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.

中文翻译：

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生育力和数字技术：尝试怀孕时使用智能手机应用程序“自然周期”的叙述

生育意识应用程序有助于在最有可能受孕时识别“受孕窗口”，被誉为“彻底改变”女性生殖健康。尽管迅速普及，但很少有研究探讨人们在尝试怀孕时如何使用这些应用程序以及这些应用程序对他们意味着什么。我们利用深入的定性访谈，采用关键的数字健康研究镜头（科学和技术研究的一个子领域），在以下背景下探索顺性别女性及其合作伙伴使用此类应用程序Natural Cycles的体验他们的日常生活。我们发现许多女性认为这项技术是一种“天然”'，在缺乏与生育相关的教育和护理的情况下，生物医学干预的隐蔽替代品，以及控制和了解自己身体的一种手段。然而，这项技术也在物质上和情感上干预了他们的生活和人际关系的空间，并优先考虑了无形的指标（温度）而不是有形的知识。同时，应用语言、广告和成本导致将“典型”用户描述为白人、异性恋、富裕、没有残疾的顺性别女性。在新自由主义转向身体自我追踪的背景下，技术因新颖、解放和“自然”而吸引人' 对可以使用它们的个人而言，可能会产生高度性别化的生殖责任、焦虑以及更广泛的健康和社会不平等。