Kinship as Social Practice in Contemporary Family-Making

Social institutions like family, systems of education, the economy, mass media, and religion help a society meet its basic needs. Many of these things are socially constructed, meaning symbols, race, gender roles, and religion do not exist because they are inherently real or true, but rather because a large enough group of people have come to agree that they are real or true. While reducing everything to social constructionism is overly simplistic, this concept provides a fundamental framework for understanding how social phenomena are created and maintained.

Social construction theory explains how humans cocreate, institutionalize, and maintain shared meaning through symbols rather than direct signs. Signs have direct relationships (smoke indicates fire), while symbols have arbitrary human-constructed relationships (fire represents conflict). Meanings are culturally relative and shaped by sociohistorical location, not universal. Socialization processes—where individuals learn cultural rules through rewards and punishments—create our understanding of what seems natural. This framework reveals that many institutions like marriage and gender are cultural constructs that change across time and cultures, not biological necessities.

Social constructionism refers to how society constructs gender roles. Gender is not biologically determined but is socially constructed through cultural, social, and institutional processes. This concept challenges the notion that gender roles are natural or inevitable, instead viewing them as products of social processes that can be changed. The social construction of gender means that the roles, behaviors, and expectations associated with being male or female are created and maintained by society rather than being inherent biological facts.

Humans differ fundamentally from animals because they lack biological instincts that determine behavior. Human nature is underdeveloped and imprecise, allowing for infinite forms of behavior. Unlike animals whose genetic makeup encodes behaviors, humans do not come with pre-programmed actions. Society and culture determine how humans should be and act. The social order is a constant human production realized through continuous externalization of human being outward. All human activity is subject to habituation, meaning it repeats frequently in the same manner. This allows for economizing resources and reduces the psychological tension of constant decision-making. Institutions appear when there is mutual typification of habitual actions by different types of actors—actors know what others will do, and others know what they will do. Roles are independent of the persons who exercise them. Institutions have a history and origin, and to understand their function, one must reconstruct their history. They also have a body of knowledge that legitimizes them, which may be written (like laws) or anchored in common sense. Institutions are regulators of conduct, teaching people how to act to fulfill certain roles.

Roles are not merely biological or natural phenomena but are socially constructed, meaning they are created and maintained through social processes and cultural expectations. This social construction means that roles can vary significantly across different cultures and historical periods, and that they can change as social values and expectations evolve. For example, the role of 'mother' has different expectations and meanings in different cultures and historical periods, reflecting the diverse ways in which societies have organized family life and gender relations. Understanding the social construction of roles helps explain how social expectations shape individual behavior and social organization.

Queer theory, drawing from Foucault's post-structuralism, rejects essentialist views of sexuality and gender, challenging heteronormativity and the assumption that heterosexuality and cisgender identity are the norm. The primary goal is deconstructing cis-heteronormativity, sexual/gender binarism, and traditional family structures. Judith Butler's 'Gender Trouble' argues gender, sex, and sexuality are performances—social constructions rather than natural facts. At birth, sex is assigned based on genitalia, and gender follows. Every binary contains domination and oppression, with women oppressed in the man-woman binary. The solution is to 'queer' the line dividing male and female categories. Donna Haraway advocated deconstructing male-female dualism, while Paul B. Preciado argued these categories are patriarchal constructions.

Post-structural and queer theory challenge traditional family assumptions by questioning what constitutes a 'good' family. They argue that traditional family structures reinforce unfair power balances and heteronormativity. Queer theory, which reappropriates 'queer' from an insult to mean 'different from normal,' seeks to disrupt and expand family definitions beyond heterosexual, child-producing models.

Queer theory challenges normative assumptions about identity, sexuality, and social structures by examining how cultural norms function as disciplinary mechanisms that regulate behavior, even when individuals don't consciously conform; heteronormativity enforces heterosexual expectations through invisible cues and socialization, creating a system where certain behaviors are rendered normative while others are pathologized, and this framework can be applied to analyze broader social issues including foreign policy, immigration, and economic policy.

Queer theory, emerging in the late 1980s-1990s, challenges heteronormativity (heterosexuality as obligatory norm) and the binary order that positions non-compliant identities as inferior. Judith Butler's concept of performativity explains that gender is created through repeated performances within socially established roles, questioning essentialism of gender identities. Transfeminist theory, emerging in Latin America, articulates all dimensions of domination including racialization, sexism, classism, and heteronormativity. It represents a 'mestizo' feminism that includes all voices, particularly those of trans and gender-diverse people who have been marginalized in traditional feminist movements.

Queer Theory is identified as a neo-Marxist ideology, similar to Critical Race Theory, which posits that society contains oppressors and the oppressed. The theory argues that sex is hierarchical and that the solution requires overthrowing oppressors to destroy institutions like the family, parental rights, and capitalism. Gail Rubin's 'sexual value system' diagram argues that no sexual behavior is wrong if consensual, categorizing 'good' behavior as heterosexual, marital, monogamous, and reproductive, while 'bad' behavior includes homosexuality, promiscuity, and cross-generational encounters. The theory claims sexuality is political and organized into power systems that reward some activities while punishing others.

Adoption and assisted reproduction are fundamentally different institutions. Adoption is a response to a social pathology - the existence of children without families. It provides a legal structure that allows children to exercise their right to have a family, with both adoptive parents having equal status. Assisted reproduction, by contrast, is a response to a desire for children, creating children to satisfy that desire. In assisted reproduction, one or both parents are not biologically related to the child, and the child is created with full awareness of this situation. The child is a person with rights, not an object to be produced according to certain criteria.

ART applications include: (1) IVF for blocked fallopian tubes, low sperm count, unexplained infertility; (2) GIFT for females who cannot produce eggs but can provide implantation environment; (3) ICSI for severe male factor infertility; (4) Artificial insemination for erectile dysfunction, low sperm count, or poor motility. Legal adoption is an alternative for couples who cannot conceive through ART. In India, adoption is legal and provides homes for orphaned children who lack parents. Adoption benefits include: providing opportunities for education, healthcare, and a loving family; based on the principle that all humans are equal regardless of caste or religion. Adoption is considered a noble alternative to biological reproduction for couples with infertility.

Assisted reproductive technology (ART) participates in the transformation of conceptions of social and biological kinship roles, the interpersonal and institutional organization of society, and legal and commercial relations. ARTs help construct and conscript the social, legal, biogenetic, and identity-based accounts needed to produce and sustain kinship legibility. Race and disability operate not only as status outcomes in the reproductive process but as productive forces themselves, as kinship devices that organize and produce value schemas regarding how kin is made intelligible and how it ought to be sustained.

Infertility is defined as the inability of a couple to conceive after two years of unprotected intercourse, caused by physical, psychological, drug-related, or health factors. Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART) provide solutions: IVF involves collecting gametes, fertilizing in laboratory to form zygote/embryo; ZIFT transfers early embryos into fallopian tubes; GIFT injects gametes from donor into recipient's fallopian tubes; ICSI directly injects sperm into egg for male factor infertility; artificial insemination introduces semen into reproductive tract; surrogacy allows selected woman to carry child for couple. ART requires specialized professionals, expensive instruments, and careful procedures, limiting availability. Legal adoption is presented as an alternative pathway to parenthood, avoiding high ART costs through evaluation and legal permission processes.

ART has created a 'legal Wild West' where courts must apply existing statutes not designed for these technologies. Pennsylvania and New Jersey lack comprehensive ART statutes, forcing judges to apply case law from the 1960s. Courts have ruled sperm donor contracts waiving support obligations are not against public policy. ART requires psychological evaluation and legal representation before proceeding. In divorce cases, courts apply different approaches: Pennsylvania uses balancing tests that may award embryos to the wife with medical conditions, while New Jersey prohibits forcing anyone to become a parent against their will. Couples must understand religious and social views on embryos before IVF. Modern ART enables genetic testing for over 100 gene disorders, requiring genetic counseling alongside psychological and legal counseling.