Abstract
The birth of Louise Brown in England in 1978 is typically cited as the origin story of in vitro fertilisation (IVF). This paper 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’. Rather than presenting a complex and nuanced story about the Browns and the troubles they had had in their marriage or the decades-long struggles of Robert Edwards and Patrick Steptoe to perfect the IVF technique, or even the kind of dystopian speculations about what IVF might lead to which emerged in later representations of ART, this origin story of IVF in 1978 was one in which science was simply assisting a natural need and bringing happiness to an ordinary, loving heterosexual marriage.

Biography
Dr Katharine Dow is a research associate in the Reproductive Sociology Research Group (ReproSoc) at the University of Cambridge. Her main research interests include reproduction, gender, ethics and the environment. Her book, Making a Good Life, will be published in summer 2016.