ArticleSociology of health & illness2021
Fertility and digital technology: narratives of using smartphone app 'Natural Cycles' while trying to conceive.
Article in Sociology of health & illness, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Implications of digital fertility tracking for clinical care: a qualitative systematic review.Reproductive health · 2025Pooled it
- Timed intercourse for couples trying to conceive.The Cochrane database of systematic reviews · 2023Pooled it
- Shaping Adoption and Sustained Use Across the Maternal Journey: Qualitative Study on Perceived Usability and Credibility in Digital Health Tools.JMIR human factors · 2024Trial
- Postfeminist Healthism: Understanding the Gendering of Healthism Using Menstrual Tracking Apps as an Example.Sociology of health & illness · 2025Article
- Fertility awareness in 97,414 women trying to conceive: gaps, misconceptions, and implications for reproductive education.Reproductive health · 2025Article
- Motivations for Use, User Experience and Quality of Reproductive Health Mobile Applications in a Pre-Menopausal User Base: A Scoping Review.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Flowing data: women's views and experiences on privacy and data security when using menstrual cycle tracking apps.Oxford open digital health · 2025Article
- Analyzing User Reviews of the First Digital Contraceptive: Mixed Methods Study.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Article
- Knowing (with) the body: Sensory knowing in contraceptive self-tracking.Sociology of health & illness · 2023Article
- (Not) talking about fertility: the role of digital technologies and health services in helping plan pregnancy. A qualitative study.BMJ sexual & reproductive health · 2022Article
- Time to Pregnancy for Women Using a Fertility Awareness Based Mobile Application to Plan a Pregnancy.Journal of women's health (2002) · 2021Observational
- Algorithms, allyship, and advice: A qualitative analysis of fertility tracker marketing.Digital healthArticle
- "UPDATE: I'm pregnant!": Inferring global downloads and reasons for using menstrual tracking apps.Digital healthArticle
- A post-phenomenological analysis of using menstruation tracking apps for the management of premenstrual syndrome.Digital healthArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Fertility awareness apps, which help to identify the 'fertile window' when conception is most likely, have been hailed as 'revolutionising' women's reproductive health. Despite rapidly growing popularity, little research has explored how people use these apps when trying to conceive and what these apps mean to them. We draw on in-depth, qualitative interviews, adopting a critical digital health studies lens (a sub-field of science and technology studies), to explore the experiences of cisgender women and partners with one such app, Natural Cycles, in the context of their daily lives. We found that many women valued the technology as a 'natural', inobtrusive alternative to biomedical intervention, and a means of controlling and knowing their bodies, amid a dearth of fertility-related education and care. Yet this technology also intervened materially and affectively into the spaces of their lives and relationships and privileged disembodied metrics (temperature) over embodied knowledge. Meanwhile, app language, advertising and cost have contributed to characterising 'typical' users as white, heterosexual, affluent, cisgender women without disabilities. In the context of neoliberal shifts towards bodily self-tracking, technologies appealing as novel, liberating and 'natural' to individuals who can access them may nevertheless reproduce highly gendered reproductive responsibilities, anxieties and broader health and social inequalities.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.