): 175-184.

Kelly, Fiona. 2012. “Autonomous Motherhood and the Law: Exploring the Narratives of Canada’s Single Mothers by Choice.” Canadian Journal of Family Law. 28: 63 – 104.

Parker, George, and Cat Pausé. 2018. “Pregnant With Possibility: Negotiating Fat Maternal Subjectivity in the ‘War on Obesity.’” Fat Studies 7(2): 124-134.

Sagi, Yair, and Cythnia Maxwell. 2017. “Cesarean Delivery in Women with Obesity. ”In Pregnancy and Obesity: Hot Topics in Perinatal Medicine, edited by Cynthia Maxwell and Dan Farine. 269-277 Berlin: De Gruyter.

Weissenberg, Ruth, Ruth Landau, and Iga Madgar. 2007. “Older Single Mothers Assisted By Sperm Donation and Their Children.” Human Reproduction 22(10): 2784-2791.

Downloads

Published

2024-10-22

Issue

Vol. 45 No. 2 (2024): Take Back the Future: 2023 Women’s, Gender, Social Justice Association (formerly Women’s and Gender Studies et Recherches Feministes) Conference

Section

Research Notes

License

Copyright (c) 2024 Kelsey Ioannoni

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

2. Authors are aware that articles published in Atlantis are indexed and made available through various scholarly and professional search tools, including but not limited to Erudit.

3. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

4. Authors are permitted and encouraged to preprint their work, that is, post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process. This can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work. Read more on preprints here.