Concepts of parenthood: the Warnock Report, the Gillick debate, and modern myths

Abstract

This article examines the notion of the family in the United Kingdom as a “contested domain” during a period of public reformulation of kinship ideas. In public discourse, threats to the family from two sources were perceived: new technologies of reproduction had led to the possibility of reproduction without sex; contraception prescription practices had evoked for some an image of disorderly sex without reproduction. Moving beyond simple contrasts such as commerce versus kinship, this essay examines the complex play of images in the public and media debate about English kinship. It shows that the conflicting positions examined inhabit a single ideological terrain, one in which the naturalness of the family is presupposed. Maternal nurture and bonding provide the key bio‐moral metaphor in these positions. The article contributes to recent explorations of the “discourse among discourses” in advanced capitalist societies.

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