Maternal Decision-Making through Temporal Uncertainties: The Anticipatory Biopolitics of Vosoritide in Dwarfism Communities

Abstract

Vosoritide, a biotechnological therapy designed to increase growth in children with achondroplasia, has introduced new pressures and bodily possibilities for families navigating this rare genetic condition. While debates around its use often centre on its efficacy as a non-surgical growth treatment for the most common form of non-lethal human dwarfism, far less attention has been paid to how the medication (re)shapes the temporal landscape of maternal decision-making, children’s bodily autonomy, and community dynamics. Drawing on qualitative interviews with mothers from UK dwarfism communities, comprising both average-stature and dwarf mothers, this research locates maternal decision-making within broader regimes of health governance, biosocial communities, and concepts of ‘good’ mothering. Conceptually, the article foregrounds how Vosoritide functions as a future-oriented health technology and a site of anticipatory biopolitics; governing decision-making through overlapping and complex regimes of temporality, maternal responsibilisation, and biosociality. Vosoritide emerges not only as a site of biomedical possibility, but also as a biopolitical discourse, shaping how mothers of children with dwarfism (re)imagine and manage their child’s body, future, and identity. In doing so, this research advances sociological scholarship by exposing the temporal and anticipatory ‘logics’ through which biopower operates in the governance of dwarfism.