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Cambridge Reproduction Forum (Lent Term 2025):
Why do people have children?
When: Wednesday, 12 March, 2025 - 15:00 to 19:00
Where: East 2 Room, West Hub, JJ Thomson Ave, Cambridge CB3 0US
Today over half the global population lives in states or nations with below replacement-level fertility. In some populations a quarter or more of 50 year-old women have never had children. While many states, economists, evolutionary biologists and demographers (not to mention journalists) puzzle over why so many people are choosing to have few or no children, these patterns raise the more fundamental question of why people have children at all.
In this forum we will gather biologists, economists, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, demographers and historians to ask: What are children for?
- Do they offer to fulfil an evolutionary urge to transmit genetic attributes or to nurture?
- Do we expect them to perpetuate our identity or lineage, to make us happy, or to provide security in sickness and old age?
- And to what extent can these roles be substituted by non-biological strategies, including adoption, extended family or non-kin support, non-human relationships, or other forms of self-realisation?
- Could social norms change so far as to make biological reproduction a minority choice, as some demographers have suggested?
- What roles do social norms play, and how influential is the two-child norm that has been associated with replacement-level fertility and with many family planning programmes?
The afternoon will feature interdisciplinary conversation and flash talks from academics across the university, followed by a networking reception.
Registration open
PROGRAMME
15:15 - Welcome and introduction - Kathy Niakan (PDN and Co-Chair of Cambridge Reproduction)
FLASH TALKS
- Hao Li (Sociology)
- Emma Diduch (Geography)
INTERDISCIPLINARY DIALOGUE (1)
What is the value of children?
Mark Dyble (Archaeology) and Or Perah Midbar Alter (Psychology), chaired by Romola Davenport (Geography)
16:25 - TEA BREAK
FLASH TALKS
- Xiwen Fu (Psychology)
- Yiyun Bai (Sociology)
INTERDISCIPLINARY DIALOGUE (2)
What size of family do people want?
Robert Pralat (THIS Institute) and Kai Liu (Economics), chaired by Alice Reid (Geography)
18:00 - Drinks and networking reception
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Past Cambridge Reproduction Fora
Creating Connections: How does Cambridge Reproduction create connections between researchers?22 October 2024 An afternoon of talks and dialogues, followed by networking reception. |
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Transpositions: a Cambridge Reproduction Forum1 June 2024 This Forum used plant scientist Barbara McClintock’s fundamental idea of chromosome ‘crossing over’ to draw connections between different ways of reproducing life – in plants, in humans, and in art – and to ask questions about how knowledge of genetics and heredity have changed over time. |
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Thicker Than Blood: kinship, its multiplicity and entanglements13 February 2024 This Forum brought together researchers from plant systematics, evolution and ecology, human evolutionary genomics, family research, and comparative linguistics to present perspectives on how kinship is measured, analysed and understood, what problems and paradoxes it presents, and whether there is a unitary perspective from which its multiplicity can be grasped. |
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The Reproductive Turn18 October 2023 This Forum invited Cambridge researchers to reflect on the status of reproduction in our fields: what this is, what it should be, and what difference change could make. |
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Cambridge Reproduction Forum: Michaelmas Term 202218 October 2022 This term's Forum was a series of flash talks about reproduction research happening around Cambridge, and an introduction to this year's programme of events and activities from Cambridge Reproduciton. |
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Ectogenesis: ethics, rights, regulation4 May 2022 This meeting considered recent progress in achieving partial ectogenesis in lambs as a model for humans, as well as some of the ethico-legal consequences of the development of complete or partial ectogenesis. |
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The past, present and future of contraception10 February 2022 This Forum was organised in collaboration with the Cambridge Femtech Society and explored the origins, methods and future directions of family planning from a historical, sociological and scientific perspective. |
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Covid and reproduction5 November 2021 This Forum explored the many ways that the COVID-19 pandemic has intersected with reproduction - from fertility, pregnancy and reproductive healthcare to infant development and marital relationships. |
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Imaging reproduction: a cross-disciplinary conversation16 March 2021 At this Forum, the panel - a sociologist, a historian, a biologist and a demographer - led a discussion about the role of visual culture in research on reproduction and encouraged the audience to share case studies from their own research. |
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Cambridge Reproduction Forum: Michaelmas Term 202015 October 2020 This online Forum brought together representatives from each of the major research departments, centres and groups with an interest in reproduction to share their recent research. |
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Cambridge Reproduction Forum: Easter Term 20205 May 2020 This online Forum presented research from Psychiatry, Sociology and the Centre for Family Research, as well as a presentation by recent Conceptions Fund award holders. |
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Cambridge Reproduction Forum: Lent Term 202014 February 2020 This Forum was sadly cancelled because of the emerging COVID-19 pandemic. |
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Cambridge Reproduction Forum: Michaelmas Term 201918 October 2019 This Forum presented flash talks from researchers in Obstetrics & Gynaecology, the MRC Epidemiology Unit, Philosophy, Paediatrics, Engineering and the Babraham Institute, as well as an interdisciplinary discussion on human genome editing. |
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Cambridge Reproduction Forum: Easter Term 201914 May 2019 This Forum presented research from Archaeology, History, Law, the MRC Epidemiology Unit and Public Health, as well interdisciplinary dialogues about embryo research, and about ancient & future families. |
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Cambridge Reproduction Forum: Lent Term 201926 February 2019 This was the first networking event of the new Cambridge Reproduction Strategic Research Initiative. |