Reassembling Motherhood

Procreation and Care in a Globalized World
Erscheinungsjahr 2017
ISBN: 978-0-231-17050-5
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 336 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 236 mm, Gewicht: 604 g

The word "mother" has traditionally meant a woman who bears and nurtures a child. In recent decades, changes in social norms and public policy as well as advances in reproductive technologies and the development of markets for procreation and care have radically expanded definitions of motherhood. But while maternity has become a choice for more women, the freedom to make reproductive decisions is unevenly distributed. Restrictive policies, socioeconomic disadvantages, cultural mores, and discrimination force some women into motherhood or prevent them from caring for their children.

Reassembling Motherhood brings together contributors from across the disciplines to examine the transformation of motherhood as both an identity and a role. It examines how the processes of bearing and rearing a child are being restructured as reproductive labor and care work change around the globe. The authors examine issues such as artificial reproductive technologies, surrogacy, fetal ultrasounds, adoption, nonparental care, and the legal status of kinship, showing how complex chains of procreation and childcare have simultaneously generated greater liberty and new forms of constraint. Emphasizing the tension between the liberalization of procreation and care on the one hand, and the limits to their democratization due to race, class, and global inequality on the other, the book highlights debates that have emerged during these multifaceted changes, working to fragment and then reassemble the concept of motherhood.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ergas, Yasmine

Jenson, Jane

Michel, Sonya

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Kultur Politische Soziologie und Psychologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Politische Soziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Familiensoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Gruppen/Soziale Themen Gender Studies, Geschlechtersoziologie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Negotiating “Mother” in the Twenty-First Century: Between Choice and Constraint, by Yasmine Ergas, Jane Jenson, and Sonya Michel
1. Certain Mothers, Uncertain Fathers: Placing Assisted Reproductive Technologies in Historical Perspective, by Nara Milanich
2. Assisted Reproductive Technologies and the Biological Bottom Line, by Linda G. Kahn and Wendy Chavkin
3. Multiple “Mothers,” Many Requirements for Protection: Children’s Rights and the Status of Mothers in the Context of International Commercial Surrogacy, by Claire Achmad
4. The Borders of Legal Motherhood: Rethinking Access to Assisted Reproductive Technologies in Europe, by Letizia Palumbo
5. Pregnant Bodies and the Subjects of Rights: The Surrogacy–Abortion Nexus, by Yasmine Ergas
6. The Motherless Fetus: Ultrasound Pictures and Their Magic Disappearing Trick, by Anne Higonnet
7. Contracting for Motherhood: Postadoption Visitation Agreements, by Carol Sanger
8. Relinquishment and Adoption in Tamil Society: Mothers’ Experiences with De-kinning, by Pien Bos
9. Marginalized Mothers and Intersecting Systems of Surveillance: Prisons and Foster Care, by Dorothy Roberts
10. Care and Gender, by Martha Albertson Fineman
11. The Double Lives of Transnational Mothers, by Sonya Michel and Gabrielle Oliveira
12. Euro-Orphans and the Stigmatization of Migrant Motherhood, by Helma Lutz
13. The New Maternalism: Children First; Women Second, by Jane Jenson
Afterword: Crossing into the Future, by Alice Kessler-Harris
Contributors
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Yasmine Ergas is the director of the gender and public policy specialization at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.

Jane Jenson is professor of political science at the Université de Montréal.

Sonya Michel is professor emerita of history, American studies, and women's studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.