L&S Curricular Connections

Childbearing is one of the most intimate and personal choices that individuals and couples ever make. At the same time, fertility is highly ordered and constrained, both socially and biologically. This course explores human reproduction through the lenses of evolutionary biology, population statistics, and culture. We organize the course in terms of major transitions and the question of choice. How do biology and culture make some choices more accessible and others less so? What happened to human fertility at key points along our evolutionary and cultural histories? What consequences do these histories have for young people today contemplating their own reproductive choices?