Conceptive Risk-Taking
Extant research shows that uncertain conditions produce patterned changes to reproductive behavior. More specifically, individuals who are uncertain about their ability to get pregnant are more likely to engage in contraceptive risk-taking resulting in unintended pregnancies. This article extends this literature by considering how personal uncertainty influences fertility intentions and risk-taking behavior among people attempting to conceive. Through 86 interviews with individuals who recently or were currently attempting to conceive via medically assisted reproduction (MAR) in the United States, this article finds that personal uncertainty results in a greater degree of risk-taking. Specifically, as individuals became more uncertain about their ability to conceive due to previous failed attempts, a perception that treatments are unlikely to result in pregnancy, and difficulty in paying for treatment, they describe themselves as becoming more flexible in their preference for the number and spacing of children from a prospective pregnancy, and more willing to pursue treatments that risk a pregnancy to twins or higher-order multiples. These findings prompt us to pair the established term and concept of contraceptive risk-taking with the novel ‘conceptive risk-taking’ to more fully encompass the multidimensionality of fertility intentions and the breadth of reproductive risk-taking practices.
Doctor, How Much Does it Cost?
In recent years, economic sociology scholarship has begun to interrogate how moral understandings of market exchanges differ according to organizational context and class stratification, but it has not yet made clear how these structures might intersect to produce distinct meanings and practices. Through ethnographic observations at three fertility clinics in the USA, I investigate how fertility providers spoke about the price of care with patients given the threat to professional authority and patient trust from appearing financially motivated. Rather than one moral value, I find variation in the field that cannot be explained by attending to either class or organizational structure alone, but instead depends on how the two combine to shape perceptions of providers’ pecuniary interests. In considering variation in moral practices across clinics, I suggest that one way that actors match economic transactions with social relations includes talking about price explicitly or abstractly. Published in Socio-Economic Review
Switching Clinics
This article argues that one important way that people exert autonomy in consumer medicine is by switching clinics. This study finds that nearly half of participants switched clinics to reorient their patient careers that were not progressing satisfactorily, attempting to reset, redirect, and escalate them. This article emphasizes that patients exercise autonomy not just over treatment decisions but also over the direction and progress of patient careers themselves. This article is published in Journal of Health and Social Behavior
The ‘Chore’ of Sex for the Purpose of Pregnancy
Through interviews with heterosexual married couples struggling to conceive, I found that sex for the purpose of pregnancy became a highly rationalized project in which participants attempt to perfect their timing and promote the best chance for conception. Using the third shift as a theoretical framework, this article demonstrates how sex for pregnancy becomes a gendered chore involving emotion work, cognitive labor, and body work. This article is published in Sociological Forum
Potential Pregnancy in Contraceptive Counseling Sessions
I examined how medical providers diagnose patients with pregnancy before it is possible to use a pregnancy test. I analyzed transcripts from the Patient-Provider Communication about Contraception study. This article is now published in Social Science & Medicine
Egg Freezing
Along with my co-investigator, Mary Patrick, I conducted an interview-based study of women who have considered or undergone elective egg freezing in the New York City metro area. It is now published in the American Sociological Review.
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