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Representations of Ageing and Infertility in the Twenty-First-Century British Press

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The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History

Abstract

This chapter looks at representations of postmenopausal reproduction and infertility in the twenty-first-century UK press. The analysis uses Media Framing Analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis and a social constructionist orientation to age(ing) and lifespan identity as theoretical frameworks. The focus is on female ageing and infertility as portrayed in a corpus of 30 British tabloid and broadsheet newspaper articles (2000–14). The articles feature famous recent cases of postmenopausal mothers: Sandra Lennon, Susan Tollefsen, Elizabeth Adeney, and Patricia Rashbrook. The microanalysis involves the identification of various framing devices, such as headlines, adjectives, and other descriptors associated with the characters, and centres on the concept of agency. It aims to uncover whether (and if so, how) the articles promote postmenopausal reproduction as an opportunity facilitated by modern medicine or, alternatively, as a threat to societal and lifespan structures. Discourses and framings of older mothers as marginalized ‘others’ are explored.

I wish to thank Kerry Andre Belgrave and Jessie Whittaker for their research assistance in the locating and coding of the data and in carrying out literature searches. I also thank the editors and Professor Alison Wray for their useful comments on an earlier draft of this chapter.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Frank van Balen and Marcia C. Inhorn, ‘Interpreting Infertility: A View from the Social Sciences’, in Marcia C. Inhorn and Frank van Balen (eds), Infertility Around the Globe: New Thinking on Childlessness, Gender, and Reproductive Technologies (Berkeley, CA, 2003); see also Marcia C. Inhorn and Daphna Birenbaum-Carmeli, ‘Assisted Reproductive Technologies and Culture Change’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 37 (2008).

  2. 2.

    Carrie Friese, Gay Becker, and Robert D. Nachtigall, ‘Rethinking the Biological Clock: Eleventh-Hour Moms, Miracle Moms and Meanings of Age-Related Infertility’, Social Science and Medicine, 63 (2006), p. 1551.

  3. 3.

    Linda J. Heffner, ‘Advanced Maternal Age – How Old is Too Old?’, New England Journal of Medicine, 351:19 (2004), p. 1928.

  4. 4.

    Susan Bewley, Melanie Davies, and Peter Braude, ‘Which Career First? The Most Secure Age for Childbearing Remains 20–35’, British Medical Journal, 15 September 2005, p. 588.

  5. 5.

    J. Lansac, ‘Delayed Parenting: Is Delayed Childbearing a Good Thing?’, Human Reproduction, 10:5 (1995), p. 1034.

  6. 6.

    Heffner, ‘Advanced Maternal Age’, p. 1929.

  7. 7.

    Barbara Hanson, ‘Questioning the Construction of Maternal Age as a Fertility Problem’, Health Care for Women International, 24:3 (2003), pp. 166, 168.

  8. 8.

    Abigail Locke and Kirsty Budds, ‘“We thought if it’s going to take two years then we need to start that now”: Age, Infertility Risk and the Timing of Pregnancy in Older First-Time Mothers’, Health, Risk & Society, 15:6–7 (2013), p. 538.

  9. 9.

    Alison Cook, Tracey A. Mills, and Tina Lavender, ‘Advanced Maternal Age: Delayed Childbearing is Rarely a Conscious Choice: A Qualitative Study of Women’s Views and Experiences’, International Journal of Nursing Studies, 49 (2012).

  10. 10.

    Friese, Becker and Nachtigall, ‘Rethinking the Biological Clock’, pp. 1553–59.

  11. 11.

    Carrie Friese, Gay Becker, and Robert D. Nachtigall, ‘Older Motherhood and the Changing Life Course in the Era of Assisted Reproductive Technologies’, Journal of Aging Studies, 22 (2008). For an example of the symbolic interactionist perspective, see Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (New York, 1963). Symbolic interactionism is a sociological perspective that looks at everyday behaviour and human interactions to help explain society and also at the meanings that people attach to tangible and non-tangible objects and symbols.

  12. 12.

    Kirstin MacDougall, Yewoubdar Beyene and Robert D. Nachtigall, ‘“Inconvenient biology”: Advantages and Disadvantages of First-Time Parenting After Age 40 Using In Vitro Fertilization’, Human Reproduction, 27:4 (2012).

  13. 13.

    Liselott Assarsson and Pål Aarsand, ‘“How to be good”: Media Representations of Parenting’, Studies in the Education of Adults, 43:1 (Spring 2011), p. 78.

  14. 14.

    However, see Virpi Ylänne, ‘Too Old to Parent? Representations of Late Parenting in the British Press’, Discourse & Communication, 10:2 (2016) for a focus on late parenting and not solely motherhood.

  15. 15.

    Kirsty Budds, Abigail Locke, and Vivien Burr, ‘Risky Business: Constructing the “Choice” to “Delay” Motherhood in the British Press’, Feminist Media Studies, 13:1 (2013). Quotation p. 132.

  16. 16.

    Lucy Hadfield, Naomi Rudoe, and Jo Sanderson‐Mann, ‘Motherhood, Choice and the British Media: A Time to Reflect’, Gender and Education, 19:2 (2007).

  17. 17.

    Tracey A. Mills, Rebecca Lavender, and Tina Lavender, ‘“Forty is the new twenty”: An Analysis of British Media Portrayals of Older Mothers’, Sexual & Reproductive Healthcare, 6 (2015).

  18. 18.

    Rachel L. Shaw and David C. Giles, ‘Motherhood on Ice? A Media Framing Analysis of Older Mothers in the UK News’, Psychology and Health, 24:2 (2009), p. 232.

  19. 19.

    Leonora King, Togas Tulandi, Robert Whitley, Teodora Constantinescu, Carolyn Ells, and Phyllis Zelkowitz, ‘What’s the Message? A Content Analysis of Newspaper Articles about Assisted Reproductive Technology from 2005 to 2011’, Human Fertility, 17:2 (2014), p. 128.

  20. 20.

    Patricia Campbell, ‘Boundaries and Risk: Media Framing of Assisted Reproductive Technologies and Older Mothers’, Social Science and Medicine, 72 (2011), p. 270.

  21. 21.

    Lucy van de Wiel, ‘For Whom the Clock Ticks: Reproductive Ageing and Egg Freezing in Dutch and British News Media’, Studies in the Maternal, 6:1 (2014): http://doi.org/10.16995/sim.4. Accessed 6 December 2016. Quotation p. 4.

  22. 22.

    Ylänne, ‘Too Old to Parent?’.

  23. 23.

    For further discussion see Baldwin Van Gorp, ‘The Constructionist Approach to Framing: Bringing Culture Back In’, Journal of Communication, 57:1 (2007), p. 60.

  24. 24.

    See, for example, Robert M. Entman, ‘Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm’, Journal of Communication, 43:4 (1993).

  25. 25.

    Robert M. Entman, Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Chicago, IL, 2004), p. 5.

  26. 26.

    Entman, Projections of Power, pp. 6, 23.

  27. 27.

    Paul D’Angelo, ‘News Framing as a Multiparadigmatic Research Program: A Response to Entman’, Journal of Communication, 52 (2002), p. 877.

  28. 28.

    Quotation Van Gorp, ‘The Constructionist Approach to Framing’, p. 62.

  29. 29.

    David Giles and Rachel L. Shaw, ‘The Psychology of News Influence and the Development of Media Framing Analysis’, Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 3:4 (2009).

  30. 30.

    Gerlinde Mautner, ‘Analyzing Newspapers, Magazines and Other Print Media’, in Ruth Wodak and Michał Krzyżanowski (eds), Qualitative Discourse Analysis in the Social Sciences (Basingstoke, 2008), p. 44.

  31. 31.

    Norman Fairclough and Ruth Wodak, ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’, in Teun A. van Dijk (ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction (London, 1997), p. 258.

  32. 32.

    John E. Richardson, Analysing Newspapers: An Approach from Critical Discourse Analysis (Basingstoke, 2007), p. 220.

  33. 33.

    Paul Baker, Costas Gabrielatos, Majid Khosravinik, Michał Krzyżanowski, Tony McEnery and Ruth Wodak, ‘A Useful Methodological Synergy? Combining Critical Discourse Analysis and Corpus Linguistics to Examine Discourses of Refugees and Asylum Seekers in the UK Press’, Discourse & Society, 19:3 (2008), p. 281.

  34. 34.

    Monika Bednarek and Helen Caple, ‘Why Do News Values Matter? Towards a New Methodological Framework for Analysing News Discourse in Critical Discourse Analysis and Beyond’, Discourse & Society, 25:2 (2014); Tony Hardcup and Deirdre O’Neill, ‘What is News? Galtung and Ruge Revisited’, Journalism Studies, 2:2 (2001).

  35. 35.

    For an extended discussion of human interest stories, see Hayley Andrew’s chapter in this volume.

  36. 36.

    Ylänne, ‘Too Old to Parent?’.

  37. 37.

    Alessandro Duranti, ‘Agency in Language’, in Alessandro Duranti (ed.), A Companion to Linguistic Anthropology (Malden, MA, 2004), p. 453.

  38. 38.

    See, for example, Theo van Leeuwen, ‘The Representation of Social Actors’, in Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard and Malcolm Coulthard (eds), Texts and Practices: Readings in Critical Discourse Analysis (London, 1996).

  39. 39.

    Richardson, Analysing Newspapers, p. 54.

  40. 40.

    In the example headlines given in the text, ‘…’ appears as in the original article, […] indicates that I have omitted material.

  41. 41.

    Laura M. Ahearn, ‘Language and Agency’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 30 (2001), p. 112, defines agency as ‘the socioculturally mediated capacity to act’, and in her review of approaches to agency comments on the importance of free will and rationality as aspects of agency.

  42. 42.

    Hadfield, Rudoe, and Sanderson‐Mann, ‘Motherhood, Choice and the British Media’, pp. 258–9; Shaw and Giles, ‘The Psychology of News Influence’, pp. 226, 230.

  43. 43.

    Campbell, ‘Boundaries and Risk’; Gayle Letherby, ‘Other than Mother and Mothers as Others: The Experience of Motherhood and Non-Motherhood in Relation to “Infertility” and “Involuntary Childlessness’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 22:3 (1999).

  44. 44.

    Ylänne, ‘Too Old to Parent?’.

  45. 45.

    See van de Wiel, ‘For Whom the Clock Ticks’, p. 5.

  46. 46.

    Ylänne, ‘Too Old to Parent?’.

  47. 47.

    Jennifer A. Parks, ‘On the Use of IVF by Post-Menopausal Women’, Hypatia, 14:1 (1999), p. 77.

  48. 48.

    Campbell, ‘Boundaries and Risk’, p. 267.

  49. 49.

    Campbell, ‘Boundaries and Risk’, for example, examines a single case study of a postmenopausal mother.

Research Resources

Primary Sources

    Databases for Accessing (UK) Newspaper Articles

    Secondary Sources

      On Media Framing Analysis

      • Paul D’Angelo, ‘News Framing as a Multiparadigmatic Research Program: A Response to Entman’, Journal of Communication, 52 (2002), 870–88.

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      • Robert M. Entman, ‘Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm’, Journal of Communication, 43:4 (1993), 51–8.

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      • Robert M. Entman, Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2004).

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      • David Giles and Rachel L. Shaw, ‘The Psychology of News Influence and the Development of Media Framing Analysis’, Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 3:4 (2009), 375–93.

        Article  Google Scholar 

      • Rachel L. Shaw and David C. Giles, ‘Motherhood on Ice? A Media Framing Analysis of Older Mothers in the UK News’, Psychology and Health, 24:2 (2009), 221–36.

        Article  Google Scholar 

      On Critical Discourse Analysis

      • Norman Fairclough, Discourse and Social Change (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992).

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      • Norman Fairclough and Ruth Wodak, ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’, in Teun A. van Dijk (ed.), Discourse as Social Interaction (London: Sage, 1997), 258–84.

        Google Scholar 

      • David Machin and Andrea Mayr, How To Do Critical Discourse Analysis: A Multimodal Introduction (Los Angles, CA and London: Sage, 2012).

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      • Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer (eds), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis, 2nd edn (London: Sage, 2009).

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      On News Discourse

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      • John Richardson, Analysing Newspapers: An Approach from Critical Discourse Analysis (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

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      On Media and Cultural Representations of Ageing

      • Mike Featherstone and Andrew Wernick (eds), Images of Aging: Cultural Representations of Later Life (London: Routledge, 1995).

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      • Virpi Ylänne (ed.), Representing Ageing: Images and Identities (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

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      • Leonora King, Togas Tulandi, Robert Whitley, Teodora Constantinescu, Carolyn Ells, and Phyllis Zelkowitz, ‘What’s the Message? A Content Analysis of Newspaper Articles about Assisted Reproductive Technology from 2005 to 2011’, Human Fertility, 17:2 (2014), 124–32.

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      • Tracey A. Mills, Rebecca Lavender, and Tina Lavender, ‘“Forty is the new twenty”: An Analysis of British Media Portrayals of Older Mothers’, Sexual & Reproductive Healthcare, 6 (2015), 88–94.

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      Author information

      Authors and Affiliations

      1. Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, UK

        Virpi Ylänne

      Authors
      1. Virpi Ylänne
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      Corresponding author

      Correspondence to Virpi Ylänne .

      Editor information

      Editors and Affiliations

      1. School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

        Gayle Davis

      2. Department of History, University of Essex, Colchester, Essex, UK

        Tracey Loughran

      Appendix: Newspaper Articles (Focus on EA, SL, PR or ST)

      Appendix: Newspaper Articles (Focus on EA, SL, PR or ST)

      Chester Chronicle

      5 June 2014: Carmelia de Lucia, ‘The older mums debate; how old is too old?’ (PR).

      Daily Mail

      6 February 2003: Paul Bracchi and Neil Sears, ‘Her children are furious, her new husband’s chatting up other women and she thinks Angel Gabriel told her to conceive…so what hope for the baby born last week to a mother of 58? (SL).

      12 January 2005: Cristina Odone, ‘How can a mum be so utterly selfish?’ (SL).

      5 May 2006: Gordon Rayner, ‘I’m not too old to be a mother at 62’ (PR).

      23 October 2006: Jenny Hope, ‘Mothers over 50 “do as well as young women”’ (PR/PF).

      3 June 2009: Allison Pearson, ‘A sickening picture that makes me shudder…’ (EA).

      28 June 2010: Daniel Martin, ‘Mother aged 67 takes her one-year-old for a walk’ (EA).

      7 November 2011: Tom Kelly, ‘I was too old when I had my baby, says IVF mum aged 61’ (ST).

      Daily Mirror

      21 March 2004: Zoe Nauman, ‘I just want to be pregnant again…before I reach 60; Exclusive: On Mother’s Day…mum aged 58 planning another baby’ (features) (SL).

      16 January 2005: Carole Malone, ‘Old mum beats a daft teen’ (features) (SL).

      19 January 2010: Sue Carroll, ‘So ageist to refuse women a baby at 59’ (features) (ST).

      Mail Online

      21 March 2012: Eleanor Harding, ‘I realise now that having a baby at 57 was a mistake, says Britain’s oldest new mother’ (ST).

      Mail on Sunday

      28 June 2009: Jo MacFarlane, ‘Oldest mum goes back to work…four weeks after giving birth’ (EA).

      Media Planner

      28 February 2014: ‘5th anniversary of Britain’s oldest mum giving birth’ (EA).

      The Daily Telegraph

      25 October 2006: Jan Moir, ‘Living longer, looking younger, losing the plot’ (features; comment) (PR).

      7 November 2011: Graeme Paton, ‘My critics were right I was wrong to have baby at the age of 57’ (ST).

      17 April 2012: Bryony Gordon, ‘We should not trick the biological clock’ (features) (ST).

      5 July 2012: Hannah Furness, ‘IVF: The older women who have become mothers’ (ST, EA, PR).

      The Express

      19 January 2010: Vanessa Feltz, ‘IVF mum is really pushing her luck’ (ST).

      12 November 2011: Jennifer Selway, ‘Too old to be a mother’ (ST).

      The Independent

      21 January 2010: Liz Hoggard, ‘We are too quick to judge older mothers’ (comment) (ST).

      The Sun

      6 February 2003: Rikki Brown, ‘A wee miracle’ (opinion) (SL).

      24 March 2004: Jane Moore, ‘Sandra Lennon gave birth at 58’ (SL).

      30 May 2009: Lorraine Kelly, ‘USUALLY the birth of a baby fills me with joy’ (EA).

      7 November 2011: Ben Cusack, ‘Don’t set age limit over IVF’ (ST).

      Sunday Express

      16 January 2005: Tessa Thomas, ‘So when is a woman too old to give birth? Review (features) (SL).

      The Sunday Telegraph

      17 May 2009: Laura Donnelly, ‘Is this woman too old to have a baby?’ (ST)

      6 June 2010: Sally Williams, ‘It’s never too late to: Run around the world Have a baby Become a DJ…’ (ST).

      The Sunday Times

      24 May 2009: ‘Oldest mum sparks battle of the bulge; Talking points’ (news review; features) (EA).

      30 May 2010: Margarette Driscoll, ‘I had my first baby at 57 – maybe it’s time for another; as women over 40 enjoy a baby boom, one tells Margarette Driscoll what older mothers can offer a child’ (news review; features) (ST).

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      Ylänne, V. (2017). Representations of Ageing and Infertility in the Twenty-First-Century British Press. In: Davis, G., Loughran, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52080-7_26

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      • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52080-7_26

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