ABSTRACT
Technology can also be understood as 'too much' culture; nonetheless as a source of anxiety in this field it seems a relatively new target. Bastardy was perceived as a growing threat; since the Second World War the number of illegitimate births had been rising steadily. To many it appeared that the institution of the family, which they believed underpinned Western civilisation, was under threat. In many ways the Warnock Report recapitulates the anxieties about adoption of children current in the 1920s. Then adoption was not regulated by the law; it could be and was exploited as a source of cheap child labour. Instead of a traffic in children, we have [today] a trade in human gametes and embryos. And where those earlier anxieties touched on the implications for people's legal and social standing, the present anxiety concerns interference with natural relations.
