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Within the field of medical sociology, there is an extensive body of literature on notable family transitions and stages in the reproductive cycle, such as getting married or becoming a parent, as they relate to mental health and well-being. However, the transition to becoming a completed family, that is, the process of determining or recognizing that one’s family is complete, is notably absent. In response to this empirical gap, this chapter presents findings from 114 semi-structured interviews with participants who reported having at least one child and who considered their family to be complete. First, the concept of “family completion” is introduced and conceptualized based on the qualitative considerations of participants and the contextual medical sociology literature. Then, thematic considerations around the process of family completion, related emotional preparations, and factors associated with mental health and well-being are explored. Findings suggest that family completion can be an important transitional period for parents and can be associated with emotional hardship for some individuals. Participants described experiencing conflict with their partner if they disagreed on the completion decision, frustration and sadness related to infertility, and/or feelings of loss or depression when completion was regarded as the end of a personal or familial life phase. This chapter concludes that creating a cultural context in which family completion is a recognized family transition period may spur intentional consideration among parents and promote the design of intervention services for parents experiencing changes in mental health or well-being.

Drawing on multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork conducted in rural Manitoba and throughout the Philippines with temporary foreign workers employed at a small inn and conference centre and their non-migrant kin, this chapter offers an introduction to and expansion of feminist engagements with social reproduction and global care chains. This chapter illustrates the importance of feminist analysis of migration trajectories and labour processes that fall outside of the conventional purview of gender and migration studies. To this end, it suggests that in addition to interrogating the conditions and rational under which reproduction comes to be articulated and experienced as labour, consideration of how divergent forms of labour also constitute and shape reproduction can provide significant insight into the social consequences of neoliberal capitalism, while revealing the ways in which the gendered and racialized parameters of reproductive and intimate labour come to be reproduced.

Purpose – This chapter addresses the transformation of patient into consumer, focusing on the specific population of human egg recipients. This work also analyzes medicine, and reproductive medicine and egg donation specifically, as marketplaces, particularly as they function in the Internet environment.

Methodology – This chapter utilizes a content analysis of egg donation related websites using both inductive and deductive coding schemes.

Findings – Egg donation related websites and their practices do indeed fit the model of a reproductive medicine marketplace, particularly those practices related to marketing strategies and cost.

Originality/value – This work focuses on the Internet as a primary location for a reproductive medicine marketplace, and develops a new understanding of the ways in which consumers are transformed by and operate in this market. It also demonstrates the emerging need for policy to govern this marketplace.

The concept of productive/unproductive work is relevant for better understanding the current capitalist economy. As the contradiction between production and the appropriation of surplus value by financial capital becomes more pronounced as it expands, it exerts intense pressure on the appropriation and redistribution of the surplus value. It puts different factions of capital into growing conflict with each other and defines the boundaries of the current geopolitical map of power. The maximization of profits in the productive sector carries on until the possibilities of greater profits are exhausted and the rationale of the capitalist system of exploitation becomes virtually meaningless. The current level of technology with Artificial Intelligence eliminates at the same time any technical impediment to planning an economy. It also has the potential to create the objective conditions for making the move to the most democratic forms of participation in planning.

We examine the relationship between height and reproductive success (RS) in women from a natural fertility population in the Gambia. We observe the predicted trade-off between adult height and age at first birth: women who are tall in adulthood have later first births than short women do. However, tall women have reproductive advantages during the rest of their reproductive careers, primarily in the lower mortality rates of their children. This ultimately leads to higher fitness for taller women, despite their delayed start to reproduction. The higher RS of tall women appears to be entirely due to the physiological benefits of being tall. There is no evidence that female height is related to patterns of marriage or divorce in this population.