Born and Bred

The study of kinship is undergoing a renaissance in social anthropology. A reflexive scrutiny of the enterprise of anthropology itself has led to questions about the cultural premisses that social anthropologists bring to the study of kinship in societies other than their own. This study offers an ethnographic example from late twentieth-century England of what constitutes, and is constitutive of, kinship. It also adds significantly to the growing ethnography of contemporary Western society, and provides an insight into attitudes towards NRTs (new reproductive technologies).