Feminist scientist: "If some animals can have babies without males, why can't humans?"

Arathi Prasad was born in Trinidad but now lives in London. She has written a book about artificial reproduction called Like a Virgin: The Science of a Sexless Future.

She takes a very positive view of the possibility that one day soon people will be able to have a baby by themselves using artificial wombs.

Why does this appeal to her? There seem to be two reasons. First, although she had a daughter as a single mother in her mid-20s, she is a career woman in her 30s with no man in sight and she would like to have a larger number of children and time is running out. She hopes that with artificial womb and fertilisation technology that women like herself could have children at any time and at any age:

I remember waking up one Saturday morning, on a bed with my daughter in my mum's loft, thinking, well, if some animals can have babies without males, why can't humans? So many women are like me, in their 30s, we do want our careers ... and we're looking for the right partner. And then you get older and it looks less likely to happen.

Why not try to get family formation right instead? Why not bring family formation back to people's mid-20s instead of leaving it so late?

I suspect one reason Arathi Prasad doesn't consider this possibility is that liberalism assumes that each person will pursue their own individual goals and respect or not interfere with other persons pursuing their own individual goals. That's OK when it comes to things like career or hobbies or travel. But it means that we can't make claims on others when it comes to relationships. We can't have expectations of how the opposite sex might behave in order to make timely family formation possible. So if that is ruled out, then the solution has to be something within our own individual control - such as using artificial reproduction techniques.

Here's another possible explanation. There are women who chafe at the idea of forming a family with an "ordinary" man they consider beneath them. They would rather operate solo, outside of marriage, in a less regulated sexual marketplace (which I think is one reason why feminists pushed for the sexual revolution). The advent of artificial wombs and new fertilisation techniques would widen the possibilities for such women to procreate outside of a relationship with a man.

The second reason why Arathi Prasad welcomes the new technology is that it would break down sex distinctions within the family. Motherhood would no longer be associated with womanhood:

If babies are gestated outside the human body, it would immediately disrupt all our notions about who should be the primary parent, and about male and female roles as a whole. "It would get away from that question of mother and father," says Prasad, "and instead become: what is a parent?"

...Someone pointed out to Prasad that men can produce milk too: "They've got mammary glands, and I haven't looked into this, but say that was possible, then you're really asking who is the mother, and who is the father? If you unhinge all of these things from their very basis, you'd have to rethink who does what."

And this:

"Why can’t a man be a mother?" she asks. "Why do we care so much about what it means to be a 'mother' rather than to be a 'parent'?

"By all reasonable estimates, in the near future we will conquer the tyranny of the womb."

She is so keen to collapse the distinction between fatherhood and motherhood that she looks forward to men breastfeeding and she talks about the "tyranny of the womb". The positive connotations that are normally associated with the womb, as the site of fertility and new life, are replaced with the idea of the womb as an agent of tyranny. It's another case of feminists degrading what is distinctly female, rather than celebrating it.

Why is Arathi Prasad so keen to collapse distinct sex roles in the family? It could be that she sees the motherhood role as an inferior one - an impediment to career - and so she wants the "hindrance" of it to be shared equally between men and women. Or perhaps she regards motherhood negatively as a biologically based role which conflicts with the liberal insistence that whatever is self-determined is superior to whatever is predetermined. Therefore, she doesn't like family roles to be associated with the predetermined fact of being biologically male or female.