ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on discussions with twelve married couples from Central London and a Berkshire town, where it was aspects of the 'modern condition' which were explored. It explores themes related to the new reproductive technologies (NRTs), evoked a particular set of tensions intrinsic to the modernism. '"Designer" mixed race baby sparks row' is the title of a front-page article in a recent issue of the Guardian. Encapsulated in the article is the perspective that technology provides enabling conditions for the imagined to become aspired towards in the real world of social relations and material conditions. The widespread media coverage that attends the latest innovation in the take-up of the NRT is testimony to the power the implications of the technology exercises on our unspoken conventions. To consider the NRT in the context of a conjugal setting is at the same time to conjure up a cultural microcosm informed by ideas intrinsic to English/Western European kinship thinking.
