‘Now She’s Just an Ordinary Baby’: Media Representations of the World’s First IVF Parents
This seminar by Dr Katie Dow analyses how the contemporary British media represented this event, focusing on Louise’s parents, Lesley and John Brown, a working-class married couple in their thirties. It will describe and analyse how the contemporary British media represented Lesley and John Brown, who came to be seen as deserving parents of the world’s first IVF baby and to stand as ciphers for a presumed universal, natural desire to have a child ‘of one’s own’.