This study, based on ethnographic field research and drawing from contemporary anthropological approaches to kinship, examines how women who are forced to resort to the biomedical technique of egg donation undermine the "hegemony" of genes and reject the monolithic subordination of motherhood and kinship to biology.

By reshaping their kinship relations through new combinations of elements, symbols, and metaphors, which may sometimes refer to biology and sometimes to upbringing, social subjects "reshuffle the deck" of kinship, leading us to the acknowledgement that parenthood and kinship should no longer be seen exclusively as a consequence of existence, but may also result from intentional action.