TY - JOUR
T1 - Children as investment
T2 - religion, money, and Muslim migrants’ experiences of assisted reproduction in Aotearoa New Zealand (NZ)
AU - Martin-Anatias, Nelly
AU - Davies, Sharyn Graham
N1 - Funding Information:
Both Authors declare no conflicts of interest. Second author has received a research grant from Marsden Research Grant from Auckland University of Technology (19/2,662,019).
Funding Information:
Our research project is funded by the Marsden Fund of The Royal Society of New Zealand. Associate Professor Sharyn Graham Davies, the second author of this manuscript is the recipient of the grant.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.
PY - 2023
Y1 - 2023
N2 - Children are valued in all societies although the specific framing of that value differs. Several societies frame the value of children through the lens of investment. For instance, children are worth having and financially and emotionally investing in because children may grow up to be economically productive citizens offering financial and emotional support to aging parents. Drawing on interviews with 18 Muslim participants in Aotearoa New Zealand, we show that the act of investing in children is emotional, financial and religious. However, while would-be-parents talked most strongly about children being a form of religious investment for the future, investment as money was forced upon participants as they engaged with assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). We explore how Muslim women and couples navigate terrain around children as investment showing a tangible tension between investment as money and investment as accruing religious capital. We thus develop the concept of children as religious investment to better understand Muslims’ journeys through ARTs.
AB - Children are valued in all societies although the specific framing of that value differs. Several societies frame the value of children through the lens of investment. For instance, children are worth having and financially and emotionally investing in because children may grow up to be economically productive citizens offering financial and emotional support to aging parents. Drawing on interviews with 18 Muslim participants in Aotearoa New Zealand, we show that the act of investing in children is emotional, financial and religious. However, while would-be-parents talked most strongly about children being a form of religious investment for the future, investment as money was forced upon participants as they engaged with assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs). We explore how Muslim women and couples navigate terrain around children as investment showing a tangible tension between investment as money and investment as accruing religious capital. We thus develop the concept of children as religious investment to better understand Muslims’ journeys through ARTs.
KW - Aotearoa New Zealand
KW - ART
KW - Investment
KW - IVF
KW - Muslim
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85176763482&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/s10823-023-09491-5
DO - 10.1007/s10823-023-09491-5
M3 - Article
C2 - 37975963
AN - SCOPUS:85176763482
SN - 0169-3816
VL - 38
SP - 307
EP - 325
JO - Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology
JF - Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology
ER -