PLEASE NOTE this is a 2014-15 reading list—the precise content may change in future
years.
Week 2
Introduction: Reproduction Matters
This introductory lecture will look at the ‘keywords’ in sociological and feminist discussions
of reproduction. Many of these circulate in the language of ‘common sense’ and their
meanings may seem obvious. But these meanings have shifted and become more difficult to
define as the social relations and the technology of reproduction have been transformed, and
as ‘the family’ has grown more diverse, challenging traditional attitudes towards ‘family
values’. We will also pay attention to the significance of reproduction within Sociology as a
field of enquiry, and its contribution to key issues and debates. Finally we will consider a
range of recent headlines about reproduction, which characterise the extent of the debate and
the anxiety it is currently generating.
Seminar
Questions
What are reproductive rights?
How might the following variables influence the exercise of reproductive
rights: place/location; age; religion; sexuality; gender?
What have you done today to contribute to the daily reproduction of human
life?
What experience do you have of the fragmentation of parenting? (eg.
genetic/gestational/social parenting?)
What contributions does the study of reproduction make to wider
sociological debates?
Core Reading
Knudsen, Lara M. (2006) Reproductive Rights in a Global Context, N a s h v i l l e :
Vanderbilt University Press (Introduction, pp. 1-10)
Available as an E-extract:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/search/extracts/so/so231
Nash, Meredith (2014) ‘Introduction: Conceiving of Postmodern Reproduction’, in Meredith
Nash (Ed.) Reframing Reproduction: Conceiving Gendered Experiences, Basingstoke; New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 1-22 [focus on pp. 1-14]
Available as an E-book:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2730303
Momsen, Janet (2004) Gender and Development, London: Routledge (ch. 3 ‘Reproduction’,
pp. 47-74)
Available as an E-book:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2525920
Additional Reading
1
Annandale, Ellen (2009) Women’s Health and Social Change, Abingdon; New York:
Routledge (ch. 4 ‘Women and Reproduction’)
Andermahr, Sonya et al (Eds) (2000) A Glossary of Feminist Theory, London: Arnold (see
entries on reproduction, the family, family/household system, patriarchy)
Castells, M. (2004) The Power of Identity, Oxford: Blackwell (Ch.4, ‘The End of
Patriarchalism: Social Movements, Family, and Sexuality in the Information Age’)
Chrisler, Joan C. (Ed.) (2012) Reproductive Justice: A Global Concern, Santa Barbara, Calif.:
Praeger
Firestone, Shulamith (1979) The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution, London:
The Women’s Press
Ginsburg, Faye and Rayna Rapp (1991) ‘The Politics of Reproduction’, Annual Review of
Anthropology, Vol. 20, pp. 311-343
Grown, Caren, Elissa Braunstein and Anju Malhotra (Eds) (2006) Trading Women’s Health
and Rights: Trade Liberalization and Reproductive Health in Developing Economies,
London; New York: Zed Books
Hamner, Jalna (1993) ‘Women and Reproduction’, in D. Richardson and V. Robinson (Eds)
Introducing Women’s Studies, London: Macmillan, pp. 224-249
Homans, Hilary (1985) The Sexual Politics of Reproduction, Aldershot: Gower
Howe, Tasha R. (2012) Marriages and Families in the 21st Century, Maiden, MA: WileyBlackwell (ch. 9 ‘Reproduction and Parenting’)
Jackson, Emily (2001) Regulating Reproduction: Law, technology and autonomy, Oxford:
Hart
Jagger, Gill and Caroline Wright (1999) ‘Introduction: Changing Family Values’, in Gill
Jagger and Caroline Wright (Eds) Changing Family Values, London: Routledge
Oakley, Ann (1985) (revised edition) Sex, Gender and Society, Aldershot: Gower
Stacey, Meg (Ed.) (1992) Changing Human Reproduction: Social Science Perspectives,
London: Sage
Widdows, Heather et al (Eds) (2006) Women’s Reproductive Rights, Basingstoke; New York:
Palgrave Macmillan
Websites
Centre for Reproductive Rights: http://reproductiverights.org/
UNFPA Reproductive Rights: http://reproductiverights.org/
2
Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights: http://www.wgnrr.org/
3
Week 3
Why Children?
‘Why Children’ was the title of an interesting collection of accounts (unfortunately not available in
the library) written by feminists in the 1970s about the process of deciding whether or not to have
children in the UK. The writers included some who had gone ahead and taken the plunge, some who
had decided against, often with some reluctance and regret, and one who was quite unambivalent,
who used the phrase ‘I always knew I did not want children’ – a phrase that recurs in recent studies
of childfree women. Some of the writers were heterosexual, some lesbian, some married, others not.
But the title indicates the assumption that the question ‘why children?’ is addressed to women of
childbearing age. This week we ask why women have children and why some do not, exploring
women’s own reasons as well as how others account for their reproductive status. In particular we
will consider Nancy Chodorow’s argument that reproduction is not always and necessarily a decision
imposed on women, but one that many women are motivated to want, because of the
psychodynamics of the family in which they developed adult sexed selves. We will also ask why
men have children (or don’t). Next week we will address a second, related question, ‘who needs
children?’ - this question draws attention to other ‘stakeholders’ in generational reproduction, who
may feel the need or the right to influence reproductive decision-making.
Seminar
Questions
Why do women have children?
How are women without children typically portrayed?
Why do men have children?
How are men without children typically portrayed?
Core Reading
Chodorow, Nancy (1992) ‘The psychodynamics of the family’ in H. Crowley and S. Himmelweit
(Eds) Knowing Women, Cambridge: Polity/OU Press, pp.153-159
Available as an E-extract:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/search/extracts/so/so231
Gillespie, Rosemary (2000) ‘When no means no: disbelief, disregard and deviance as discourses of
voluntary childlessness’, Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 223-234
Available as an E-journal article:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1746049~S1
Morgan, S. Philip and Rosalind B. King (2001) ‘Why Have Children in the 21 st Century? Biological
Predisposition, Social Coercion, Rational Choice’, European Journal of Population, Vol. 17, No. 1,
pp. 3-20
Available as an E-journal article:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1739765~S1
Office for National Statistics (2013) ‘Why Has the Fertility Rate Risen Over the Last Decade in
England and Wales’, London: ONS
Available online:
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1/birth-summary-tables--england-and-wales/2011--final-/styfertility.html
4
Additional Reading
Abma, J.C. and G.M. Martinez (2006) ‘Childlessness among older women in the United States:
Trends and profiles’, Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 68, No. 4, pp. 1045-1056
Bartlett, J. (1994) Will you be Mother? Women who choose to say no, London: Virago
Bongaarts, J. (1999) ‘Fertility Decline in the Developed World: Where will it end?’, The American
Economic Review, Vol. 89, No. 2, pp. 256-260
Busfield, J. and M. Paddon (1978) Thinking about Children: Sociology and Fertility in Post-War
England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Dowrick, S. and S. Grundberg (Eds) (1980) Why Children?, London: Woman’s Press (not in library)
Gillespie, R. (2001) ‘Contextualizing voluntary childlessness within a postmodern model of
reproduction: implications for health and social needs’, Critical Social Policy, Vol. 21, No. 2, pp.
139-160
Gittins, Diana (1993) The Family in Question: Changing Households and Familiar Ideologies,
Basingstoke: Macmillan (Ch. 5 ‘Why do people have children?’)
Hadley, Robin and Hanley, Terry (2011) ‘Involuntarily Childless Men and the Desire for
Fatherhood’, Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 56-68
Heaton, T. B. et al (1999) ‘Persistence and change in decisions to remain childless’, Journal of
Marriage and the Family, Vol. 61, No. 2, pp. 531-539
Hird, Myra (2003) ‘Vacant Wombs: Feminist Challenges to Psycho-analytic Theories of Childless
Women’, Feminist Review, Vol. 75, No. 1, pp. 5-19
Hollway, Wendy (1997) Mothering and Ambivalence, London: Routledge
Jackson, Emily (2006) ‘What is a Parent?, in Alison Diduck and Katherine O’Donovan (Eds)
Feminist Perspectives on Family Law, Abingdon, New York: Routledge-Cavendish, pp. 59-74
Koropeckyj-Coz, Tanya, Victor Romano and Amanda Moras (2007) ‘Through the Lenses of Gender,
Race and Class: Students’ Perceptions of Childless/Childfree Individuals and Couples’, Sex Roles,
Vol. 56, Nos. 7-8, pp. 415-428
Letherby, Gayle (2002) ‘Challenging Dominant Discourses: Identity and change and the experience
of ‘infertility’ and ‘involuntary childlessness’’, Journal of Gender Studies, Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 277288
McCallister, F. (1998) Choosing Childlessness, London: Family Policy Studies Centre
McDaniel, Susan A. (1996) ‘Towards a synthesis of feminist and demographic perspectives on
fertility’, The Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 83-104
Marshall, H. (1994) Not Having Children, Oxford: Oxford University Press
5
Morrell, C. (1994) Unwomanly Conduct: The Challenge of Intentional Childlessness, London:
Routledge
O’Brien, M. (1981) The Politics of Reproduction, London: Routledge
O’Donovan, Katherine and Jill Marshall (2006) ‘After birth: decisions about becoming a mother’, in
Alison Diduck and Katherine O’Donovan (Eds) Feminist Perspectives on Family Law, Abingdon,
New York: Routledge-Cavendish, pp.101-122
Overall, Christine (2012) Why Have Children: The ethical debate, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press
Rich, Adrienne (1977) Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Institution and Experience, London: Virago
Romito, P (1997) ‘Damned if you Do and Damned if you Don’t: Psychological and Social
Constraints of Motherhood in Contemporary Europe’, in A. Oakley & J. Mitchell (Eds) Who’s Afraid
of Feminism: Seeing Through the Backlash, London: Hamish Hamilton
Ruddick, Sara (1990) Maternal Thinking, London: Women’s Press
Salecl, R. (2011) The Tyranny of Choice, London: Profile (ch. 4 Children: To have or have not?)
Schoen, R. K. et al (1997) ‘Why do Americans want children?’ Population and Development
Review, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 333-358
Thompson, Rachel and Christina Lee (2011) ‘Fertile Imaginations: Young Men’s Reproductive
Attitudes and Preferences’, Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp. 4355
Woollett, Anne (1991) ‘Having Children: Accounts of Childless Women and Women with
Reproductive Problems’ in Anne Phoenix, Anne Woollett and Eva Lloyd (Eds) Motherhood:
Meanings, practices and ideologies, London: Sage, pp. 47-65
Websites
Office for National Statistics: Births and Fertility:
http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/taxonomy/index.html?nscl=Births+and+Fertility
UK ChildFree: http://www.meetup.com/UK-Childfree/
Why No Kids: http://whynokids.com/about/
World Bank: Global Fertility Rates: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.TFRT.IN
6
Week 4
Who owns women’s bodies? Who needs children?
This week we move the focus from the question ‘why children?’, with its implicit focus on women,
to the broader question ‘who needs children?’ This second question allows us to identify those other
than women of childbearing age who have a stake in the next generation and therefore an interest in
the reproductive lives of fertile women. We shall identify some of these ‘stakeholders’ and look at
their success in claiming rights over women’s reproductive bodies. This will bring into sharp focus
the revolutionary nature of the liberal claim, first articulated in the early modern period in Europe, to
individual ‘ownership’ of one’s body. This claim has been central to the 1970s women’s movement,
and is pretty much taken for granted today in modern societies. It is a claim that is not without
contention, and one that women have yet, de facto, to claim with full success.
Seminar
Questions
Who needs children?
Does needing children give other people the right to make claims over the
reproductive lives of women?
What sort of claims are made, how successfully and by whom?
How are these claims differentiated by women’s (dis)ability?
How are these claims differentiated by women’s ‘race’/ethnicity?
How are these claims differentiated by women’s location?
Core Reading
Browner, C.H. (2000) ‘Situating Women’s Reproductive Activities’, American Anthropologist, Vol.
102, No. 4, pp. 773-778
Available as an E-journal article:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1736847~S1
Kallianes V. and P. Rubenfeld (1997) ‘Disabled Women and Reproductive Rights’, Disability &
Society, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 203-221
Available as an E-journal article:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1739242~S1
Kasai, Makiko and S. Craig Rooney (2012) ‘The Choice Before the Choice: Partner Selection is
Essential to Reproductive Justice’, in Joan C. Chrisler (Ed.) Reproductive Justice: A Global Concern,
Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, pp. 11-28
Available as an E-book:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2647316
King, Leslie (2002) ‘Demographic Trends, Pronatalism, and Nationalist Ideologies in the late
Twentieth Century’, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 25, No. 3, pp. 367-389
Available as an E-journal article:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1739671~S1
Additional Reading
Beck, U. and Beck-Gernshein, E. (2001) Individualization: Individualism and its Social and Political
Consequences, London: Sage
7
Brenner, Johanna and Maria Ramas (1990), ‘Rethinking women’s oppression’ (first published 1984),
in T. Lovell (Ed.) British Feminist Thought, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 152-169
Brown, Jessica Autumn and Myra Marx Ferree (2005) ‘Close Your Eyes and Think of England’,
Gender & Society, Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 5-24
Daniels, Cynthia R. (2008) Exposing Men: The Science and Politics of Male Reproduction, Oxford:
Oxford University Press (Ch. 2 ‘Powers of Conception’)
Dillaway, Heather and Cathering Lysack (2014) ‘“My Doctor Told Me I Can Still Have Children But
… “: Contradictions in Women’s Reproductive Health Experiences after Spinal Cord Injury’, in
Meredith Nash (Ed.) Reframing Reproduction: Conceiving Gendered Experiences, Basingstoke;
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 135-149
Dotson, L.A., J. Stinson and L. Christian (2003) ‘“People Tell Me I Can’t Have Sex”: Women with
disabilities share their personal perspectives on health care, sexuality and reproductive rights’,
Women and Therapy, Vol. 26, Nos 3-4, pp. 195-210
Fraser, N. (1997) Justice Interruptus: Critical Reflections on the ‘Postsocialist’ Condition, New
York & London: Routledge (ch. 10 Beyond the Master/Subject Model)
Ginsberg, F. and R. Rapp (1991) ‘The Politics of Reproduction’, Annual Review of Anthropology,
Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 11-43
Halkias, Alexandra (2003) ‘Money, God and Race: The Politics of Reproduction and the Nation in
Modern Greece’, European Journal of Women's Studies, Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 211- 232
Hill Collins, Patricia (1999) ‘Producing the Mothers of the Nation: Race, Class and Contemporary
US Population Policies’, in Nira Yuval-Davis and Pnina Werbner (Eds) Women, Citizenship and
Difference, London and New York: Zed, pp. 118-129
Inhorn, Marcia C. (2006) ‘Defining Women’s Health: A Dozen Messages from more than 150
Ethnographies’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 345-378
Irwin, Sarah (2000) 'Reproductive Regimes: Changing Relations of Inter-dependence and Fertility
Change', Sociological Research Online, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 151-167
Kanaaneh, Rhoda A. (2002) Birthing the Nation: Strategies of Palestinian Women in Israel,
Berkeley: University of California Press
King, Leslie (1998) ‘“France Needs Children”: Pronatalism, Nationalism and Women's Equity’, The
Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 1, pp. 33-52
MacPherson, C.B (1962) The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism, Oxford: OUP
Mishtal, Joanna Z. (2009) ‘Matters of “Conscience”: The Politics of Reproductive Healthcare in
Poland’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 161-183
Nelson, J. (2003) Women of Colour and the Reproductive Rights Movement, New York: New York
University Press
8
O, Neill, J. (1994) The Missing Child in Liberal Theory, Toronto: University of Toronto
Overall, Christine (2012) Why Have Children: The ethical debate, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press (ch.
2 ‘Reproductive Freedom, Autonomy and Reproductive Rights’)
Parry, Diana C. (2005) ‘Women's Leisure as Resistance to Pronatalist Ideology’, Journal of Leisure
Research, Vol. 37, No. 2, pp. 133-151
Pateman, Carole (1988) The Sexual Contract, Cambridge: Polity Press
Philips, A. (2011) ‘It’s my body and I’ll do what I like with it: Bodies as Objects and Property’,
Political Theory, Vol. 39, No. 6, pp. 724-748
Phillips, A. (2013) Our Bodies, Whose Property?, Princeton: Princeton University Press (Ch. 1
‘What’s So Special About the Body?’)
Roberts, Dorothy (1998) ‘Who May Give Birth to the Citizen?: Reproduction, Eugenics and
Immigration’, Rutgers Race and Law Review, Vol. 1, pp. 129-135
Silliman, J. et al (2004) Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organise for Reproductive Justice,
Boston: South End Press
Sparrow, Robert (2008) ‘Is it “Every Man’s Right to Have Babies If He Wants Them”?: Male
Pregnancy and the Limits of Reproductive Liberty’, Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal, Vol. 18,
No. 3, pp. 275-299
Thomas, L.M. (2003) Politics of the Womb: Women, Reproduction and the State in Kenya, Berkeley:
California University Press
Tilly, Liz, Jan Walmsley, Sarah Earle and Dorothy Atkinson (2012) ‘International Perspectives on
the Sterilization of Women with Intellectual Disabilities’, in Sarah Earle, Carol Komarory and Linda
Layne (Eds) Understanding Reproductive Loss: Perspectives on Life, Death and Fertility, Farnham:
Ashgate Publishing, pp. 23-36
Yuval-Davis, N. (1997) Gender and Nation, London: Sage (Ch. 2: ‘Women and the biological
reproduction of the nation’)
Websites
Centre for Reproductive Rights: http://reproductiverights.org/
Disability Rights Fund: Reproductive Rights: http://www.disabilityrightsfund.org/node/403
Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights: http://www.wgnrr.org/
9
Week 5
Femininity and Motherhood: Towards an Uncoupling?
This week we look at the tight bond maintained between ‘being a woman’ and ‘being a mother’:
between femininity and motherhood. Within Western ‘modernity’ and more widely, the idea that
biological motherhood is an essential component of adult femininity, that the transition to
motherhood marks the transition to adulthood for women, has been prominent. However there is an
important conditional clause: only ‘the right women’ should become mothers. The right women are
marked by age, marriage (or at least a steady partnership), sexuality (heterosexual), able-bodiedness
and ‘respectability’. Respectability is often marked in terms of class and ‘race’. It is deemed ‘natural’
for women who meet these criteria to become mothers, and ‘good mothering’ is assumed to come
‘naturally’ to them. At the same time step-mothers are supposedly ‘bad’ mothers, by definition.
These dominant discourses are often at variance with the actual experiences of mothers, but continue
to shape women’s responses to motherhood.
Seminar
Questions
What are the dominant discourses of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mothering’?
What problems do they pose for women’s identity and agency and how do women
respond?
How are constructions of ‘good’ mothering related to different parenting styles and
to social class?
How have feminists theorized the relationship between motherhood and
femininity?
Core Reading and Viewing
BBC Three (2011) Cherry’s Parenting Dilemmas, originally broadcast on August 11. Available at
http://bobnational.net/programme.php?archive=65060&view=flash_player
Choi, P., Henshaw, C., Baker, S. and Tree, J. (2005) ‘Supermum, Superwife, Supereverything:
Performing Femininity in the Transition to Motherhood’, Journal of Reproductive and Infant
Psychology, Vol. 23, No.2, pp. 167-180
Available as an E-journal article:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1774711~S1
Christian, Allison (2005) ‘Contesting the Myth of the ‘Wicked Stepmother’: Narrative Analysis of an
Online Stepfamily Support Group’, Western Journal of Communication, Vol. 69, No. 1, pp. 27-47
Available as an E-journal article:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b2099875~S1
Smart, Carol (1996) ‘Deconstructing Motherhood’ in Bortoloia Silva, E. (Ed.) Good Enough
Mothering: Feminist Perspectives on Lone Motherhood, London: Routledge, pp. 37-57
Available as an E-book:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b2081813~S1
Additional Reading
Apple, Rima D. (2006) Perfect Motherhood: Science and Childrearing in America, New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press
10
Arendell, Terry (2000) ‘Conceiving and Investigating Motherhood: The Decade's Scholarship’,
Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 62, No. 4, pp. 1192-1207
Berger, P. & Berger, B. (1983) The War Over the Family: Capturing the Middle Ground, London:
Hutchinson
Bernard, Stephen and S. J. Connell (2010) ‘Normative Discrimination and the Motherhood Penalty’,
Gender and Society, Vol. 24, No. 6, pp. 717-745
Blossfeld, H.P. (Ed.) (1995) The New Role of Women: Family Formation in Modern Societies,
Boulder: Westview
Bornat, Joanne, Brian Dimmock, David Jones and Sheila Peace (1999) ‘Generational ties in the
‘New’ family: Changing contexts for traditional obligations’, in Elizabeth B. Silva and Carol Smart
(Eds) The New Family?, London: Sage, pp. 115-128
Byrne, B. (2006) ‘In search of a good mix: “race”, class, gender and practices of mothering’,
Sociology, Vol. 40, No. 46, pp. 1001-1017
DiQinzio, P. (1999) The Impossibility of Motherhood: Feminism, Individualism and the Problem of
Mothering, London: Routledge
Gimenez, M.E. (1983) ‘Feminism, Pronatalism and Motherhood’, in J. Trebilcot (Ed.) Mothering:
Essays in Feminist Theory, Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield
Glenn, Evelyn Nakano (1994) ‘Social Constructions of Mothering: A Thematic Overview’, in Glenn,
Evelyn Nakano et al (Eds) Mothering: Ideology, Experience and Agency, London: Routledge
Green, Trish (2010) Motherhood, Absence and Transition: when adult children leave home,
Farnham; Burlington: Ashgate
Hays, Sharon (1996) The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood, New Haven: Yale University
Press
Hewlett, S.A. (2002) Baby Hunger: The New Battle for Motherhood, London: Atlantic Books
Hollway, W. and Featherstone, B. (Eds) (1997) Mothering and Ambivalence, London: Routledge
Johnson, Deirdre D. and Debra H. Swanson (2006) ‘Constructing the ‘Good Mother’: The
Experience of Mothering Ideologies by Work Status’, Sex Roles, Vol. 54, Nos 7-8, pp. 509-519
Kaplan, E. Ann (1992) Motherhood and Representation: the mother in popular culture and
melodrama, London: Routledge
Kehily, Mary Jane and Rachel Thomson (2011) ‘Displaying Motherhood: Representations, Visual
Methods and the Materiality of Maternal Practice’, in Esther Dermott and Julie Seymour (Eds)
Displaying Families: A New Concept for the Sociology of Family Life, Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, pp. 61-80
11
Kuperberg, Arielle and Pamela Stone (2008) ‘The Media Depiction of Women Who Opt Out’,
Gender and Society, Vol. 22, No. 4, pp. 497-517
Landsman, Gail (2010) Reconstructing Motherhood and Disability in the Age of ‘Perfect’ Babies,
Hoboken: Taylor and Francis
Lareau, Annette (2003) Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race and Family Life, Berkeley: University of
California Press (esp. ch. 1 ‘Concerted Cultivation and Natural Growth’)
Lewiecki-Wilson, Cynthia and Jen Cellio (Eds) (2011) Disability and Mothering: Liminal Spaces of
Embodied Knowledge, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press
Lorber, J. (1994) Paradoxes of Gender, New Haven, CT.: Yale University Press (esp. ch. 7 ‘Rocking
the Cradle: Gendered Parenting’)
McMahon, M. (1995) Engendering Motherhood: Identity and self-transformation in women’s lives,
New York: Guildford Press
Malacrida, Claudia (2009) ‘Performing Motherhood in a Disablist World: Dilemmas of motherhood,
femininity and disability’, International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, Vol. 22, No. 1,
pp. 99-117
Marshall, Harriette (1991) ‘The social construction of motherhood: An analysis of childcare and
parenting manuals’, in Anne Phoenix, Anne Woollett and Eva Lloyd (Eds) Motherhood: Meanings,
Practices and Ideologies, London: Sage, pp. 66-85
Martinot, S. (2007) ‘Motherhood and the invention of race’, Hypatia, Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 79-97
Meyers, Diana (2001) ‘The Rush to Motherhood: pronatalist discourse and women’s autonomy’,
Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Vol. 26, No. 3, pp. 735-74
Miller, Tina (2005) Making Sense of Motherhood: A Narrative Approach, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press
Miller, Tina (2007) ‘“Is This What Motherhood is All About?”: Weaving Experiences and Discourse
through Transition to First-Time Motherhood’, Gender and Society, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 337-358
Neustatter, Angela (1989) Hyenas in Petticoats: A Look at Twenty Years of Feminism, London:
Penguin (Ch. 4 ‘Holding the baby: feminism and motherhood)
Nicolson, Paula (1993) ‘Motherhood and Women’s Lives’, in Diane Richardson and Victoria
Robinson (Eds) Introducing Women’s Studies, London: Macmillan, pp. 201-223
Oakley, Ann (1979) Becoming a Mother, Oxford: Martin Robertson
Oakley, Ann (1984) Taking It Like a Woman, London: Fontana
O’Donovan, Katherine and Jill Marshall (2006) ‘After birth: decisions about becoming a mother’, in
Alison Diduck and Katherine O’Donovan (Eds) Feminist Perspectives on Family Law, Abingdon,
New York: Routledge-Cavendish, pp. 123-138
12
Perrier, Maud (2013) ‘Middle-Class Mothers’ Moralities and “Concerted Cultivation”: Class Others,
Ambivalence and Excess’, Sociology, Vol. 47, No. 4, pp. 655-670
Prilleltensky, O. (2003) ‘A Ramp to Motherhood: The Experiences of Mothers with Physical
Disabilities’, Sexuality and Disability, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 21-47
Prilleltensky, Ora (2004) Motherhood and Disability: Children and Choices, Houndmills, New
York: Palgrave Macmillan
Reynolds, T. (2005) Caribbean Mothers: Identity and Experience in the UK, London: Tufnell Press
Ross, Ellen (1995) ‘New Thoughts on “The Oldest Vocation”: Mothers and Motherhood in Recent
Feminist Scholarship’, Signs, Vol. 20, No. 2
Silva, Elizabeth B. (1999) ‘Transforming Housewifery: Dispositions, Practices and Technologies’, in
Elizabeth B. Silva and Carol Smart (Eds) The New Family?, London: Sage, pp. 48-65
Smyth, Lisa (2012) The Demands of Motherhood: Agents, Roles and Recognitions, Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan
Snitow, Ann (1992) ‘Feminism and Motherhood: An American Reading’, Feminist Review, No. 40,
pp. 32-51
Thomas, Carol (1997) ‘The baby and the bath water: Disabled women and motherhood in social
context’, Sociology of Health and Illness, Vol. 19, No. 5, pp. 622-643
Thomson, Rachel (2011) Making Modern Mothers, Bristol; Portland: Policy Press
Walkerdine, V. and Lucey, H. (1989) Democracy in the kitchen: Regulating Mothers and Socialising
Daughters, London: Virago
Woollett, Anne and Ann Phoenix (1991) ‘Psychological Views of Mothering’, in Anne Phoenix,
Anne Woollett and Eva Lloyd (Eds) Motherhood: Meanings, practices and ideologies, London:
Sage, pp. 28-46
Websites
Mumsnet: http://www.mumsnet.com/
Netmums: http://www.netmums.com/
Working Families: http://www.workingfamilies.org.uk/
Working Mums: http://www.women-returners.co.uk/
13
Week 6
Masculinity and Fatherhood: Beyond the Breadwinner Role?
This week we turn our attention to the relationship between masculinity and fatherhood. Is
fatherhood seen as an essential component of masculinity? Is this relationship limited to biological
fatherhood – a sign of virility? The social aspects of fathering are not deemed to make the adult man
in the way in which motherhood marks the transition to adult femininity. Rather it is entry into paid
work that marks the rite de passage to adult status for males: the ‘breadwinner’ role. We shall
consider new and old fatherhood discourses about what makes a ‘good’ father, including the concept
and practice of a nurturing or involved fatherhood, and how this is differentiated by social class. In
exploring the extent to which fatherhood is being reinvented in the 21st century we will also explore
the reinvention, or not, of masculinities.
Seminar
Questions
What is the dominant discourse of good fathering?
How is good fathering differentiated by social class?
To what extent is fatherhood being reinvented and gender undone/redone?
Is the fear of ‘fatherlessness’ warranted?
Core Reading
Halford, Susan (2006) ‘Collapsing the Boundaries? Fatherhood, Organization and Home-Working’,
Gender, Work and Organization, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 383-402
Available as an E-journal article:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1740132~S1
Miller, Tina (2011) ‘Falling Back into Gender? Men’s Narratives and Practices around First-time
Fatherhood’, Sociology, Vol. 45, No. 6, pp. 1094-1109
Available as an E-journal article:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1745236
Shirani, Fiona, Karen Henwood and Carrie Coltart (2011) ‘Meeting the Challenges of Intensive
Parenting Culture: Gender, Risk Management and the Moral Parent’, Sociology, Vol. 46, No. 1, pp.
25-40
Available as an E-journal article:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1745236
Shows, Carla and Naomi Gerstel (2009) ‘Fathering, Class, and Gender: A comparison of Physicians
and Emergency Medical Technicians’, Gender and Society, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 161-187
Available as an E-journal article:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1740130~S1
Additional Reading
Bradshaw, J. et al (1999) Absent Fathers?, London: Routledge
Collier, Richard (1999) ‘Men, heterosexuality and the changing family: (re)constructing fatherhood
in law and social policy’, in Gill Jagger and Caroline Wright (Eds) Changing Family Values,
London: Routledge, pp. 38-58
14
Collier, Richard and Sally Sheldon (2008) Fragmenting Fatherhood: A Socio-legal Study, Oxford,
Portland Oregon: Hart Publishing
Davies, Cynthia R. (Ed.) (1998) Lost Fathers: The Politics of Fatherlessness in America,
Basingstoke: Macmillan
Daniels, Cynthia R. (2008) Exposing Men: The Science and Politics of Male Reproduction, Oxford:
Oxford University Press (Ch. 6 ‘Reproducing Men’)
Dennis, Norman and George Erdos (2000) Families Without Fatherhood, London: Institute for the
Study of Civil Society (3rd edition)
Doucet, Andrea (2011) ‘“It’s Just Not Good for a Man to be Interested in Other People’s Children’:
Fathers, Public Displays of Care and “Relevant Others”’, in Esther Dermott and Julie Seymour (Eds)
Displaying Families: A New Concept for the Sociology of Family Life, Basingstoke: Palgrave
Macmillan, pp. 81-101
Doucet, Andrea (2013) ‘A “Choreography of Becoming”: Fathering, Embodied Care, and New
Materialisms’, Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue canadienne de sociologie, Vol. 50, No. 3, pp.
284–305
Dowd, Nancy (2000) Redefining Fatherhood, New York: NYU Press (Ch. 10 ‘Gender Challenges:
Masculinities and Mothers’)
Edin, Kathryn and Timothy J. Nelson (2013) Doing the Best I Can: Fatherhood in the Inner City,
Berkeley: University of California Press
Faludi, S. (1999) Stiffed: The Betrayal of Modern Man, London: Chatto and Windus
Gerstel, Naomi and Sally K. Gallagher (2001) ‘Men’s Caregiving: Gender and the Contingent
Character of Care’, Gender & Society, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 197-217
Greene, M. E. and A. E. Biddlecom (2000) ‘Absent and problematic men: demographic accounts of
male reproductive roles’, Population and Development Review, Vol. 25, No. 3: pp. 81-116
Hamer, Jennifer and Kathleen Marchioro (2002) ‘Becoming Custodial Dads: Exploring parenting
among low income and working class African American fathers’, Journal of Marriage and Family,
Vol. 64, No. 1, pp. 116-129
Harris, Ian M. (1995) Messages Men Hear: Constructing Masculinities, London: Taylor and Francis
(Ch. 6 ‘Lovers’)
Harwood, Susan (1997) Family Fictions: Representations of the Family in 1980s Hollywood
Cinema, London: Macmillan (Ch. 5 ‘Backlash patriarch or the new man? The role of the father’ and
pp. 184-185 ‘The nineties father: romance and parthenogenesis’)
Henwood, Karen and Joanne Procter (2003) ‘The “good father”: Reading men’s accounts of paternal
involvement during the transition to first-time fatherhood’, British Journal of Social Psychology,
Vol. 42, No. 3, pp. 337-355
15
Hobson, B. (Ed.) (2002) Making Men into Fathers: Men, Masculinities and the Social Politics of
Fatherhood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Hodges, Melissa L. and Michell J. Budig (2010) ‘Who Gets the Daddy Bonus? Organizational
hegemonic masculinity and the impact of fatherhood on earnings’, Gender and Society, Vol. 24, No.
6, pp. 717-745
Irwin, Sarah (1999) ‘Resourcing the family: Gendered claims and obligations and issues of
explanation’, in Elizabeth B. Silva and Carol Smart (Eds) The New Family? London: Sage, pp. 31-45
Kilkey, Majella (2006) ‘New Labour and Reconciling Work and Family Life: Making it Father’s
Business’, Social Policy and Society, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 167-175
Kimmel, Michael S., Jeff Hearn and R.W. Connell (Eds) (2005) Handbook of Studies on Men &
Masculinities, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications
Krampe, Edythe M. (2009) ‘When is the Father Really There? A conceptual reformulation of father
presence’, Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 30, No. 7, pp. 875-897
Lees, Sue (1999) ‘Will boys be left on the shelf?’ in Gill Jagger and Caroline Wright (Eds) Changing
Family Values, London: Routledge, pp. 59-76
Lupton, Deborah and Lesley Barclay (1997) Constructing Fatherhood: Discourses and Experiences,
London: Sage
Marsiglio, William, Paul Amato, Randal D. Day and Michael E. Lamb (2004) ‘Scholarship on
Fatherhood in the 1990s and Beyond’, Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 62, No. 4, pp. 11731191
Marsiglio, William (2004) Stepdads: Stories of love, hope and repair, Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield
Marsiglio, William and Ramon Hinojosa (2007) ‘Managing the Multifather Family: Stepfathers as
Father Allies’, Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 69, No. 3, pp. 845-862
Miller, Tina (2011) Making Sense of Fatherhood: Gender, caring and work, Cambridge, New York:
Cambridge University Press
Morgan, Patricia (1999) Farewell to the Family?: Public Policy and Family Breakdown in Britain
and the US, London: IEA Health and Welfare Unit
Moore, Lisa Jean (2007) Sperm Counts: Overcome by man’s most precious fluid, New York: New
York University Press, Ch. 3 (‘My sperm in shining armour: children’s books’)
Natalier, Kristin and Belinda Hewitt (2010) ‘“It’s Not Just About the Money”: Non-resident Fathers’
Perspectives on Paying Child Support’, Sociology, Vol. 44, No. 3, pp. 489-505
Nelson, Timothy J. (2004) ‘Low-Income Fathers’, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 30, No. 1, pp.
427-451
16
Norman, Dennis and George Erdos (2000) Families without Fatherhood, London: Institute for the
Study of Civil Society
Ruddick, Sara (1997) ‘The idea of fatherhood’, in H. L. Nelson (Ed.) Feminism and Families,
London: Routledge
Schindler, Holly S. (2010) ‘The Importance of Parenting and Financial Contributions in Promoting
Fathers’ Psychological Health’, Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 72, No. 2, pp. 318-332
Sheldon, S. (2003) ‘Unwilling Fathers and Abortion: Terminating Men’s Child Support Obligations’,
The Modern Law Review, Vol. 66, No.2, pp. 175-194
Smart, Carol (2006) ‘The Ethic of Justice Strikes Back: Changing Narratives of Fatherhood’, in
Alison Diduck and Katherine O’Donovan (Eds) Feminist Perspectives on Family Law, Abingdon,
New York: Routledge-Cavendish, pp. 123-138
Walls, Glenda and Stephanie Arnold (2007) ‘How Involved is Involved Fathering?: An Exploration
of the Contemporary Culture of Fatherhood’, Gender and Society, Vol. 21, No. 4, pp. 501-527
Westwood, Sallie (1996) ‘“Feckless fathers”: Masculinities and the British state’, in Mairtin Mac an
Ghaill (Ed.) Understanding Masculinities, Buckingham: Open University Press, pp. 21-34
Williams, Stephen (2008) ‘What is Fatherhood? Searching for the Reflexive Father’, Sociology, Vol.
42, No. 3, pp. 487-502
Additional Viewing
BBC Four (2010) A Century of Fatherhood, originally broadcast in June 2010, 3 episodes.
The three episodes are available on BobNational through the following links:





episode 1 – The Good Father:
http://bobnational.net/programme.php?archive=32835&view=flash_player
episode 2 – Fathers at War:
http://bobnational.net/programme.php?archive=32902&view=flash_player
episode 3 – The New Father:
http://bobnational.net/programme.php?archive=33206&view=flash_player
BBC Four (2010) Biology of Dads, originally broadcast on 22 June 2010. Available on BobNational:
http://bobnational.net/programme.php?archive=32631&view=flash_player
BBC Four (2010) The Cinema Show: Father and Sons on Film, originally broadcast on 22 June
2010. Available on BobNational:
http://bobnational.net/programme.php?archive=32641&view=flash_player
17
Websites
Dad Talk: http://www.dad.info/
Fathers4Justice: http://www.fathers-4-justice.org/
Fatherhood Institute: http://www.fatherhoodinstitute.org/
Families Need Fathers: http://www.fnf.org.uk/
National Centre for Fathering: http://fathers.com/
Working Families: http://www.workingfamilies.org.uk/
18
Week 7
Beyond the Nuclear Family: Can parenting ‘be’ what parenting ‘is’?
Caroline Wright
The title of this week’s lecture is a variation on the cryptic question asked by Elizabeth Silva and
Carol Smart in their book, The New Family. What they asked was whether definitions of ‘the
family’ ever reflect the diversity of modern family forms. ‘The family’ has always carried strong
normative overtones. It designates what ‘ought to be’ rather than what is, and, as we have seen, so
does ‘parenting’, especially ‘mothering’. This week we shall look at some of the different types of
parenting prevailing in modern society, including single motherhood and gay and lesbian parents.
Can they all be included within the general definition of ‘good parenting’? Looking in detail at gay
and lesbian parents we will consider their decision-making and strategies around parenting, the wider
discourses and counter-discourses about their ‘fitness’ to parent, the argument that they contribute to
a degendering of parenting and the ways in which their status is negotiated and contested through
practices of family display. We will also look at how middle class single mothers by choice are
negotiating negative discourses of single motherhood.
Seminar
Questions
Who decides who’s fit to be a parent? What criteria are used and what criteria
should be used?
What challenges to heterosexual parenting are posed by gay and lesbian parenting?
How important is ‘display work’ in constituting gay and lesbian families?
How do middle class single mothers by choice present themselves and what are the
implications for other single mothers?
Core Reading
Almack, Kathryn (2011) ‘Display Work: Lesbian Parent Couples and Their Families of Origin
Negotiating New Kin Relationships’, in Esther Dermott and Julie Seymour (Eds) Displaying
Families: A New Concept for the Sociology of Family Life, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.
102-118
Available as an E-Book:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2537337
Bock, Jane D. (2000) ‘Doing the Right Thing? Single Mothers by Choice and the Struggle for
Legitimacy’, Gender and Society, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 62-86
Available as an E-journal article:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1740130~S1
Campion, Mukti J. (1995) Who’s fit to be a parent? London: Routledge (Ch. 9 ‘Gay Parents’)
Available as an E-book:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b2687598~S1
Schacher, Stephanie Gill, Carl F. Auerbach and Louise Bourdeux Silverstein (2005) ‘Gay Fathers
Expanding the Possibilities for Us All’, Journal of GLBT Family Studies, Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 31-52
Available as an E-journal article:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2564077
19
Additional Reading
Anderssen, N., C. Amlie and E. Ytteroy (2002) ‘Outcomes for Children with Lesbian or Gay Parents:
A Review of Studies from 1978 to 2000’, Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, Vol. 43, No. 4, pp.
335-351
Ben, Ari, Adital and T. Livni (2006) ‘Motherhood is Not a Given Thing: Experiences and
Constructed Meanings of Biological and Nonbiological Lesbian Mothers’, Sex Roles, Vol. 54, Nos.
7-8, pp. 521-531
Biblarz, Timothy J. and Evren Savci (2010) ‘Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Families’,
Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 72, No. 3, pp. 480-497
Bozett, Frederick W. (Ed.) (1987) Gay and Lesbian Parents, London: Praeger
Clarke, V. (2001) ‘What about the Children? Arguments against Lesbian and Gay Parenting’,
Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 24, No. 5, pp. 555- 570
Coleman, Marilyn and Lawrence H. Ganong (Eds) (2004) Handbook of Contemporary Families:
Considering the Past, Contemplating the Future, Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications
Cook, Matt (2014) Queer Domesticities: Homosexuality and Home Life in Twentieth Century
London, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (Part II Queer Families)
Davies, Jon (1993) ‘From household to family to individualism’ in Jon Davies (Ed.) The family – Is
it just another lifestyle choice?, London: IEA Health and Welfare Unit
De Wert, G., W Dondorp, F. Shenfield, P. Barry, P. Devroey, K. Diedrich, B. Tarlatzis, V. Provoost
and G. Pennings (2014) ‘ESHRE Task Force on Ethics and Law 23: Medically Assisted
Reproduction in Singles, Lesbian and Gay Couples, and Transsexual People’, Human Reproduction,
Vol. 29, No. 9, pp. 1859-1865
Dempsey, Deborah (2010) ‘Conceiving and Negotiating Reproductive Relationships: Lesbians and
Gay Men Forming Families with Children’, Sociology, Vol. 44, pp. 1145-1162
Donovan, Catherine (2000) ‘Who Needs a Father? Negotiating Biological Fatherhood in British
Lesbian Families Using Self-Insemination’, Sexualities, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 149-164
Duncan, Simon and Rosalind Edwards (1999) ‘Lone mothers, paid work and the underclass debate’,
Critical Social Policy, Vol. 17, No. 4, pp. 29-49
Duncan, Simon and Rosalind Edwards (Eds) (1999) Lone Mothers, Paid work and Gendered Moral
Rationalities, Basingstoke: Macmillan
Dunne, Gillian A. (1999) ‘A Passion for “Sameness”? Sexuality and Gender Accountability’, in
Elizabeth B. Silva and Carol Smart (Eds) The New Family? London: Sage, pp. 66-82
Dunne, Gillian A. (2000) ‘Opting into Motherhood: Lesbians Blurring the Boundaries and
Transforming the Meaning of Parenthood and Kinship’, Gender & Society. Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 11-35
20
Edin, K. and M. Kefalas (2006) Promises I Can Keep: Why poor women put motherhood before
marriage, Berkeley, California.: University of California Press
Giddens, A. (1992) The Transformation of Intimacy: Sexuality, Love and Eroticism in Modern
Society, Cambridge: Polity
Goldberg, Abbie E. and Katherine R. Allen (2007) ‘Imagining Men: Lesbian mothers’ perceptions of
male involvement during the transition to parenthood’, Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 69,
No. 2, pp. 352-365
Griffin, Kate and Lisa A. Mulholland (Eds) (1997) Lesbian Motherhood in Europe, London and
Washington: Cassell
Hanscombe, G. (2006) ‘The Right to Lesbian Parenthood’, in H. Kuhse and P. Singer (Eds)
Bioethics: An Anthology (2nd edition), Malden, MA, Oxford, Victoria: Blackwell, pp. 104-107
Harne, Lynne (1984) ‘Lesbian custody and the new myth of the father’, Trouble and Strife, No. 3,
pp. 12-14
Hayden, Corinne P. (1995) ‘Gender, Genetics, and Generation: Reformulating Biology in Lesbian
Kinship’, Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 41-63
Hertz, Rosanna (2006) Single by Chance, Mothers by Choice, New York: Oxford University Press
Hicks, Steven and Janet McDermott (Eds) (1999) Lesbian and Gay Fostering and Adoption:
Extraordinary Yet Ordinary, London: Jessica Kingsley
Hicks, Stephen (2011) Lesbian, Gay and Queer Parenting: Families, Intimacies, Genealogies,
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (Ch. 3 ‘Family’, pp. 54-82)
Hogben, S. and Coupland, J. (2000) ‘Egg seeks sperm…End of story? Articulating gay parenting in
small ads for reproductive partners’, Discourse and Society, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp. 459-485
Hopkins, Jason et al (2013) ‘Same-Sex Couples, Families, and Marriage: Embracing and Resisting
Heteronormativity’, Sociology Compass, Vol. 7, No. 2, pp. 97-110
Juran, Ali (1996) We are Family: Testimonies of Lesbian and Gay Parents, London: Cassell
Karnein, Anja (2012) ‘Parenthood: Whose Right is it Anyway?’, in Martin Richards, Guido Pennings
and John Appleby (Eds) Reproductive Donation: Practice, Policy and Bioethics, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
Kilkey, Majella (2000) Lone Mothers Between Paid Work and Care: The policy regime in twenty
countries, Aldershot: Ashgate
Klett-Davis, Martina (2007) Going it Alone?: Lone Motherhood in Late Modernity, Aldershot,
Burlington: Ashgate
21
Landau, J. (2009) ‘Straightening Out (the Politics of) Same-Sex Parenting: Representing Gay
Families in US Print News Stories and Photographs’, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Vol.
26, No. 1, pp. 80-100
Lapidus, J. (2004) ‘All the lesbian mothers are coupled, all the single mothers are
straight, and all of us are tired: Reflections on being a single lesbian mom’, Feminist Economics,
Vol. 10, No. 2, pp. 227-236
Levine, Nancy (2008) ‘Alternative Kinship, Marriage, and Reproduction’, Annual Review of
Anthropology, Vol. 37, No. 1, pp. 375-389
Mamo, Laura (2013) ‘Queering the Fertility Clinic’, Journal of Medical Humanities, Vol. 34, No. 2,
pp. 227-239
Mann, Kirk and Sasha Roseneil (1999) ‘Poor choices?: Gender, agency and the underclass debate’,
in Gill Jagger and Caroline Wright (Eds) Changing Family Values, London: Routledge, pp. 98-118
May, Vanessa (2008) ‘On Being a “Good” Mother: The Moral Presentation of Self in Written Life
Stories’, Sociology, Vol. 42, No. 3, pp. 470-486
Morgan, Patricia (1999) (2nd edition) Farewell to the Family, London: IEA Health and Welfare Unit
(Ch. 1 ‘The Breaking of the Modern Family’)
Morgan, Patricia (2000) Marriage-lite, London: Institute for the Study of Civil Society
Morgan, Patricia (2007) The War Between the State and the Family: How government divides and
impoverishes, London: Institute for the Study of Civil Society
Naples, Nancy A. (2004), ‘Queer Parenting in the New Millennium’, Gender & Society, Vol. 18, No.
6, pp. 679-684
Neubeck, K. and Cazenave, N. (2001) Welfare Racism: Playing the Race Card Against American’s
Poor, London: Routledge
Nordqvist, Petra (2010) ‘Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Family Resemblances in Lesbian Donor
Conception’, Sociology, Vol. 44, No. 6, pp. 1128-1144
Nordqvist, Petra (2012) ‘‘I don’t want us to stand out more than we already do’: Complexities and
negotiations in lesbian couples’ accounts of becoming a family through donor conception’,
Sexualities, Vol. 15, No. 5-6, pp. 644-661
O’Donnell, Kath (1999) ‘Lesbian and gay families: Legal perspectives’ in Gill Jagger and Caroline
Wright (Eds) Changing Family Values, London: Routledge, pp. 77-97
O’Neill, O. (2000) ‘The “Good Enough Parent” in the Age of the New Reproductive Technologies’,
in H.B. Baker and D. Beyleved (Eds) The Ethics of Genetics in Human Procreation, Aldershot:
Ashgate, pp. 33-48
Olsen, R. and Clarke, H. (2003) Parenting And Disability: Disabled Parents’ Experiences Of
Raising Children, Bristol: Policy Press
22
Popenoe, David (1999) Life Without Father: Compelling new evidence that fatherhood and marriage
are indispensable for the good of children and society, London, Cambridge Mass.: Harvard
University Press
Riggs, Damien W. (2011) ‘“Let’s Go to the Movies”: Filmic Representations of Gay Foster and
Adoptive Parents’, Journal of GLBT Family Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 297-312
Ryan-Flood, Roisin (2009) Lesbian Motherhood: Gender, Families and Sexual Citizenship,
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Ryan-Flood, Roisin (2011) ‘Negotiating Sexual Citizenship: Lesbians and Reproductive Health Care’,
in Rosalind Gill and Christine Scharff (Eds) New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and
Subjectivity, Houndmills; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 246-264
Smart, Carol (1999) ‘The “new” parenthood: Fathers and mothers after divorce’, in Elizabeth B.
Silva and Carol Smart (Eds) The New Family? London: Sage, pp. 100-114
Song, M. and Edwards, R. (1997) ‘Raising questions on the perspectives of black lone motherhood’,
Journal of Social Policy, Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 233-244
Sparks, Holloway (2004) ‘Queens, Teens and Model Mothers’, in Sanford F. Schram, Joe Soss and
Richard Fording (Eds) Race and the Politics of Welfare Reform, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
Press, pp. 171-195
Tasker, Fiona and Charlotte Patterson (2007) ‘Research on Gay and Lesbian Parenting: Retrospect
and Prospect, Journal of GLBT Family Studies, Vol. 3, No. 203, pp. 9-34
Taylor, Yvette (2009) Lesbian and Gay Parenting: Securing Social and Educational Capital,
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Touroni, Elena and Adrian Coyle (2002) ‘Decision-Making in Planned Lesbian Parenting: An
Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis’, Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, Vol.
12, pp. 194-209
Zanghellini, Aleardo (2010) ‘Lesbian and Gay Parents and Reproductive Technologies: The 2008
Australian and UK Reforms’, Feminist Legal Studies, Vol. 18, No. 3, pp. 227-251
Additional Viewing
BBC One (2010) The British Family: Our History – Episode 2: Children, originally broadcast on 23
March. Available on BobNational:
http://bobnational.net/programme.php?archive=27697&view=flash_player
BBC Three (2011) Shame About Single Mums, originally broadcast on August 30. Available on
BobNational: http://bobnational.net/programme.php?archive=67068&view=flash_player
23
Websites
Disabled Parents Network: http://disabledparentsnetwork.org.uk/
Gingerbread: Single Parents, Equal Families: http://www.gingerbread.org.uk/
New Family Social: UK Network for LGBT Adoptive and Foster Families:
https://www.newfamilysocial.org.uk/?gclid=CJeNprz047kCFZMbtAodJkcACA
One Space For Single Parents: http://www.onespace.org.uk/
Pink Parents: Gay and Lesbian Parenting Issues: http://www.pinkparents.org.uk/
The Centre for Separated Families: http://www.separatedfamilies.info/
We Are Family: Magazine for Alternative Families: http://www.wearefamilymagazine.co.uk/
24
Week 8
Embodied Experiences of Pregnancy in a Technological Age
This week we discuss some of the ways in which reproductive science and technology have reshaped
the embodied experience of pregnancy for pregnant women, their partners and medical professionals.
The increasing importance of seeing the foetus rather than feeling its movement will be a key point
of discussion, as social birth arguably precedes biological birth. We will explore the ways in which
reproductive technologies are sometimes experienced as empowering and reassuring, and sometimes
as alienating and disempowering. We will discuss the ways in which these technologies can be used
in the surveillance and regulation of women’s bodies, in the ‘quality control’ of the children they
may produce and in rendering women’s bodies public property once they become pregnant bodies.
Seminar
Questions
How does ‘visual knowledge’ impact upon women’s embodied experience
of their pregnancies? What does it mean for men?
In what ways do women and men experience the pressure to produce a healthy
baby?
Do women have the choice not to utilise reproductive medicine?
How has ‘visual knowledge’ of pregnancy impacted on the abortion debate?
Core Reading
Draper, Jan (2002) ‘“It Was a Real Good Show”: the Ultrasound Scan, Fathers and the Power of
Visual Knowledge’, Sociology of Health and Illness, Vol. 24, No. 6, pp. 771-795
Available as an E-journal article:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1745238~S1
Lupton, Deborah (2014) ‘Unborn Assemblages: Shifting Configurations of Embryonic and Foetal
Embodiment’, in Meredith Nash (Ed.) Reframing Reproduction: Conceiving Gendered Experiences,
Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 101-114
Available as an E-book:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2730303
Reed, Kate (2009) ‘‘It’s them faulty genes again’: women, men and the gendered nature of genetic
responsibility in prenatal blood screening’, Sociology of Health and Illness, Vol. 31, No. 3, pp. 343359
Available as an E-journal article:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1745238~S1
Roberts, Julie (2013) The Visualised Foetus: A Cultural and Political Analysis of Ultrasound,
Farnham; Burlington, VT : Ashgate (Ch. 2 ‘Ultrasound and its Application to Obstetrics’)
Available as an E-book:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2691044
Vanstone, Meredith, Elizabeth Anne Kinsella and Jeff Nisker (2014) ‘“Diseases”, “Defects”,
“Abnormalities” and “Conditions”: Discursive Tensions in Prenatal Screening’, in Meredith Nash
(Ed.) Reframing Reproduction: Conceiving Gendered Experiences, Basingstoke; New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 54-68
Available as an E-book:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2730303
25
Additional Reading
Alderson, Priscilla, Clare Williams and Bobbie Farsides (2004) ‘Practitioners’ Views About Equity
Within Prenatal Services’, Sociology, Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 61-80
Asch, A. (2006) ‘Prenatal Diagnosis and Selective Abortion: A Challenge to Practice and Policy’, in
H. Kuhse and P. Singer (Eds) Bioethics: An Anthology (2nd edition), Malden, MA, Oxford, Victoria:
Blackwell, pp. 122-136
Balsamo, Anne (1996) Technologies of the Gendered Body, Durham & London: Duke University
Press (Ch. 4 ‘Public Pregnancies’)
Browner, C.H. (2007) ‘Can Gender ‘Equity’ in Prenatal Genetic Services Unintentionally Reinforce
Male Authority?’, in Marcia Inhorn (Ed.) Reproductive Disruptions: Gender, technology and
biopiolitics in the new millennium, New York: Berghahn Books
Cahill, Heather A. (2001) ‘Male Appropriation and Medicalization of Childbirth: an Historical
Analysis’, Journal of Advanced Nursing, Vol. 33, No. 3, pp. 334-342
Copelton, Denise A. (2007) ‘“You are what you eat”: Nutritional norms, maternal deviance, and
neutralization of women’s prenatal diets’, Deviant Behavior, Vol. 28, No. 5, pp. 467-494
Dworkin, Shari L., and Faye Linda Wachs (2004) ‘“Getting your Body Back”: Postindustrial Fit
Motherhood in Shape Fit Pregnancy Magazine’, Gender & Society, Vol. 18, No. 5, pp. 610-624
Earle, Sarah (2003) ‘“Bumps and Boobs”: Fatness and Women’s Experiences of Pregnancy’,
Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 26, No. 3 pp. 245-252
Earle, Sarah and Cathy Lloyd (2012) ‘Diabetes and the Pregnancy Paradox: The Loss of
Expectations and Reproductive Futures’, in Sarah Earle, Carol Komarory and Linda Layne (Eds)
Understanding Reproductive Loss: Perspectives on Life, Death and Fertility, Farnham: Ashgate
Publishing, pp. 65-78
Farrant, Wendy (1985) ‘Who’s for Amniocentesis? The Politics of Prenatal Screening’, in Hilary
Homans (Ed.) The Sexual Politics of Reproduction, Aldershot: Gower
Gammeltoft, T. and Hạnh Thị Thuý Nguyễn (2007) ‘The Commodification of Obstetric Ultrasound
Scanning in Hanoi, Viet Nam’, Reproductive Health Matters, Vol. 15, No. 29, pp. 163-171
Ivry, Tsipy (2007) ‘Embodied Responsibilities: Pregnancy in the Eyes of Japanese Ob-Gyns’,
Sociology of Health and Illness, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 251-274
Ivry, Tsipy (2009) ‘The Ultrasonic Picture Show and the Politics of Threatened Life’, Medical
Anthropology Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp. 189-211
Jackson, Emily (2001) Regulating Reproduction: Law, Technology and Autonomy, Oxford, Portland
Oregan: Hart Publishing (Ch. 4 ‘Pregnancy and Childbirth’)
26
Kaplan, E. Ann (1994) ‘Look Who’s Talking, Indeed: Fetal Images in Recent North American
Visual Culture’, in E. N. Glenn et al (Eds) Mothering: Ideology, Experience and Agency, New York
& London: Routledge, pp. 121-137
Leavitt, Judith Waltzer (2009) Make Room for Daddy: The Journey from Waiting Room to Birthing
Room, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press
Locock, Louise and J. Alexander (2006) ‘“Just a bystander”? Men’s Place in the Process of Fetal
Screening and Diagnosis’, Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 62, pp. 1349-1359
Longhurst, Robyn (2001) ‘Breaking Corporeal Boundaries: Pregnant Bodies in Public Spaces’ in
Ruth Holliday and John Hassard (Eds) Contested Bodies, London: Routledge
Markens, Susan, Carole H. Browner, and H. Mabel Preloran (2003), ‘“'I'm not the one they're
sticking the needle into”: Latino couples, fetal diagnosis, and the discourse of reproductive rights’,
Gender & Society, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 452-481
Markens, Susan, Carole H. Browner and H. Mabel Preloran (2009) ‘Interrogating the dynamics
between power, knowledge and pregnant bodies in amniocentesis decision making’, Sociology of
Health and Illness, Vol. 32, No. 1, pp. 37-56
Martin, Emily (1992) The Woman in the Body: a Cultural Analysis of Reproduction, London:
Beacon Press
Morgan, Lynn M. & Meredith Michaels (Eds) (1999) Fetal Subjects, Feminist Positions,
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press
Morris, Therese and Katherine McInerney (2010) ‘Media Representations of Pregnancy and
Childbirth: An Analysis of Reality Television Programs in the United States’, Birth, Vol. 37, No. 2,
pp. 134-140
Oakley, Ann (1984) The Captured Womb: a History of the Medical Care of Pregnant Women,
Oxford: Basil Blackwell
Overall, Christine (2012) Why Have Children: The ethical debate, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press
(Ch. 8 ‘Illness, Impairment and the Procreation Debate’)
Petchesky, Rosalind (1987) ‘Fetal Images: The Power of Visual Culture in the Politics of
Reproduction’, Feminist Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 263-292
Purdy, L.M. (2006) ‘Are Pregnant Women Fetal Containers’, in H. Kuhse and P. Singer (Eds)
Bioethics: An Anthology (2nd edition), Malden, MA, Oxford, Victoria: Blackwell, pp. 63-76
Rapp, Rayna (1999) Testing Women, Testing the Fetus: The Social Impact of Amniocentesis in
America, London, New York: Routledge
Roberts, Julie (2012) The Visualised Foetus: a Cultural and Political Analysis of Ultrasound
Imagery, Farnham: Ashgate
27
Rothman, Barbara Katz (1988) The Tentative Pregnancy: Prenatal Diagnosis and the Future of
Motherhood, London: Pandora
Sagrestano, Lynda M. and Ruthbeth Finerman (2012) ‘Pregnancy and Prenatal Care: A Reproductive
Justice Perspective’, in Joan C. Chrisler (Ed.) Reproductive Justice: A Global Concern, Santa
Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, pp. 201-230
Sandelowski, Margarete (1994) ‘Separate, but Less Unequal: Fetal Ultrasonography and the
Transformation of Expectant Mother/Fatherhood’, Gender and Society, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 230-245
Savage, Julie (2012) ‘Reconstructing Childbirth Expectations after Pre-eclampsia’, in Sarah Earle,
Carol Komarory and Linda Layne (Eds) Understanding Reproductive Loss: Perspectives on Life,
Death and Fertility, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, pp. 51-63
Selin, H. and P.K. Stone (Eds) (2009) Childbirth Across Cultures: Ideas and Practices of Pregnancy,
Childbirth and the Postpartum, Dordrecht; New York: Springer
Taylor, J. S. (2000) ‘Of sonograms and baby prams: Prenatal diagnosis, pregnancy, and
consumption’, Feminist Studies, Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 391-418
Thomson, Rachel (2011) Making Modern Mothers, Bristol; Portland: Policy Press (Ch. 3 ‘Body’ and
Ch. 6 ‘Work’)
Tyler, Imogen (2011) ‘Pregnant Beauty: Maternal Femininities Under Neoliberalism’, in Rosalind
Gill and Christine Scharff (Eds) New Femininities: Postfeminism, Neoliberalism and Subjectivity,
Houndmills; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 21-36
Warren, Samantha and Joanna Brewis (2004) ‘Matter Over Mind? Examining the Experience of
Pregnancy’, Sociology, Vol. 38, No. 2, pp. 219-236
Williams, Clare (2006) ‘Dilemmas in fetal medicine: premature application of technology or
responding to women's choice?’, Sociology of Health & Illness, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 1–20
Zechmeister, I. (2001) ‘Foetal Images: The Power of Visual Technology in Antenatal Care and the
Implications for Women’s Reproductive Freedom’, Health Care Analysis, Vol. 9, pp. 387–400
Websites
Baby and Bump: http://babyandbump.momtastic.com/
Baby Centre: http://community.babycentre.co.uk/
MumsNet Pregnancy: http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/pregnancy
Pregnancy Forum: http://www.pregnancyforum.co.uk/
28
Week 9
Giving Birth to Children and Mothers (and Fathers)
Bearing in mind that not all pregnancies result in child-birth, this session will explore some of the
main issues surrounding contemporary childbirth. Particular attention will be paid to the role of the
medical profession in birth and the potential conflicts that might arise between birthing women and
their ‘caregivers’. By considering the mechanistic metaphors that have underpinned medical
understandings of women’s bodies and the birthing process we will discuss the ways in which some
women seek to resist the imposition of particular medical interventions into their birthing experience,
while others have embraced the medicalized birth. We will further explore the work of midwives in
different childbirth settings, and how they navigate the ‘emotion-work’ of helping women to give
birth. Finally we will consider some recent research on men’s experiences of childbirth as fathers-tobe and the implications for their gendered identities.
Seminar
Questions
What impacts have the machine metaphor and the production metaphor had on
medical practices in childbirth?
How do birthing women’s experiences of the medicalization of childbirth vary?
How do fathers-to-be’s experiences of contemporary childbirth vary?
How do midwives’ experiences of contemporary childbirth vary?
What do the concepts of risk, control and embodiment contribute to the sociological
understanding of contemporary childbirth?
Core Reading
Fox, Bonnie and Diana Worts (1999) ‘Revisiting the Critique of Medicalized Childbirth: A
Contribution to the Sociology of Birth’, Gender and Society, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 326-346
Available as an E-journal article:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1740130~S4
Hunter, Billie (2004) ‘Conflicting ideologies as a source of emotion work in Midwifery’, Midwifery,
Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 261-272
Available as an E-journal article:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1749745~S4
Lupton, Deborah and Virginia Schmied (2013) ‘Splitting bodies/selves: women’s concepts of
embodiment at the moment of birth’, Sociology of Health & Illness, Vol. 35, No. 6, pp. 828–841
Available as an E-journal article:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1745238~S1
Martin, Emily (2001) The Woman in the Body, Boston: Beacon Press, Ch. 4 ‘Medical Metaphors of
Women’s Bodies: Birth’, pp. 54-70 [See also ch. 8, ‘Birth, Resistance, Race and Class’]
Available as an E-book:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b2072866~S1
Miller, Tina (2014) ‘Anticipating and “Experiencing” Birth: Men, Essentialisms and Reproductive
Realms’, in Meredith Nash (Ed.) Reframing Reproduction: Conceiving Gendered Experiences,
Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 165-181
Available as an E-book:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2730303
29
Additional Reading
Berg, A. (2002) Mothering the Race: Women's Narratives of Reproduction, 1890-1930, Urbana,
University of Illinois Press
Bledsoe, Caroline H. and Rachel Scherrer (2007) ‘The Dialectics of Disruption: Paradoxes of Nature
and Professionalism in Contemporary American Childbearing’, in Marcia Inhorn (Ed.) Reproductive
Disruptions: Gender, technology and biopolitics in the new millennium, New York: Berghahn Books
Bowler, I. (1993) ‘They’re Not the Same as Us: Midwives' Stereotypes of South Asian Descent
Maternity Patients’, Sociology of Health and Illness, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 157-178
Carter, Shannon K. (2010) ‘Beyond control: body and self in women’s childbearing narratives’,
Sociology of Health & Illness, Vol. 32, No. 7, pp. 993-1009
Davies, Lorna, Rae Daellenbach and Mary Kensington (2011) Sustainability, Midwifery and Birth,
Abingdon; New York: Routledge
Davis-Floyd, Robbie (1992) Birth as an American Rite of Passage, Berkeley, London: University of
California Press
Davis-Floyd, Robbie E. and Carolyn F. Sargent (1997) Childbirth and Authoritative Knowledge:
Cross-cultural Perspectives, Berkeley: University of California Press
Glenn, Evelyn Nakano, Grace Chang and Linda Rennie Forcey (Eds) (1994) Mothering: Ideology,
Experience and Agency, New York; London: Routledge
Halfon, Saul (2010) ‘Encountering Birth: Negotiating Expertise, Networks, and My STS Self’,
Science as Culture, Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 61-77
Hunt, S. and A. Symonds (1995) The Social Meaning of Midwifery Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan
Jackson, Emily (2001) Regulating Reproduction: Law, Technology and Autonomy, Oxford, Portland
Oregon: Hart Publishing (ch. 4 'Pregnancy and Childbirth')
Johanson, Richard, Mary Newburn and Alison Macfarlane (2002) ‘Has the Medicalisation of
Childbirth Gone Too Far?’, British Medical Journal, No. 324, pp. 892-895
Katbamna, Savita (2000) ‘Race’ and Childbirth, Milton Keynes: Open University Press
Kent, D. (2002) ‘Beyond Expectations: Being Blind and Becoming a Mother’, Sexuality and
Disability, Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 81-88
Kirkham, M. (1999) ‘The culture of midwifery in the National Health Service in England’, Journal
of Advanced Nursing, Vol. 30 No. 3, pp. 732-739
Longhurst, Robyn (2009) 'YouTube: A new space for birth?', Feminist Review, Vol. 93, No.1, pp.
46-63
30
Machizawa, Sayaka and Kayoko Hayashi (2012) ‘Birthing Across Cultures: Towards the
Humanization of Childbirth’, in Joan C. Chrisler (Ed.) Reproductive Justice: A Global Concern,
Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, pp. 231-250
Martin, Emily (1992) The Woman in the Body, Boston: Beacon Press
Martin, Karen A. (2003) ‘Giving Birth Like a Girl’, Gender and Society, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 54-72
Murphy-Lawless, Jo (1998) Reading Birth and Death: A History of Obstetric Thinking, Bloomington
and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press
Pollock, Stella (1999) Telling Bodies, Performing Birth: Everyday narratives of childbirth, New
York: Columbia University Press
Ragone, Helena and Frances W. Twine (Eds) (2000) Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood:
Race, Class, Sexuality, Nationalism, New York: Routledge
Rothman, Barbara Katz (1989) Recreating Motherhood: Ideology and Technology in a Patriarchal
Society, New York: Norton
Selin, H. and P.K. Stone (Eds) (2009) Childbirth Across Cultures: Ideas and Practices of Pregnancy,
Childbirth and the Postpartum, Dordrecht; New York: Springer
Simonds, W. (2002) ‘Watching the Clock: keeping time during pregnancy, birth and postpartum
experiences’, Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 55, No. 4, pp. 559-570
Thomson, Rachel (2011) Making Modern Mothers, Bristol; Portland: Policy Press (Ch. 8 ‘Birth’)
Walsh, Denis (2006) Small is Beautiful: Improving Maternity Services – lessons from a Birth Centre,
Oxford: Radcliffe Publishing
Walsh, Denis (2009) ‘Childbirth embodiment: problematic aspects of current understandings’,
Sociology of Health & Illness, Vol. 32, No. 3, pp. 486–501
Witz, A. (1992) Professions and Patriarchy, London: Routledge (Especially Chapter 4 ‘Medical
Men and Midwives’)
Additional Viewing
BBC Three (2010) Cherry Has a Baby, originally broadcast September 2010, available on
BobNational: http://bobnational.net/programme.php?archive=36613&view=flash_player
31
Websites
Make Women Matter: http://www.makewomenmatter.org/
Maternity Action: http://www.maternityaction.org.uk/
Maternity Worldwide: http://www.maternityworldwide.org/the-issues/
National Childbirth Trust: http://www.nct.org.uk/
Royal College of Midwives: https://www.rcm.org.uk
Royal College of Midwives Normal Birth Campaign: http://www.rcmnormalbirth.org.uk/
WHO Maternal Mortality: http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs348/en/
32
Week 10
The Feminist Politics of Infant Feeding: Is ‘Breast Best’?
Historically mothers breastfed their babies or, if they were unable or unwilling to do that, their babies
were mostly breastfed by another woman, a practice known as wet-nursing. In the late 19th century
the first artificial commercial infant food was developed, and, as wet-nursing declined in popularity
and the marketing of formula intensified, breastfeeding began to decline. Public health messages
since the 1970s have sought to reverse this decline through a ‘breast is best’ narrative. This week
we’ll be considering the politics of infant feeding and the claims and counter claims made in favour
of breastfeeding. We’ll also pay attention to women’s experiences of breastfeeding and bottlefeeding, and the difficulties they may face if they want to breastfeed. Breastfeeding is inherently
gendered and embodied, and the debates about it and women’s relation to it connect with discourses
of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ mothering and the mother-child bond, as well as the sexualisation of women’s
breasts and the public-private divide. Binary oppositions of nature vs. commerce; health benefit vs.
health risk; sustainable vs. unsustainable; choice vs. duty; dependence vs. autonomy can also be
identified.
Seminar
Questions
On what medical, environmental and social grounds is it argued that ‘breast is best’
for infant feeding? What counter-arguments can be identified?
To what extent are women’s experiences of breastfeeding at odds with the ‘breast is
best’ narrative?
How do women who bottle-feed navigate the ‘breast is best’ narrative?
How is breastfeeding differentiated by the social class of the mother and what
factors might explain this differentiation?
Why is breastfeeding such a ‘vexed feminist issue’ (Schmied and Lupton, 2010)?
Why is the international marketing of infant formula so controversial?
Core Reading and Viewing
BBC Three (2011) Is Breast Best? Cherry Healey Investigates, originally broadcast on April 12.
Available at http://bobnational.net/programme.php?archive=56025&view=flash_player
Lee, Ellie J. (2008) ‘Living with Risk in the Age of “Intensive Motherhood”: Maternal Identity and
Infant Feeding’, Health, Risk and Society, Vol. 10, No. 5, pp. 467-477
Available as an E-journal article:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1740370
Schmied, Virginia and Deborah Lupton (2001) ‘Blurring the Boundaries: Breastfeeding and
Maternal Subjectivity’, Sociology of Health and Illness, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 234-250
Available as an E-journal article:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1745238
Van Esterik, Penny (2013) ‘The Politics of Breastfeeding: An Advocacy Approach’, in Carole
Counihan and Penny Van Esterik (Eds) Food and Culture: A Reader, New York: Routledge, pp.
510-530, Available as an E-extract:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/search/extracts/so/so231
33
Additional Reading
Abrahams, Sheryl (2012) ‘Milk and Social Media’, Journal of Human Lactation, Vol. 28, No. 3, pp.
400-406
Afflerback, S., S.K. Carter, A.K. Anthony and L. Grauerholz (2013) ‘Infant-feeding Consumerism in
the Age of Intensive Mothering and Risk Society’, Journal of Consumer Culture, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp.
387-405
Bobel, Christina G. (2001) ‘Bounded Liberation: A Focused Study of La Leche League
International’, Gender & Society, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp. 130-151
Britton, Cathryn (1998) ‘“Feeling Letdown” An exploration of an embodied sensation associated
with breastfeeding’, in Sarah Nettleton and Jonathan Watson (Eds) The Body in Everyday Life,
London; New York: Routledge, pp. 65-82
Callaghan, Jane E.M. and Lisa Lazard (2012) ‘“Please don’t put the whole dang thing out there!”: A
discursive analysis of internet discussions around infant feeding’, Psychology and Health, Vol. 27,
No. 8, pp. 938-955
Chetley, Andrew (1979) The Baby Killer Scandal: A War on Want investigation into the promotion
and sale of powdered milks in the Third World, London: War on Want
Gong, Qian and Peter Jackson (2012) ‘Consuming Anxiety?: Parenting Practices in China after the
Infant Formula Scandal’, Food, Culture and Society, Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 557-578
Hausman, Bernice L. (2004) ‘The Feminist Politics of Breastfeeding’, Australian Feminist Studies,
Vol. 19, No. 45, pp. 273-285
Hausman, Bernice L. (2007) ‘Things (Not) to Do with Breasts in Public: Maternal Embodiment and
the Biocultural Politics of Infant Feeding’, New Literary History, Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 479-504
Johnstone-Robledo, Ingrid, Stephanie Wares, Jessica Fricker and Pasek Leigh (2007) Indecent
Exposure: Self-objectification and Young Women’s Attitudes Towards Breastfeeding’, Sex Roles,
Vol. 56, Nos. 7-8, pp. 429-437
Johnstone-Robledo, Ingrid and Alison Murray (2012) ‘Reproductive Justice for Women and Infants:
Restoring Women’s Postpartum Health and Infant-feeding Options’, in Joan C. Chrisler (Ed.)
Reproductive Justice: A Global Concern, Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, pp. 269-288
Knaak, Stephanie (2010) ‘Contextualising Risk, Constructing Choice: Breastfeeding and good
mothering in risk society’, Health, Risk & Society, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 345-355
Kuttai, Heather (2011) ‘Nurturing the Nurturer: Reflections on an experience of breastfeeding,
disability and physical trauma’, in Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson and Jen Cellio (Eds) Disability and
Mothering: Liminal Spaces of Embodied Knowledge, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press
Lee, Ellie J. (2007) ‘Infant Feeding in Risk Society’, Health, Risk and Society, Vol. 9, No. 3, pp.
295-309
34
McCaughey, Martha (2010) ‘Got Milk?: Breastfeeding as an “Incurably Informed” Feminist STS
Scholar’, Science as Culture, Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 79-100
McCarter-Spaulding, Deborah (2008) ‘Is Breastfeeding Fair?: Tensions in Feminist Perspectives on
Breastfeeding and the Family’, Journal of Human Lactation, Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 206-212
Murtagh, Lindsey and Anthony Moulton (2011) ‘Working Mothers, Breastfeeding and the Law’,
American Journal of Public Health, Vol. 101, No. 2, pp. 217-223
Palmer, Gabrielle (2009) The Politics of Breastfeeding: When Breasts are Bad for Business, London:
Pinter and Martin Ltd (on order for library)
Parkes, Peter (2004) ‘Fosterage. Kinship, and Legend: When Milk Was Thicker than Blood?’,
Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 46, No. 3, pp. 587-615
Parkes, Peter (2005) ‘Milk Kinship in Islam. Substance, Structure, History’, Social Anthropology,
Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 307-329
Perdue, Robert Todd, Joshua Sbicca and Jeanne Halcomb (2012) ‘ A Life Cycle Approach to Food
Justice: The Case of Breastfeeding’, Environmental Justice, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 168-172
Regan, Paul and Elaine Ball (2013) ‘Breastfeeding Mothers’ Experiences’, Qualitative Health
Research, Vol. 23, No. 5, pp. 679-688
Rippeyoung, Phyllis L.F. and Mary C. Noonan (2012) ‘Is Breastfeeding Truly Cost Free? Income
Consequences of Breastfeeding for Women’, American Sociological Review, Vol. 77, No. 2, pp. 244267
Stevens, Emily E. (2009) ‘A History of Infant Feeding’, Journal of Perinatal Education, Vol. 18,
No. 2, pp. 32-39
Sundhagen, Rebecca (2009) ‘Breastfeeding and Child Spacing’, in H. Selin and P.K. Stone (Eds)
Childbirth Across Cultures: Ideas and Practices of Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Postpartum,
Dordrecht; New York: Springer, pp. 23-32
Tarrant, Roslyn C., Margaret Sheridan-Pereira, Roberta A. McCarthy, Katherine M. Younger and
John M. Kearney (2013) ‘Mothers who Formula Feed: Their Practices, Support Needs and Factors
Influencing their Infant Feeding Decision’, Child Care in Practice, Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 78-94
Team, Victoria and Kath Ryan (2014) ‘Expressed Breast Milk as Commodity: Disembodied
Motherhood and Involved Fatherhood’, in Meredith Nash (Ed.) Reframing Reproduction:
Conceiving Gendered Experiences, Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 221-235
Traina, Cristina L.H. (2011) Erotic Attunement: Parenthood and the Ethics of Sensuality Between
Unequals, Chicago: Chicago University Press
Turner, Paaige K. and Kristen Norwood (2013) ‘Unbounded Motherhood: Embodying a Good
Working Mother Identity’, Management Communication Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 396-424
35
Weiner, Lynn Y. (1994) ‘Reconstructing Motherhood: The La Leche League in Postwar America’
Journal of American History, Vol. 80, No. 4, pp. 1357-1381
Websites
Baby Milk Action: http://info.babymilkaction.org/nestlefree
International Baby Food Action Network: http://ibfan.org/
La Leche League GB: Friendly Breastfeeding Support from Pregnancy Onwards:
http://www.laleche.org.uk/
Love Mums: Support for Feeding Your Baby: http://www.lovemums.org.uk/
NHS Advice (See ‘Your Newborn’ on top blue menu bar):
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/
National Childbirth Trust: http://www.nct.org.uk/professional/research/feeding-babies
Simply Supporting Breastfeeding Coventry:
https://www.facebook.com/SimplySupportingBreastfeedingCoventry/
The Breastfeeding Network: http://www.breastfeedingnetwork.org.uk/about-us.html
36
Week 11
The Politics of Adoption
Parenthood is often regarded as a natural and inevitable part of the life cycle, yet individuals do not
possess an inalienable/innate right to parent children. Nowhere perhaps is this more evident than in
the area of adoption. This lecture looks historically at adoption practices both in the UK and
internationally. Ideologies about who constitutes the ‘fit’ parent have influenced UK adoption
policy, notions of ‘fitness’ themselves overlaid with particular ideas about ‘race’, social class, gender
and sexuality. Although since 2005 legislation in England defines any family structure as
appropriate for a child’s upbringing, single men and gay couples may still face resistance. This
lecture will also consider the ‘race’, class and cross/transcultural politics of adoption, looking at how
policy has shifted over time and asking what is in the best interests of the child. Finally we will
explore the rising trend of inter-country adoption, which raises further questions about neocolonialism and the global commodification of children.
Seminar
Questions
How have class, sexuality and gender shaped UK social policy around
adoption?
What challenges do gay men in particular face as prospective adopters?
In whose best interest is transracial adoption?
What structures transnational adoption and does it matter?
Core Reading
Bhabha, Jacqueline (2004) ‘Moving Babies: Globalization, Markets and Transracial Adoption’,
Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Vol. 28, No. 2, pp. 181-198
Available as an E-journal article:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1739984~S1 [search through HeinOnline Jnl Library]
Hicks, Stephen (2011) Lesbian, Gay and Queer Parenting: Families, Intimacies, Genealogies,
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan (Ch. 7 ‘State’, pp. 174-206)
Available as an E-book:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2587338
Miles, Penny (2013) ‘International Adoption as Humanitarian Aid: The Discursive and Material
Production of the Social Orphan in Haitian Disaster Relief’, in Angelia R. Wilson (Ed.) Situating
Intersectionality: Politics, Policy, and Power, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 89-106
Available as an E-book:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2722257?lang=eng
Riggs, Damien W. (2011) ‘“Let’s Go to the Movies”: Filmic Representations of Gay Foster and
Adoptive Parents’, Journal of GLBT Family Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3, pp. 297-312
Available as an E-journal article:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2564077
37
Additional Reading
Bharadwaj, Aditya (2003) ‘Why Adoption is not an Option in India: The visibility of infertility, the
secrecy of donor insemination, and other cultural complexities’, Social Science and Medicine, Vol.
56, No. 9, pp. 1867-1880
Briggs, L. (2003) ‘Mother, Child, Race, Nation: The Visual Iconography of Rescue and the Politics
of Transnational and Transracial Adoption’, Gender & History, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 179-200
Campion, Mukhti J. (1995) Who’s Fit to be a Parent? Routledge: London (Ch. 2 ‘Other People’s
Children: Who’s Fit to Adopt?’)
Cocker, Christine (2011) ‘Sexuality Before Ability: The Assessment of Lesbians as Adopters’, in
Priscilla Dunk-West and Trish Halford-Letchield (Eds) Sexual Identities and Sexuality in Social
Work, Burlington; Farnham: Ashgate, pp. 141-162
Conn, Peter (2013) Adoption: A Brief Social and Cultural History, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Dorow, S. K. (2006) Transnational Adoption: A Cultural Economy of Race, Gender and Kinship,
New York: New York University Press
Fogg-Davis, Hawley (2002) The Ethics of Transracial Adoption, Ithaca: Cornell University Press
Gaber, Ivor and Jane Aldridge (1994) In the best interest of the child: culture, identity and
transracial adoption, London: Free Association Books
Godon, Danielle E., Whitney F. Green and Patricia G. Ramsey (2014) ‘Transracial Adoptees: The
Search for Birth Family and the Search for Self’, Adoption Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 1-27
Grice, H. (2005) ‘Transracial Adoption Narratives: Prospects and Perspectives’, Meridians:
feminism, race, transnationalism, Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 124-148
Harris-Short, S. (2012) ‘Holding onto the past? Adoption, birth parents and the law in the twentyfirst century’, in R. Probert and C. Barton (Eds) Fifty Years in Family Law, Cambridge: Intersentia,
pp. 147-160
Hearst, Alice (2009) ‘Children, International Human Rights, and the Politics of Belonging’, in
Martha A. Fineman and Karen Worthington (Eds) What is Right for Children?, Farnham;
Burlington: Ashgate, pp. 329-347
Hicks, Stephen and Janet McDermott (Eds) (1999) Lesbian and Gay Fostering and Adoption:
Extraordinary yet Ordinary, London: J. Kingsley
Hicks, Stephen (2005) ‘Lesbian and Gay Foster Care and Adoption: A brief UK history’, Adoption
and Fostering, Vol. 29, No. 3, pp.42-56
Howe, David (1992) Half A Million Women: Mothers Who Lose Their Children by Adoption,
London: Penguin Books
38
Howell, Signe (2006) The Kinning of Foreigners: Transnational Adoption in a Global Perspective,
Oxford: Berghahn Books
Humphrey, M. and H. Humphrey (1993) Intercountry Adoption: Practical Experiences, London:
Routledge (Ch. 9)
Judith, M. (2001) ‘Intercountry Adoption: A Global Problem or a Global Solution?’, Journal of
International Affairs, Vol. 55, No. 1, pp. 141-154
Kay, Jackie (1991) The Adoption Papers, Newcastle: Bloodaxe
Kirton, Derek (2000) Race, Ethnicity and Adoption, Milton Keynes: Open University Press
Leinaweaver, Jessaca B. (2014) ‘The Quiet Migration Redux: International Adoption, Race, and
Difference’, Human Organization, Vol. 73, No. 1, pp. 62-71
Mandell, Betty Reid (1973) Where Are The Children? A Class Analysis of Foster Care and
Adoption, London: Lexington Books
Millar, Ian and Christina Paulson-Ellis (2009) Exploring Infertility Issues in Adoption, London:
British Association for Adoption and Fostering
Morgan, Patricia (1999) Adoption: The Continuing Debate, IEA Health and Welfare Unit
Mortimer, Claudia (1994) Immigration and Adoption, London: Trentham Books/SOAS
Nijhoff, M. (1993) Parenthood in Modern Society: Legal and Social Issues for the Twenty First
Century, London: Dodrecht
Owen, Gill and Barbara Jackson (1983) Adoption and Race: Black Asian and Mixed Race Children
in White Families, London: Batsford Academic Books/BAAF
Park, Shelley (2006) ‘Adoptive Maternal Bodies: A Queer Paradigm for Rethinking Mothering?’,
Hypatia, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 201-226
Roberts, Dorothy (1999) Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty,
Vintage Books, New York (Chapter 6)
Sales, Sally (2012) Adoption, Family and the Paradox of Origins, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Selman, Peter (Ed.) (2000) Intercountry Adoption: Devlopments, Trends and Perspectives, London:
British Agencies for Fostering and Adoption
Seymour, Natalie (2007) In Black and White: The story of an open transracial adoption, London:
British Agencies for Adoption and Fostering
Simon, Rita (1994) The Case for Transracial Adoption, London: American University Press
Simon, Rita and Howard Alstein (2004) Adoption, Race and Identity, From Infancy to Young
Adulthood, New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers
39
Smolin, David M. (2006) ‘Child Laundering: How the Intercountry Adoption System Legitimizes
and Incentivizes the Practices of Buying, Trafficking, Kidnapping, and Stealing Children’, Wayne
Law Review, Vol. 52, No. 1, pp. 113-200
Weise, Jacqueline (1988) Transracial Adoption: A Black Perspective, Norwich: Social Work
Monographs
Younes, Maha N. and Stephanie A. Klein (2014) ‘The International Adoption Experience: Do They
Live Happily Ever After?’, Adoption Quarterly, Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 65-83
Yngvesson, B. (2010) Belonging in an Adopted World: Race, Identity and Transnational Adoption,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press
Additional Listening:
BBC Radio debate about adoption and black families:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/london/content/articles/2007/09/14/blacklondon_feature.shtml
Interviews with an African-American father adopting a white child:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=16611567
http://www.npr.org/blogs/bryantpark/2007/11/white_kid_black_family_transra.html
Websites:
Adoption UK: http://www.adoptionuk.org/
Alliance for Children: http://www.allforchildren.org/
British Association of Adoption and Fostering: http://www.baaf.org.uk/
Children’s Hope International: http://www.chinaadoptionagency.com/
International Adoption Net: http://www.internationaladoptionnet.org/
LGBT Adoption and Fostering Week: http://www.lgbtadoptfosterweek.org.uk/
Stonewall: Adoption and Fostering: https://www.stonewall.org.uk/at_home/parenting/2624.asp
40
Week 12
Timing Parenthood
This week’s lecture focuses on the timing of parenthood, and in particular, the normative boundaries
that demarcate the ‘right’ time to become a parent (and especially a mother). By looking at the
narratives, representations and experiences of older and younger parents, we will explore the
multiple factors that influence the timing of parenthood, the challenges that younger and older
parents encounter, and the ways in which moral panics around early and late motherhood impact
upon the lived experiences of those becoming parents outside of the ‘right’ time. We will also
explore different ways of understanding time in a reproductive context.
Seminar
Questions
Is there a ‘right’ time to become a parent?
What factors impact upon the timing of parenthood and how are they gendered?
What do debates about the timing of parenthood contribute to our understanding of
time as a concept?
What do the moral panics around younger and older motherhood have in common?
How are they different?
Core Reading and Listening
BBC Radio Four (2013) More or Less: How Long Can You Wait to Have a Baby?, originally
broadcast on 13 September. Available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b039rwd0
Kirkman, Maggie et al (2001) ‘“I know I’m doing a good job”: canonical and
autobiographical narratives of teenage mothers’, Culture, Health and Sexuality, Vol. 3, No. 3, pp.
279-294
Available as an E-journal article:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1739068~S1
Shelton, N. and Johnson, S. (2006) ‘“I think motherhood for me was a bit like a double-edged
sword”: the narratives of older mothers’, Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology Vol.
16, No. 4, pp. 316-330
Available as an E-journal article:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1741658~S1
Shirani, Fiona (2014) ‘Taking a Long View of the “Right Time” for Fatherhood’, in Meredith Nash
(Ed.) Reframing Reproduction: Conceiving Gendered Experiences, Basingstoke; New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 150-164
Available as an E-book:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2730303
Additional Reading
Aarvold, J. and C. Buswell (1999) ‘Very Young Motherhood: Whose Problem?’, Youth and Policy,
No.64, pp. 1-14
Allen, I. and S. Bourke (1998) Teenage mothers: decisions and outcomes, London: Policy Studies
Institute
41
Berryman, Julia (1991) ‘Perspectives on later motherhood’, in Phoenix et al (Eds)
Motherhood: Meanings, practices and ideologies, London: Sage
Bullen, Elizabeth et al (2000) ‘New Labour, Social Exclusion and Educational Risk
Management: the case of gymslip mums’, British Educational Research Journal, Vol. 26, No. 4,
pp. 441-456
Breheny, Mary and Christine Stephens (2007) ‘Individual Responsibility and Social Constraint:
The construction of adolescent motherhood in social scientific research’, Culture, Health and
Sexuality, Vol. 9, No. 4, pp. 333-346
Byrne, Bridget (2006) ‘In Search of a Good Mix: “Race”, Class, Gender and Practices of
Mothering’, Sociology, Vol. 40, No. 6, pp. 1001-1017
Carolan, Mary (2005) ‘Doing it Properly: the experience of first mothering over 35 years’,
Health Care for Women International, Vol. 26, No. 9, pp. 764-787
Cutas, Daniela (2007) ‘Postmenopausal Motherhood: Immoral, Illegal? A case study’, Bioethics,
Vol. 21, No. 8, pp. 458-463
De Carvalho, Joao Eduardo Coin (2007) ‘How Can a Child be a Mother: Discourse on teenage
pregnancy in a Brazilian favela’, Culture, Health and Sexuality, Vol. 9, No. 2, pp.109-120
Duncan, Simon (2005) ‘Mothering, Class and Rationality’, Sociological Review, Vol. 53, No. 1, pp.
50-76
Duncan, Simon, Rosalind Edwards and Claire Alexancer (2010) Teenage Parents: What’s the
Problem?, London: Tufnell Press
Earle, Sarah and Gale Letherby (2007) ‘Conceiving Time?: Women who do or do not conceive’,
Sociology of Health and Illness, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 233-250
Edwards M.E. (2002) ‘Education and Occupations: Reexamining the Conventional Wisdom About
Later First Births Among American Mothers’, Sociological Forum, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 423-443
Finlay, A. (1996) ‘Teenage Pregnancy, romantic love and social science - an uneasy
relationship’, in V. James and J. Gabe (Eds) Health and the Sociology of Emotions, Oxford:
Blackwell
Fuller, Sylvia, et al (2008) ‘Constructing “active citizenship”: Single mothers, welfare and the
logics of voluntarism’, Citizenship Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp.157-176
Hawkes, G. (1995) ‘Responsibility and Irresponsibility: Young Women and Family Planning’,
Sociology, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 257-273
Heilborn, Maria Luiza et al. (2007) ‘Teenage Pregnancy and Moral Panic in Brazil’, Culture,
Health and Sexuality, Vol. 9, No. 4, pp.403-414
Higginson, Joanna (1998) ‘Competitive Parenting: The Culture of Teen Mothers’, Journal of
Marriage and the Family, Vol. 60, No. 1, pp. 135-149
42
Holgate, S., R. Evans and F.K.O. Yuen (Eds) (2006) Teenage Pregnancy and Parenthood: Global
Perspectives, Issues and Interventions, London: Routledge
Hudson, F. and B. Ineichen (1991) Taking it Lying down: Sexuality and Teenage Motherhood
Basingstoke: Macmillan
Kidger, Judi (2005) ‘Stories of Redemption? Teenage Mothers as the New Sex Educators’,
Sexualities, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp. 481-496
Kiernan, K. (1997) ‘Becoming a Young Parent’, British Journal of Sociology, Vol. 48, No. 3, pp.
406-428
Kluger, Jeffrey et al (2013) ‘Too Old to be a Dad?’, Time, Vol. 181, No. 15, pp. 38-43
Lawson, A. and D. L. Rhode (1993) The Politics of Pregnancy: Adolescent sexuality and public
policy, New Haven, London: Yale University Press
Luker, K. (1996) Dubious Conceptions: The Politics of Teenage Pregnancy, Cambridge MA;
London: Harvard University Press
MacIntyre, S. and Cunningham-Burley, S. (1993) ‘Teenage Pregnancy as a social problem: a
perspective from the United Kingdom’, in A. Lawson and D. Rhode (Eds) The Politics of
Pregnancy: Adolescent Sexuality and Public Policy, New Haven: Yale University Press
McDermott, E. and H. Graham (2005) ‘Resilient young mothering: social inequalities, late
modernity and the “problem” of “teenage” motherhood’, Journal of Youth Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp.
59-79
Mills, M. et al (2011) ‘Why do people postpone parenthood? Reasons and social policy incentives’,
Human Reproduction Update, Vol. 17, No. 6, pp. 848-860
Perrier, M. (2013) ‘No Right Time: Younger and Older Mothers' Accounts of Timing Motherhood’,
Sociological Review, Vol. 61, No. 1, pp. 69-87
Phoenix, A. (1991) Young Mothers?, Cambridge: Polity Press
Rolfe, Alison (2008), ‘ “You’ve Got to Grow Up When You’ve Got a Kid”: Marginalised
young women’s accounts of motherhood’, Journal of Community and Applied Social
Psychology, Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 299-314
Rosenthal, J. L., R.C. Zimmermann and M.V. Sauer (1997) ‘The desire for childbearing in women of
advanced reproductive age: findings in a donor oocyte program’, Fertility and Sterility Supplement
1, 18 October, pp. 179-180
Royal College of Obstetrician and Gynaecologists (2009) ‘RCOG Statement of Later Maternal Age’,
Press release, issued 15 June, Available Online: http://www.rcog.org.uk/what-we-do/campaigningand-opinions/statement/rcog-statement-later-maternal-age
Scholfield, G. (1994) Youngest Mothers, Aldershot: Avebury
43
Selman, P. and C . Glendinning (1994) ‘Teenage Pregnancy and Social Policy’, Youth and
Policy, Vol. 47, No. 5, pp. 39-58
Sevon, Eija (2005) ‘Timing Motherhood: Experiencing and narrating the choice to become a
mother’, Feminism and Psychology, Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 423-443
Shaw, Rachel L. and David C. Giles (2009) ‘Motherhood on Ice: A Media Framing Analysis of
Older Mothers in the UK news’, Psychology and Health, Volume 24, No. 2, pp. 221-236
Tabberer S. et al (2000) Teenage pregnancy and choice: abortion or motherhood: influences on the
decision, York: York Publishing Services for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation
Whitman L. et al (2001) Interwoven Lives: Adolescent mothers and their children, PLACE:
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates
Wilson, Helen and Huntington, Annette (2005) ‘Deviant (M)others: The Construction of Teenage
Motherhood in Contemporary Discourse’, Journal of Social Policy, Vol. 35, No. 1, pp. 59-76
Websites
Bubbalicious: The Place for Young Parents:
http://www.bubbalicious.co.uk/?gclid=CLLKqtOH5LkCFcbLtAod1SkAcw
Mothers Over 40: http://www.mothersover40.com/home.html
Nurture: Stories of Midlife Mothers: http://www.midlifemothers.org/
Thrive Teen Parenting Centre:
http://www.tindall.org.nz/thrive-teen-parenting-centre-empowering-young-parents-to-buildthriving-families/
44
Week 13
Who Manages Fertility? The Politics of Contraception
Contraception has a long history that illustrates women's desire and struggle to achieve control over
their reproduction in relation to laws, regulations and instruction by different religions, states and
medical professionals. Moreover, decisions over fertility emerge from and are intertwined with the
wider social context, including marriage customs, economic factors, cultural prescriptions, and, of
course, gender relations. Contraceptive technologies are not ‘neutral’; they are designed, promoted
and controlled within the social context, and thus re/produce wider social inequalities and
conventions. This week we will consider issues that illustrate the politics of contraception. First, the
centrality of ideas about which women are 'fit' to be mothers to the promotion of contraception will
be looked at, including eugenic agendas. Second, control of access to contraception will be
considered, including the surveillance of women by health professionals. Third, health implications
for women using contraception will be examined, including the implication of pharmaceutical
companies in the power relationships of contraception. Fourth, the links between contraceptive use
and practices of heterosexuality will be explored. Finally we will ask why the development of
contraception has focussed on women users; what are the prospects for a ‘male pill’ and how has its
development to date been gendered?
Seminar
Questions
Is contraception good for women’s health?
What difference does ‘race’ make to women’s experiences of contraception?
What difference does intellectual disability make to women’s experiences of
contraception?
How do discourses and practices of heterosexuality shape contraceptive use?
Could there / should there be a male pill?
Core Reading
Lowe, Pam (2005) ‘Contraception and Heterosex: An Intimate Relationship’, Sexualities, Vol. 8, No.
1, pp. 75-92
Available as an E-journal article:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2152062
Oudshoorn, Nelly E. J. (2004) ‘“Astronauts in the Sperm World”: The Renegotiation of Masculine
Identities in Discourses on Male Contraceptives’, Men and Masculinities, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 349-367
Available as an E-journal article:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1743209
Roberts, Dorothy (1999) Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty,
New York: Vintage (ch. 3 ‘From Norplant to the Contraceptive Vaccine: The New Frontier of
Population Control’, pp. 105-149)
Available as an E-extract: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/search/extracts/so/so231
Tilley, Elizabeth, Jan Walmsley, Sarah Earle and Dorothy Atkinson (2012) ‘“The Silence is
Roaring": Sterilization, reproductive rights and women with intellectual disabilities’, Disability &
Society, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 413-426
Available as an E-journal article:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1739242
45
Additional Reading
Agadjanian, Victor (2002) ‘Men’s Talk about “Women’s Matters”: Gender, Communication, and
Contraception in Urban Mozambique’, Gender & Society, Vol. 16, No. 2, pp. 194-215
Anderson, P. and R. Kitchen (2000) ‘Disability, space and sexuality: access to family planning
services’, Social Science & Medicine, Vol. 51, No. 8, pp. 1163-1173
Barrett, G. and R. Harper (2000) ‘Health Professionals’ Attitudes to the Deregulation of Emergency
Contraception (Or the Problem of Female Sexuality)’, Sociology of Health and Illness, Vol. 22, No.
2, pp. 197-216
Bashford, Alison and Phillippa Levine (Eds) (2010) The Oxford Handbook of Eugenics, New York:
Oxford University Press
Foster, P. (1995) Women and the Health Care Industry: An Unhealthy Relationship, Buckingham:
Open University Press (ch. 1 ‘Contraception and Abortion’)
Gordon, L. (1990) Women's Body, Women's Rights: Birth Control in America, London: Penguin
Books
Grant, N. J. (1992) The Selling of Contraception: The Dalkon Shield Case, Sexuality and Women's
Autonomy, Columbus: Ohio State University Press
Hawkes, G. (1995) 'Responsibility and Irresponsibility: Young Women and Family Planning',
Sociology, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 257-273
Holland, J., C. Ramazanoglu, S. Scott, S. Sharpe and R. Thomson (1990) ‘Don't Die of Ignorance’ I
Nearly Died of Embarrassment: Condoms in Context, London: The Tufnell Press
Jackson, M. (1994) The Real Facts of Life: Feminism and the Politics of Sexuality c1850-1940,
London: Taylor and Francis (especially chapter on Birth Control Movement)
Jackson, Emily (2001) Regulating Reproduction: Law, Technology and Autonomy, Oxford, Portland
Oregan: Hart Publishing (ch. 2 ‘Birth Control’)
Jütte, Robert (2007) Contraception: A history, translated by Vicky Russell, Cambridge: Polity
Kammen, Jessika van and Nelly Oudshoorn (2002) ‘Gender and Risk Assessment in Contraceptive
Technologies’, Sociology of Health and Illness, Vol. 24, No. 4, pp. 436-461
Keogh, Louise A. (2005) ‘Women’s Contraceptive Decision-Making: Juggling the Needs of the
Sexual Body and the Fertile Body’, Women and Health, Vol. 42, No. 4, pp. 83-103
Kissling, Elizabeth Arveda (2014) ‘What Does Not Kill You Makes You Stronger: Young Women’s
Online Conversations about Quitting the Pill’, in Meredith Nash (Ed.) Reframing Reproduction:
Conceiving Gendered Experiences, Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 236-250
Kohn, T. and R. McKechnie (Eds) (1999) Extending the Boundaries of Care: Medical Ethics and
Caring Practices, Oxford: Berg (Especially chapter on Depo-Provera)
46
Kuo, L. (1998) ‘Secondary Discrimination as a Standard for Feminist Social Policy: Norplant and
Probation, A Case Study’, Signs Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 907-944
Lowe, Pam (2005) ‘Embodied Expertise: Women’s Perceptions of the Contraception Consultation’,
Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine, Vol. 9,
No. 3, pp. 361-378
Lowe P., R. Sidhu R & F. Griffiths (2007) ‘Barriers faced by Pakistani women seeking
contraception’, Diversity in Health and Social Care, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 69-76
McLaren, A. (1990) A History of Contraception, Oxford: Basil Blackwell
Norsworthy, Kathryn L., Margaret A. McLaren and Laura D. Waterfield (2012) ‘Women’s Power in
Relationships: A Matter of Social Justice’, in Joan C. Chrisler (Ed.) Reproductive Justice: A Global
Concern, Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, pp. 57-76
Oudshoorn, Nelly E. J. (2000) ‘Imagined Men: Representations of Masculinities in Discourse of
Male Contraceptive Technology’, in A. Saetnan, N. Oudshoorn and M. Kirejczyk (Eds) Bodies of
Technology: Women’s Involvement in Reproductive Medicine, Ohio: Ohio University Press, pp. 123145
Oudshoorn, Nelly E. J. (2003) The Male Pill: A Biography of a Technology in the Making, Durham;
London: Duke University Press
Peel, R. (Ed.) (1997) Marie Stopes, Eugenics and the English Birth Control Movement, London: The
Galton Institute
Pollock, S. (1984) ‘Refusing to take women seriously: “Side effects” and the Politics of
Contraception’, in R. Arditti et al (Eds) Test-tube Women: What Future for Motherhood? Boston:
Pandora
Pollock, Scarlet (1985) ‘Sex and the Contraceptive Act’, in Hilary Homans (Ed.) The Sexual Politics
of Reproduction, Aldershot: Gower
Riddle, John M. (1992) Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance,
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press
Roberts, Dorothy (1999) Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty
New York: Vintage (Ch. 4 ‘Making Reproduction a Crime’)
Rose, June (1993) Marie Stopes and the Sexual Revolution, London, Boston: Faber & Faber
Russell, Andrew, Sobo, Elisa and Thompson, Mary (Eds) (2000) Contraception across cultures:
technologies, choices, constraints, Oxford: Berg
Russo, Felipe and Julia R. Seinberg (2012) ‘Contraception and Abortion: Critical Tools for Achieving
Reproductive Justice’, in Joan C. Chrisler (Ed.) Reproductive Justice: A Global Concern, Santa
Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, pp. 145-172
47
Seal, Vivien (1990) Whose Choice? Working Class Women and the Control of Fertility, London:
Fortress (ch. 2 ‘The Struggle for Birth Control’)
Stevens, Dionne P., Vrushali Patil and Tami L. Thomas (2012) ‘STI Prevention and Control for
Women: A Reproductive Justice Approach to Understanding Global Women’s Experiences’, in Joan
C. Chrisler (Ed.) Reproductive Justice: A Global Concern, Santa Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, pp. 117144
Takeshita, Chikako (2010) ‘The IUD in Me: On Embodying Feminist Technoscience Studies’,
Science as Culture, Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 37-60
Thomas, Hilary (1985) ‘The Medical Construction of the Contraceptive Career’, in Hilary Homans
(Ed.) The Sexual Politics of Reproduction, Aldershot: Gower
Tilly, Liz, Jan Walmsley, Sarah Earle and Dorothy Atkinson (2012) ‘International Perspectives on
the Sterilization of Women with Intellectual Disabilities’, in Sarah Earle, Carol Komarory and Linda
Layne (Eds) Understanding Reproductive Loss: Perspectives on Life, Death and Fertility, Farnham:
Ashgate Publishing, pp. 23-36
Watkins, E. S. (1998) On the Pill: A Social History of Oral Contraceptives 1950-1970, Baltimore,
London: John Hopkins University Press
Waxman-Fiduccia B. (1994) ‘Up Against Eugenics: Disabled Women's Challenge to Receive
Reproductive Health Services’, Sexuality and Disability, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 185-171
Welner, S. (1999) ‘Contraceptive Choices for Women with Disabilities’, Sexuality and Disability,
Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 209-214
Wong, A. (2000) ‘The Work of Disabled Women Seeking Reproductive Health Care’, Sexuality and
Disability, Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 301-306
Wynn, L.L. and James Trussell (2006) ‘The Social Life of Emergency Contraception in the United
States’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 3, pp. 297-320
Websites
BBC Medical Ethics and Contraception:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/contraception/ethics_contraception_1.shtml
Brook: http://www.brook.org.uk/
International Planned Parenthood Federation: http://www.ippf.org/
Family Planning Association: http://www.fpa.org.uk/help-and-advice/contraception-help
Marie Stopes International: http://www.mariestopes.org.uk/
NHS Choices: Contraception:
method-suits-me.aspx
http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/contraception-guide/Pages/which-
48
Week 14
Whose body is it anyway? The politics of abortion
The phrase ‘a woman’s right to choose’ has been used as a rallying cry by feminists in the pursuit of
safe, legal abortion – ideally on demand. However, by using the language of ‘rights’, it can be
argued, feminists have provided opponents of abortion with a valuable weapon to use against them.
Contestation around abortion is increasingly framed as a battle between women’s rights, foetal rights
and fathers’ rights, particularly since the advent of new reproductive technologies including, most
significantly, ultrasound. The session will outline the historical context of feminist demands for safe,
legal abortion, detailing the various interest groups that feel entitled to be considered in debates over
abortion. It will consider the shifts in the debate around the concept of ‘foetal rights’ instigated by
the advent of the ‘new reproductive technologies’, as well as considering the ‘eugenic’ dimension of
selective abortion of ‘impaired’ foetuses, where feminist principles are in tension with the disability
movement.
Seminar
Questions
What arguments have feminists used to win or maintain access to abortion?
What arguments have anti-choice groups used to deny or restrict access to
abortion?
In what ways have the new reproductive technologies changed the terms of the
abortion debate?
What are the key issues for disability rights campaigners with regards to the
abortion time limit in the UK?
Core Reading and Viewing
American
Portrait
Films
(1984),
The
Silent
Scream.
Available
at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iipPDUsojng
(WARNING: this video contains graphic images of abortion; if you are worried these might
disturb you, do not watch it)
Fadiman, D. (director) (2004) Motherhood by Choice, Not by Chance. Available at
http://www.archive.org/details/motherhood_by_choice_fadiman_2004
Roberts, Julie (2013) The Visualised Foetus: A Cultural and Political Analysis of Ultrasound,
Farnham; Burlington, VT : Ashgate (Ch. 4 ‘The Ultimate Image in the Abortion Debate’)
Available as an E-book:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2691044
Rose, M. and Hatfield, M. R. (2007) ‘Republican motherhood redux?: women as contingent citizens
in 21st century America’, Journal of Women, Politics and Policy, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 5-30
Available as an E-journal article:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b2286771~S1
Saxton, M, (2006) ‘Disability Rights and Selective Abortion’ in L.J. Davis (Ed.) The Disability
Studies Reader, London: Routledge, pp. 105-116
Available as an E-book:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2687655
49
Additional Reading
Bennett, B. (2004) Abortion, Dartmouth, Aldershot; Burlington, Vt: Ashgate
Berer, M. (1988) ‘Whatever happened to a woman’s right to choose?’, Feminist Review No. 29, pp.
24-37
Browner, C. H. (2000) ‘Situating women’s reproductive activities’, American Anthropologist Vol.
102, No. 4, pp.773-778
Chavkin, W. (1992) ‘Women and foetus: the social construction of conflict’, in C. Feinman (Ed.) The
Criminalisation of a Woman’s Body, New York; London: Haworth Press, pp. 193-202
Daniels, C. (1993) At Women’s Expense: State Power and the Politics of Fetal Rights, London:
Harvard University Press
Davis-Floyd, R. and Dumit, J. (1998) Cyborg Babies: From Techno-Sex to Techno Tots, London:
Routledge
Francome, C. (2004) Abortion in the USA and the UK, Aldershot: Ashgate
Franklin, S. et al (1991) Off-Centre: Feminism and Cultural Studies, London: Harper Collins (see
chapters from the section entitled ‘In the wake of the Alton Bill’)
Fried, M. G. (Ed.) (1990) From Abortion to Reproductive Freedom: Transforming a Movement,
Boston: South End Press (especially chapter by A. Davis ‘Racism, birth control and reproductive
rights’)
Fried, M. (2006) ‘Politics of abortion’, Indian Journal of Gender Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 229245
Ginsburg, F. and Rapp, R. (1995) Conceiving the New World Order: The Global Politics of
Reproduction, London; Los Angeles: University of California Press
Githens, M. and McBride Stetson, D. (Eds) (1996) Abortion Politics: Public Policy in Cross Cultural
Perspective, London: Routledge
Gleeson, Kate (2014) ‘The Limits of “Choice”: Abortion and Entrepreneurialism’, in Meredith Nash
(Ed.) Reframing Reproduction: Conceiving Gendered Experiences, Basingstoke; New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 69-83
Heumann, S. G. (2007) ‘Abortion and politics in Nicaragua: the women’s movement in the debate on
the Abortion Law reform 1999-2002’, Culture, Health and Sexuality, Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 217-231
Himmelweit, S. (1988) ‘More than “a woman’s right to choose”?’, Feminist Review, No. 29, pp. 3856
Hubbard, R. (2006) ‘Abortion and Disability: Who Should and Should Not Inhabit the World?’, in
L.J. Davis (Ed.) The Disability Studies Reader, London: Routledge, pp. 93-104
50
Hussain, S. (2003) ‘Gender and reproductive behaviour: the role of men’, Indian Journal of Gender
Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 45-76
Jackson, E. (2001) Regulating Reproduction: Law, Technology and Autonomy, Oxford: Hart
Publishing (ch.3 Abortion)
Kallianes, V. and Rubenfeld, P. (1997) ‘Disabled women and reproductive rights’, Disability and
Society, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp.203-221
Kramer, A-M. (2005) ‘Gender, nation and the abortion debate in the Polish media’ in V. Tolz and S.
Booth (Eds) Nation and Gender in Contemporary Europe, Manchester: Manchester University Press
Kuhse, Helga and Peter Singer (Eds) (2012) A Companion to Bioethics, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell,
Part IV – Before Birth: Issues involving embryos and fetuses
Lewiecki-Wilson, Cynthia (2011) ‘Uneasy Subjects: Disability, feminism and abortion’, in Cynthia
Lewiecki-Wilson and Jen Cellio (Eds) Disability and Mothering: Liminal Spaces of Embodied
Knowledge, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press
MacPherson, Y. (2007) ‘Images and icons: harnessing the power of the media to reduce sex-selective
abortion in India’, Gender in Development, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 413-423
Mason, C. (2000) ‘Cracked babies and the partial birth of a nation: millennialism and fetal
citizenship’, Cultural Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 35-60
Oaks, L. (2000) ‘Smoke-filled wombs and fragile foetuses: the social politics of fetal representation’,
Sign, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 63-108
Oaks, L. (2002) ‘Abortion is part of the Irish experience, it is part of what we are: the transformation
of public discourses on Irish abortion policy’, Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 25, No. 3,
pp. 315-333
Overall, Christine (2012) Why Have Children: The ethical debate, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
Ch. 3 (When Prospective Parents Disagree)
Palmer, J. (2000) ‘Seeing is knowing’, Feminist Theory Vol. 10, No. 2, pp.173-189
Petchesky, R. (1987) ‘Foetal images: the power of visual culture in the politics of reproduction’, in
M. Stanworth (Ed.) Reproductive Technologies: Gender, Motherhood and Medicine, Cambridge:
Polity Press pp. 57-80
Randall, V. (1992) ‘Great Britain and dilemmas for feminist strategy in the 1980s: the case of
abortion and reproductive rights’, in J. M. Bystydzienski (Ed.) Women Transforming Politics:
Worldwide Strategies for Empowerment, Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, pp.
80-94
Rabindranathan, S. (2003) ‘Women’s decision to undergo abortion’, Indian Journal of Gender
Studies, Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 457-473
51
Rapp, R. (2000) Testing Women, Testing the Foetus: the Social Impact of Amniocentesis in America,
London: Routledge
Riddle, John M. (1992) Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance,
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press
Ruhl, P. L. (2002) ‘Disarticulating liberal subjectivities: abortion and fetal protection’, Feminist
Studies, Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 37-60
Russo, Felipe and Julia R. Seinberg (2012) ‘Contraception and Abortion: Critical Tools for Achieving
Reproductive Justice’, in Joan C. Chrisler (Ed.) Reproductive Justice: A Global Concern, Santa
Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, pp. 145-172
Schrage, L. (2002) ‘From reproductive rights to reproductive Barbie: post-porn modernism and
abortion’, Feminist Studies Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 61-93
Seal, V. (1990) Whose Choice? Working Class Women and the Control of Fertility, London: Fortress
(chapter 3: Abortion – the Campaign for the Right to Choose)
Sedgh, G. et al (2007) ‘Legal abortion worldwide: incidence and recent trends’, Perspectives on
Sexual and Reproductive Health, Vol. 39, No. 4, pp. 216-225
Sharp, K. and Earle, S. (2002) ‘Feminism, abortion and disability: irreconcilable differences?’,
Disability and Society, Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 137-145
Smyth, L. (2002) ‘Feminism and abortion politics: choice, rights and reproductive freedom’,
Women’s Studies International Forum Vol. 25, No. 3, pp. 335-345
Smyth, L. (2005) Abortion and Nation: the Politics of Reproduction in Contemporary Ireland,
Aldershot: Ashgate
Stetson, D.M. (1996) ‘Feminist perspectives on abortion and reproductive technologies’, in M.
Githens and D. McBride Stetson (Eds) Abortion Politics: Public Policy in Cross-Cultural
Perspective, London: Routledge
Stormer, N. (2000) ‘Prenatal space’, Signs, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 109-144
Woolford, J. and Woolford, A. (2007) ‘Perspectives: abortion and genocide: the unbridgeable gap’,
Social Politics Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 126-153
Websites
Abortion Rights: http://www.abortionrights.org.uk
National Abortion Federation (US): http://www.prochoice.org/
National Right to Life (US): http://www.nrlc.org/
ProLife: http://prolife.org.uk/
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Week 15
Reproductive Disruptions: Infertility
Caroline Wright
So far, we have explored what might be considered as ‘normative’ human reproduction, which
assumes parenthood to be a normative, taken-for-granted trajectory in the life-course of (most)
adults, particularly for women. But in this lecture we contemplate infertility as a disruption to that
supposed trajectory. In many cases, reproduction goes awry and reproductive trajectories may be
disrupted through illness, miscarriage, still-birth. What becomes clear is that the meanings of
infertility are culturally shaped, as are responses to infertility, and that infertility bears particularly
heavily on women. In this lecture, we explore the effects of infertility on women and men within
global contexts.
Seminar
Questions
Why is it important to consider infertility in a global context?
How is infertility gendered, classed and ‘raced’?
Why are miscarriages so often invisible and what impacts does this have?
Should access to NRTs designed to address infertility be considered a basic health
right or priority in areas of high or over population?
To what extent does conflict exist between medical and social models of infertility?
Core Reading
Inhorn, M. C. (2008) ‘Middle Eastern masculinities in the age of new reproductive technologies:
male infertility and stigma in Egypt and Lebanon’, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Vol. 18, No. 2,
pp. 162-182
Available as an E-journal article:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1743175
Letherby, Gayle (2012) ‘“Infertility” and “Involuntary Childlessness”: Losses, Ambivalences and
Resolutions’, in Sarah Earle, Carol Komarory and Linda Layne (Eds) Understanding Reproductive
Loss: Perspectives on Life, Death and Fertility, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, pp. 9-22
Available as an E-book:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2655848
Peel, Elizabeth and Ruth Cain (2012) ‘“Silent” Miscarriage and Deafening Heteronormativity: A
British Experiential and Critical Feminist Account’, in Sarah Earle, Carol Komarory and Linda
Layne (Eds) Understanding Reproductive Loss: Perspectives on Life, Death and Fertility, Farnham:
Ashgate Publishing, pp. 79-92
Available as an E-book:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2655848
Upton, R. (2001) ‘“Infertility Makes You Invisible”: Gender, Health and the Negotiation of Fertility
in Northern Botswana’, Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 27, No. 2, pp. 349-452
Available as an E-journal article:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1742522~S1
53
Additional Reading
Becker, G. and R. D. Nachtingall (1992) ‘Eager for Medicalisation: The social production of
infertility as a disease’, Sociology of Health and Illness, Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 456-471
Bharadwaj, A. (2003) ‘Why adoption is not an option in India: the visibility of infertility, the secrecy
of donor insemination, and other cultural complexities’, Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 56, No. 9,
pp. 1867-1880
Brenborg, Ann Davidsson (2012) ‘The Memorialization of Stillbirth in the Internet Age’, in Sarah
Earle, Carol Komarory and Linda Layne (Eds) Understanding Reproductive Loss: Perspectives on
Life, Death and Fertility, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, pp. 155-166
Britt, E. C. (2001) Conceiving Normalcy: Rhetoric, Law and the Double Binds of Infertility,
Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press
Ceballo, R. (1999) ‘“The only black woman walking the face of the earth who cannot have a baby”:
two women’s stories’, In M. Romero and A.J. Stewart (Eds) Women’s Untold Stories: Breaking
Silence, Talking Back, Voicing Complexity, London: Routledge, pp. 3-19
Culley, L., N. Hudson and F. van Rooij (2009) Marginalised Reproduction: Ethnicity, Infertility and
Reproductive Technologies, Earthscan: London
Dodoo, Nii-Amoo F. and A.E. Frost (2008) ‘Gender in African population research: the fertility/
reproductive health example’, Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 34, pp. 431-452
Dyer, Karen, Khadija Mitu and Cecilia Vindola-Padros (2012) ‘The Social Shaping of Fertility Loss
Due to Cancer Treatment: A Comparative Perspective’, in Sarah Earle, Carol Komarory and Linda
Layne (Eds) Understanding Reproductive Loss: Perspectives on Life, Death and Fertility, Farnham:
Ashgate Publishing, pp. 37-50
Earle, S. and G. Letherby (2007) ‘Conceiving time? Women who do or do not conceive’, Sociology
of Health and Illness, Vol. 29, No. 2, pp. 233-250
Greil, A. L. (1991) Not yet Pregnant: Infertile Couples in Contemporary America, New Brunswick:
Rutgers University Press
Handwerker, L. (1995) ‘“The Hen that Can’t Lay An Egg”: Conceptions of Female Infertility in
Modern China’, in J. Urla and J. Terry (Eds) Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in
Science and Popular Culture, pp. 358-387
Hellum, A. and Stewart, J. (1999) Women’s Human Rights and Legal Pluralism in Africa: Mixed
Norms and Identities in Infertility Management in Zimbabwe, Oslo: Mond Books
Inhorn, M. (1994) Quest for Conception: Gender, Infertility and Egyptian Medical Traditions,
Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press
Inhorn, M. and van Balen, F. (Eds) (2002) Infertility Around the Globe: New Thinking on
Childlessness, Gender and Reproductive Technologies, London: Berkeley, Calif.: University of
California Press
54
Inhorn, M. C. (2003) Local Babies, Global Science: Gender, Religion, and In Vitro Fertilisation in
Egypt, London: Routledge
Inhorn, M. C. (2003) ‘Global infertility and the globalisation of new reproductive technologies:
illustrations from Egypt’, Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 56, No. 9, pp. 1837-1851
Johnson, Katherine M., Julia McQuillian, Arthur L. Greil and Karina M. Shreffler (2014) ‘Towards a
More Inclusive Framework for Understanding Fertility Barriers’, in Meredith Nash (Ed.) Reframing
Reproduction: Conceiving Gendered Experiences, Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.
23-38
Komarory, Carol (2012) ‘Managing Emotions at the Time of Stillbirth and Neonatal Death’, in Sarah
Earle, Carol Komarory and Linda Layne (Eds) Understanding Reproductive Loss: Perspectives on
Life, Death and Fertility, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, pp. 193-204
Keeble, S. (1994) Infertility, Feminism and the New Technologies, London: Fabian Society
Layne, L. (1999) ‘“True gifts from God”: motherhood, sacrifice and enrichment in the case of
pregnancy loss’, in L. Layne (Ed.) Transformative Motherhood: On Giving and Getting in Consumer
Culture, New York: New York University Press
Layne, L. (2000) ‘Baby things as fetishes? Memorial goods, simulacra and the “realness” problem of
pregnancy loss’, in H. Ragone and F.W. Twine (Eds) Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood:
Race, Class, Sexuality, Nationalism, London: Routledge
Layne, L. (2003) Motherhood Lost: A Feminist Account of Pregnancy Loss in America, London:
Routledge
Layne, Linda (2012) ‘“Troubling the Normal”: “Angel Babies” and the Canny/Uncanny Nexus’, in
Sarah Earle, Carol Komarory and Linda Layne (Eds) Understanding Reproductive Loss:
Perspectives on Life, Death and Fertility, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, pp. 129-142
Martin, E. (1996) ‘The egg and the sperm: how science has constructed a romance based on
stereotypical male-female roles’, in E.F. Keller and H.E. Longina (Eds) Feminism and Science,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 103-120
Millar, I. and Paulson-Ellis, C. (2009) Exploring Infertility Issues in Adoption, London: British
Association for Adoption and Fostering
Moore, Lisa Jean (2007) Sperm Counts: Overcome by man’s most precious fluid, New York: New
York University Press, Ch. 2 (‘Lashing their tails: science discovers sperm’)
ORC Macro and the WHO (2004) Infecundity, Infertility, and Childlessness in Developing
Countries. Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Comparative Reports No. 9
Available Online:
http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/publicatons/infertility/DHS_9/en/print.html
Pfeffer, N. (1993) The Stork and the Syringe: a Political History of Reproductive Medicine,
Cambridge: Polity Press
55
Riesman, C. (2002) ‘Positioning gender identity in narratives of infertility: south Indian women’s
lives in context’, in M. Inhorn and F. van Balen (Eds) Infertility Around the Globe: New Thinking on
Childlessness, Gender and Reproductive Technologies, London; Berkeley Calif.: University of
California Press
Rubin, Lisa R. and Aliza Philips (2012) ‘Infertility and Assisted Reproductive Technologies: Matters
of Reproductive Justice’, in Joan C. Chrisler (Ed.) Reproductive Justice: A Global Concern, Santa
Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, pp. 173-200
Sandelowski, M. and de Laceuy, S. (2002) ‘The uses of a “disease”: infertility as rhetorical vehicle’,
In M. Inhorn and F. van Balen (Eds) Infertility Around the Globe: New thinking on Childlessness,
Gender and Reproductive Technologies, London; Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press,
pp. 33-51
Thompson, C. M. (2002) ‘Fertile ground: feminists theorize infertility’, in M. Inhorn and F. van
Balen (Eds) Infertility Around the Globe: New thinking on Childlessness, Gender and Reproductive
Technologies, London; Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press
Thompson, Susannah (2012) ‘“As If She Never Existed”: Changing Understandings of Perinatal
Loss in Australia in the Twentieth and Early Twenty First Centuries’, in Sarah Earle, Carol
Komarory and Linda Layne (Eds) Understanding Reproductive Loss: Perspectives on Life, Death
and Fertility, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, pp. 167-178
Throsby, K. (2004) When IVF Fails: Feminism, Infertility and the Negotiation of Normality,
Houndmills: Palgrave
van Balen, F. and M. Inhorn (2002) ‘Interpreting Infertility: A View from the Social Sciences’, in M.
Inhorn and F. van Balen (Eds) Infertility Around the Globe: New Thinking on Childlessness, Gender
and Reproductive Technologies, London: Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, pp. 3-17
Webb, R. E. and Daniluk, J. C. (1999) ‘The end of the line: infertile men’s experiences of being
unable to produce a child’, Men and Masculinities, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 6-25
Woodruff, T. K. et al (Eds) (2010) Oncofertility: Ethical, Legal, Social and Medical Perspectives,
New York: Springer
Woodthorpe, Kate (2012) ‘Baby Gardens: A Privilege or a Predicament’, in Sarah Earle, Carol
Komarory and Linda Layne (Eds) Understanding Reproductive Loss: Perspectives on Life, Death
and Fertility, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, pp. 143-154
Zegers-Hochschild, F., Adamson, G. D., de Mouzon, J., Ishihara, O., Mounsoure, R., Nygren, K.,
Sullivan, E. and Venderpoel, S. (2009) ‘International Committee for Monitoring Assisted
Reproductive Technology (ICMART) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) revised glossary
of ART terminology’, Fertility and Sterility, Vol. 92, No. 5, pp. 1520-1524
56
Websites
Infertility Network UK: http://www.infertilitynetworkuk.com/
Miscarriage Association: http://www.miscarriageassociation.org.uk/
More to Life: Support for the Involuntary Childless:
http://www.infertilitynetworkuk.com/more_to_life?gclid=CP6Z0KSg5LkCFUXKtAod6TMAtQ
Tommys: Miscarriage:
http://www.tommys.org/miscarriage?gclid=CImvnuOi5LkCFUXKtAod6TMAtQ
WHO Infertility: http://www.who.int/topics/infertility/en/
Week 16
Reading Week
No lecture or seminars. This is a chance to finalize your project presentation ready for next week.
Please note that this is a department wide reading week, unless a particular module convenor has
advised you otherwise.
Week 17
Project Presentation Week
The lecture slot and your seminar slot this week will be dedicated to the presentation of group
projects, hard copies of which should be handed in to your seminar tutor at the start of the seminar
(see formative work above).
57
Week 18
IVF and Gamete Donation
Since the birth of the first IVF baby in 1978, Louise Brown, assisted conception techniques have
become widespread. Moreover, IVF not only offers hopes of bypassing infertility for heterosexual
couples, it also offers the prospect of biological children to single women, lesbian couples and, via
surrogacy, gay couples. We will examine the gender divisions of labour in IVF, paying particular
attention to its impact on women's bodies and psyches. Examples of IVF internationally will be used
to illustrate the importance of context in terms of how the technology is gendered. Since IVF may
also rely on donated gametes, eggs and/or sperm, we will then consider the nature of the exchange,
including recently agreed financial incentives to donate in the UK, the challenges posed to the
normative categories of parenthood and kinship and the hazards of commodification.
Seminar
Questions
Do we / should we have the right to reproduce?
What have feminists got to fear from IVF and what do women’s owns accounts of
IVF contribute to the debate?
How much does context matter when considering gender and IVF?
How does gamete donation challenge normative categories of parenthood and
kinship?
How is gamete donation gendered and how does it relate to processes of
commodification?
Core Reading
Hargreaves, K. (2006) ‘Constructing families and kinship through donor insemination’, Sociology of
Health and Illness, Vol. 28, No. 3, pp. 261-283
Available as an E-journal article: http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1745238
Inhorn, M. C. (2007) ‘Masturbation, semen collection and men’s IVF experiences: anxieties in the
Muslim world’, Body & Society, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 37-53
Available as an E-journal article: http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1737734~S1
Moore, Lisa Jean and Marianna Grady (2014) ‘Putting “Daddy” in the Cart: Ordering Sperm
Online’, in Meredith Nash (Ed.) Reframing Reproduction: Conceiving Gendered Experiences,
Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 185-202
Available as an E-book:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2730303
Throsby, K. (2004) When IVF Fails: Feminism, Infertility and the Negotiation of Normality,
Houndmills: Palgrave (Chapter 6: ‘Taking Responsibility’)
Available as an E-book:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b2341631~S1
Additional Reading
Almeling, R. (2006) ‘“Why do you want to be a donor?”: gender and the production of altruism in
egg and sperm donation’, New Genetics and Society, Vol. 25, No. 2, pp. 143-157
58
Almeling, R. (2007) ‘Selling genes, selling gender: egg agencies, sperm banks and the medical
market in genetic material’, American Sociological Review, Vol. 72, No. 3, pp. 319-340
Arditti, R. et al (1989) Test Tube Women, London: Pandora (especially chapter by M. Saxton ‘Born
and Unborn: The Implications of Reproductive Technologies for people with Disabilities’)
Birke, L., S. Himmelweit and G. Vines (1990) Tomorrow's Child, London: Virago
Boulos, Margaret, Ian Kerridge and Catherine Waldby (2014) ‘Reciprocity in the Donation of
Reproductive Oocytes’, in Meredith Nash (Ed.) Reframing Reproduction: Conceiving Gendered
Experiences, Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 203-220
Cahn, Naomi R. (2013) The New Kinship: Constructing Donor-Conceived Families, New York:
New York University Press
Cellio, Jen (2011) ‘“Healthy, Accomplished and Attractive”: Visual representations of “fitness” in
egg donors’, in Cynthia Lewiecki-Wilson and Jen Cellio (Eds) Disability and Mothering: Liminal
Spaces of Embodied Knowledge, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press
Corea, Gena (1985) The Mother Machine: Reproductive Technologies from Artificial Insemination to
Artificial Wombs, London: The Women’s Press
Culley, L., Hudson, N. and van Rooji, F. (2009) Marginalized Reproduction: Ethnicity, Infertility
and Reproductive Technologies, London; Sterling VA.: Earthscan
Daniels, K.R., Lewis, G.M. and Gillett, W. (1995) ‘Telling donor insemination offspring about their
conception: the nature of couples’ decision-making’, Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 40, No. 9,
pp. 1213-1220
Denny, E. (1994) ‘Liberation or Oppression?: Radical Feminism and in vitro fertilization’, Sociology
of Health and Illness, Vol. 16, No. 1, pp. 62-80
Edwards, J. et al (Eds) (1993) Technologies of Procreation: Kinship in the Age of Assisted
Conception, London: Routledge
Farquhar, D. (1996) The Other Machine, London: Routledge
Franklin, S. (1993) ‘Making Representations: the parliamentary debate on the Human Fertilisation
and Embryology Act’, in J. Edwards, S. Franklin, E. Hirsch, F. Price, & M. Strathern (Eds)
Technologies of Procreation: kinship in the age of assisted conception, London: Routledge, pp. 127170
Franklin, S. (1997) Embodied Progress: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception, London:
Routledge
Grace, V.M., Daniels, K.R. and Gillett, W. (2007) ‘The donor, the father, and the imaginary
constitution of the family: parents’ constructions in the case of donor insemination’, Social Science
and Medicine Vol. 66, No. 2, pp. 301-314
59
Handwerker, L. (1995) ‘The Social and Ethical Implications of In-vitro Fertilization in
Contemporary China’, Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 355-363
Handwerker, L. (2002) ‘The politics of making modern babies in China: reproductive technologies
and the “new” eugenics’, in M. Inhorn and F. van Balen (Eds) Infertility Around the Globe: New
Thinking on Childlessness, Gender and Reproductive Technologies, London; Berkeley Calif.:
University of California Press
Hanson, F.A. (2001) ‘Donor insemination: Eugenic and feminist implications’, Medical
Anthropology Quarterly, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 287- 311
Hartouni, V. (1997) Cultural Conceptions, Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press
HFEA (1998) ‘Paid egg sharing to be regulated, not banned’, Press release, 10 December, Available
online: http://www.hfea.gov.uk/986.html
HFEA (2000) ‘Guidance for Egg Sharing Arrangements’, 28 September, Available online:
http://www.hfea.gov.uk/499.html
Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (2012) ‘Implications of the Outcomes of the
Donation Review’, Chair’s letter following public consultation ‘Donating Sperm and Eggs: Have
your say’, Available online: http://www.hfea.gov.uk/6966.html
Inhorn, M. (2003) Global Nature, Global Science: Gender, Religion and In Vitro Fertilisation in
Egypt, New York: Routledge
Inhorn, Marcia C. and Soraya Tremayne (Eds) (2012) Islam and Assisted Reproductive
Technologies: Sunni and Shia Perspectives, New York: Berghan Books
Kirkman, M. (2003) ‘Egg and embryo donation and the meaning of motherhood’, Women and
Health, Vol. 38, No. 2, pp. 1-18
Klein, R. D. (1987) ‘What’s “new” about the “new” reproductive technologies?’, in Gena Corea et al
(Eds) Man-Made Women: How New Reproductive Technologies Affect Women Bloomington:
Indiana University Press
Meerabeau, L. (1991) ‘Husbands’ participation in fertility treatment: they also serve who only stand
and wait’, Sociology of Health and Illness, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 396-410
Moore, Lisa Jean (2007) Sperm Counts: Overcome by man’s most precious fluid, New York: New
York University Press, Ch. 5 (‘The family jewels: sperm banks and the crisis of fatherhood’)
Nahman, M. (2006) ‘Materializing Israeliness: difference and mixture in transnational ova donation’,
Science as Culture, Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 199-213
Nahman, M (2008) ‘Romanian egg sellers, “dignity” and feminist alliances in transnational ova
exchanges’, European Journal of Women’s Studies, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 133-135
Nordqvist, Petra (2010) ‘Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Family Resemblances in Lesbian Donor
Conception’, Sociology, Vol. 44, No. 6, pp. 1128-1144
60
Oakley, A. (1993) Essays on Women, Health & Medicine, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press
(Ch. 13 ‘Technologies of Procreation: Hazards for Women and the Social Order’)
Pfeffer, N. (1993) The Stork and the Syringe, Cambridge: Polity Press
Phillips, A. (2011) ‘It’s my body and I’ll do what I like with it: Bodies as Objects and Property’,
Political Theory, Vol. 39, No. 6, pp. 724-748
Phillips, A. (2013) Our Bodies, Whose Property?, Princeton: Princeton University Press, (Ch. 4
‘Spare Parts and Desperate Needs’)
Richards, Martin, Guido Pennings and John Appleby (Eds) (2012) Reproductive Donation: Practice,
Policy and Bioethics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Roberts, Dorothy (1999) Killing the Black Body: race, reproduction, and the meaning of liberty,
New York: Vintage (Ch. 6 ‘Race and the New Reproduction’)
Roberts, Elizabeth F.S. (2012) God’s Laboratory: Assisted Reproduction in the Andes, Berkeley:
University of California Press
Rubin, Lisa R. and Aliza Philips (2012) ‘Infertility and Assisted Reproductive Technologies: Matters
of Reproductive Justice’, in Joan C. Chrisler (Ed.) Reproductive Justice: A Global Concern, Santa
Barbara, Calif.: Praeger, pp. 173-200
Saetnan, A.R., Oudshoorn, N. et al (Eds) (2000) Bodies of Technology: Women’s Involvement with
Reproductive Medicine, Columbus: Ohio State University Press
Shaw, R (2008) ‘Rethinking reproductive gifts as body projects’, Sociology, Vol. 42, No. 1, pp. 1128
Spallone, Patricia and Deborah Lynn Steinberg (Eds) (1987) Made to Order: The Myth of
Reproductive and Genetic Progress, Oxford: Pergamon Press
Spallone, P. (1989) Beyond Conception, Basingstoke: Macmillan
Stacey. M. (1992) Changing Human Reproduction, London: Sage
Stanworth, M. (1987) Reproductive Technologies, Cambridge: Polity Press (especially chapters by
Michelle Stanworth and Janet Gallagher)
Steinberg, D. (1997) Bodies in Glass: Genetics, Eugenics and Embryo Ethics, Manchester:
Manchester University Press (especially Ch. 1 ‘Writing Recombinant bodies: the professional
genea/logics of IVF’)
Throsby, K. and Gill, R. (2004) ‘“It’s different for men”: masculinity and IVF’, Men and
Masculinities, Vol. 6, No. 4, pp. 330-348
Throsby, K. (2006) ‘The unaltered body?: Rethinking the body when IVF fails’, Science Studies
Vol. 19, No. 2, pp. 77-97
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Websites
FINNRAGE: http://www.finrrage.org/
Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) Website:
http://www.hfea.gov.uk/Home
HFEA pages about reviews and public consultations on donation of sperm, eggs and embryos:
http://www.hfea.gov.uk/513.html
HFEA pages about the National Donation Strategy, to encourage egg and sperm donation:
http://www.hfea.gov.uk/7138.html
Infertility Network: NHS Funding: http://www.infertilitynetworkuk.com/nhs_funding_2
National Gamete Donation Trust: http://www.ngdt.co.uk/
NICE 2013 Guideline on Fertility: http://guidance.nice.org.uk/CG156
One At a Time: Better Outcomes From Fertility Treatment: http://www.oneatatime.org.uk/
‘Right to Life’ campaign against egg donation: www.handsoffourovaries.com
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Week 19
Genetics – our reproductive futures
This week we will consider the emerging genetic technologies, focusing first on technologies of
genetic selection and the so-called ‘designer babies’ and ‘saviour siblings’, and then on stem cell
research and therapeutic cloning technologies – an area of scientific research that is dependent on a
supply of eggs and embryos from fertility treatment. We will explore the ways in which the
gendered body is constructed in the public and scientific debates on reproductive genetics, and the
role of women (and their body parts) in the genetic revolution. We will also consider critiques of
new genetic technologies from critical disability scholars and activists. Finally we will examine the
latest research and consultation on mitochondria replacement (whereby any children born following
mitochrondria replacement will have inherited nuclear DNA from their parents and mitochrondrial
DNA from a donor, thus, arguably, three genetic parents).
Seminar
Questions
What do you understand by the term ‘designer babies’? Why does the term
incite such strong controversy and is the controversy justified?
What is the case for and against ‘saviour siblings’?
What can feminism and critical disability scholars contribute to the debates around
the new reproductive and genetic technologies?
Considering the HFEA consultation, what social and ethical issues are raised by
the potential of mitochondrial replacement, for potential donors, recipients and
wider society?
Core Reading
Boardman, F. (2011) ‘Negotiating Discourses of Maternal Responsibility, Disability and
Reprogenetics’, in C. Lewiecki-Wilson and J. Cellio (Eds) Disability and Mothering: Liminal Spaces
of Embodied Knowledge, New York: Syracuse University Press, pp. 34 – 49
Available as an E-extract:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/search/extracts/so/so231
Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (2013) Mitochondria Replacement Consultations:
Advice to Government, See pp. 1-31 [this is a very long document!]
Available online:
http://www.hfea.gov.uk/docs/HFEA_Authority_meeting_March_2013_-_Mitchondria_report.pdf
Roberts, C. and Throsby, K. (2008) ‘Paid to share: IVF patients, eggs and stem cell research’, Social
Science and Medicine, Vol. 66, No. 1, pp. 159-169
Available as an E-journal article:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1745209~S1
Sui, S. and M. Sleeboom-Faulkner (2010) ‘Choosing offspring: Prenatal genetic testing for
thallassaemia and the production of a “saviour sibling” in China’, Culture, Health and Sexuality,
Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 167-175
Available as an E-journal article:
http://webcat.warwick.ac.uk/record=b1739068~S1
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Additional Reading
Andrews, L. B. (1999) The Clone Age: Adventures in the New World of Reproductive Technology,
New York: Henry Holt and Company
Atkin, K. (2003) ‘Ethnicity and the politics of the new genetics: principles and engagement’,
Ethnicity and Health, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 91-109
Chadwick, R. and M. Levitt (2006) ‘Genetic Technology: A Threat to Deafness’, in H. Kuhse and P.
Singer (Eds) Bioethics: An Anthology (2nd edition), Malden, MA, Oxford, Victoria: Blackwell, pp.
137-144
Deech, Ruth and Anna Smajdor (2007) From IVF to Immortality: Controversy in the Era of
Reproductive Technology, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Ehrich, K., Williams, C. and Farsides, B. (2008) ‘The embryo as moral work object: PGD/IVF staff
views and experiences’, Sociology of Health and Illness, Vol. 30, No. 5, pp. 772-787
Ettore, E. (2000) ‘Reproductive genetics, gender and the body: “please doctor, may I have a normal
baby”’, Sociology, Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 402-420
Ettore, E. (2002) Reproductive Genetics, Gender and the Body, London: Routledge
Franklin, S. (2001) ‘Culturing biology: cell lines for the second millennium’, Health, Vol. 5, No. 3,
pp. 335-354
Franklin, S. and Roberts, C. (2006) Born and Made: An Ethnography of Preimplantation Genetic
Diagnosis, Oxford: Princeton University Press
Fukuyama, F. (2003) Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the biotechnology revolution
London, Profile Books
Gosden, R. (1999) Designer Babies: the Brave New World of Reproductive Technology, London:
Phoenix
Handwerker, L. (2003) ‘New Genetic Technologies and their Impact on Women: A feminist
perspective’, Gender and Development, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 114-125
Kerr, A. and Shakespeare, T. (2002) Genetic Politics: from Eugenics to Genome, Cheltenham: New
Clarion Press
Kuhse, Helga and Peter Singer (Eds) (2012) A Companion to Bioethics, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell,
Part VI – New Genetics
Lee, Ellie (2002) Designer Babies: Where Should We Draw the Line?, London: Hodder & Stoughton
McKibben, B. (2003) Enough: Genetic Engineering and the End of Human Nature, London:
Bloomsbury
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Overboe, J. (2007) ‘Disability and Genetics: Affirming the Bare Life (the State of Exception)’,
Canadian Review of Sociology, Vol. 44, No. 2, pp. 219-235
Parens E. and Asch, A. (2000) Prenatal testing and disability rights, Washington, DC: Georgetown.
University Press
Parry, S. (2003) ‘The politics of cloning: mapping the rhetorical convergence of embryos and stem
cells in parliamentary debates’, New Genetics and Society, Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 145-168
Parry, S. (2005) ‘(Re)constructing embryos in stem cell research: exploring the meaning of embryos
for people involved in fertility treatments’, Social Science and Medicine, Vol. 62, No. 10, pp. 23492359
Peterson, A. (2001) ‘Biofantasies: genetics and medicine in the new print media’, Social Science and
Medicine, Vol. 52, No. 8, pp. 1255-68
Purdy, L. (2006) ‘Genetics and reproductive risk: can having children be immoral?’, in H. Kuhse and
P. Singer (Eds) Bioethics: An Anthology (2nd edition), Malden, MA, Oxford, Victoria: Blackwell, pp.
113-121
Rapp, R., Heath, D. and Taussig, K-S. (2001) ‘Genealogical dis-ease: where hereditary abnormality,
biomedical explanation, and family responsibility meet’, in S. Franklin and S. McKinnon (Eds)
Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies, Durham: Duke University Press, pp. 384-409
Rapp, R. (2003) ‘Cell life and death, child life and death: genomic horizons, genetics diseases,
family stories’, in S. Franklin and M. Lock (Eds) Remaking Life and Death: Toward an
Anthropology of the Life Sciences, Oxford: James Currey
Roberts, Dorothy (2009) ‘Race, Gender and Genetic Technologies: A New Reproductive Dystopia?’,
Signs, Vol, 34, No. 4, pp. 783-804
Rock, P.J. (1996) ‘Eugenics and Euthanasia: A cause for concern for disabled people, particularly
disabled women’, Disability & Society, Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 121-127
Rothblatt, M. (1997) Unzipped Genes: Taking Charge of Baby-Making in the New Millennium,
Philadelphia: Temple University Press
Shakespeare, T. (1999) ‘“Losing the plot”? Medical and activist discourses of contemporary genetics
and disability’, Sociology of Health and Illness, Vol. 21, No. 5, pp. 669-688
Silver, L. M. (1998) Remaking Eden: Cloning, Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humankind,
London: Phoenix
Steinberg, D. L. (1997) ‘A most selective practice: the eugenic logics of IVF’, Women's Studies
International Forum, Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 33-48
Svendsen, M.N. and Koch, L. (2008) ‘Unpacking the “spare embryo”: facilitating stem cell research
in a moral landscape’, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 92-110
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Taylor-Sands, Michelle (2013) Saviour Siblings: A Relational Approach to the Welfare of the Child
in Selective Reproduction, London: Routledge
Tutton, R. (2002) ‘The gift relationship in genetics research’, Science as Culture, Vol. 11, No. 4, pp.
523-542
Turney, J. (1998) Frankenstein’s Footsteps: Science, Genetics and Popular Culture, New Haven:
Yale University Press
Warnock, Mary and Peter Braude (2012) ‘Research Using Preimplantation Human Embryos’, in
Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer (Eds) A Companion to Bioethics, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell
Widdows, Heather (2009) ‘Border Disputes Across Bodies: Exploitation in Trafficking for
Prostitution and Egg Sale for Stem Cell Research’, International Journal of Feminist Approaches to
Bioethics, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 5-24
Williams, C., Kitzinger, J., & Henderson, L. (2003) ‘Envisaging the embryo in stem cell research:
rhetorical strategies and media reporting of the ethical debates’, Sociology of Health and Illness, Vol.
25, No. 7, pp. 793-814
Websites
Campaign to End Sex Selection: http://www.cwpe.org/initiatives/sexselection
Council for Responsible Genetics: http://www.councilforresponsiblegenetics.org/Help/About.aspx
FINNRAGE: http://www.finrrage.org/
HFEA web-pages on Embryo Research in the UK: http://www.hfea.gov.uk/158.html
HFEA web-pages on Genetic Testing, including Preimplantation Genetic Diagnosis and
Preimplantation tissue typing: http://www.hfea.gov.uk/172.html
Human Genetics Alert: http://www.hgalert.org/
Wellcome Trust: The Ethics of Stem Cells: http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/About-us/Policy/Spotlightissues/Human-Fertilisation-and-Embryology-Act/Stem-cell-basics/WTD040077.htm
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Week 20
The Politics of Surrogacy
A cultural imperative towards having genetically related children has encouraged the growth of
assisted conception techniques. Closely related to this has been the growth of surrogacy. Although in
the UK commercial surrogate contracts are unenforceable, and there are strict limits to the ‘expenses’
that can be paid, surrogacy continues to take place. In addition, some British prospective parents
travel to other countries, where commercial surrogacy is legal or less regulated. Media debate tends
to focus more on the ‘fitness’ of so-called commissioning parents to parent than on the context of
surrogacy contracts themselves. This week, we will consider how social inequalities structure the
context of surrogacy, and the ethical and political considerations of ‘renting a womb’. Surrogacy will
be examined as part of the commodification of childbearing, and the wider implications this has for
women will be discussed, as well as a technology through which gay male couples can seek to ‘start
a (genetic) family’.
Seminar
Questions
Is surrogacy just another contract? What structures the contract?
Are surrogate mothers victims, monsters or rational agents?
How does surrogacy challenge idealizations of biological motherhood?
Does the trend for ‘surrogacy tourism’ matter?
Do the ends justify the means for gay men who father through surrogacy?
Core Reading and Viewing
Affordable Surrogates: http://www.affordablesurrogacy.com/33.html (browse generally)
Bergman, Kim, Ritchie J. Rubio, Robert-Jay Green and Elena Padron (2010) ‘Gay Men Who
Become Fathers via Surrogacy: The Transition to Parenthood’, Journal of GLBT Family Studies,
Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 111-141
Available as an E-journal article:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2564077
COTS UK (surrogacy support group): http://www.surrogacy.org.uk
(browse generally)
Phillips, A. (2013) Our Bodies, Whose Property?, Princeton: Princeton University Press, (Ch. 3
‘Bodies for Rent: The Case of Commercial Surrogacy’)
Available as an E-book:
http://encore.lib.warwick.ac.uk/iii/encore/record/C__Rb2679342
Ragone, H. (2000) ‘Of likeness and difference: how race is being transfigured by gestational
surrogacy’, in H. Ragone and F.W. Twine (Eds) Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood: Race,
Class, Sexuality, Nationalism, London: Routledge, pp. 56-75
Available as an E-extract:
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/library/search/extracts/so/so231
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Additional Reading
Atwood, M. (1986) The Handmaid’s Tale, London: Cape
Baslington, H. (1996) ‘Anxiety overflow: implications of the IVF surrogacy case and the ethical and
moral limits of reproductive technologies in Britain’, Women's Studies International Forum, Vol. 19,
No. 6, pp. 675-684
Berend, Zsuzsa (2012) ‘Surrogacy Losses: Failed Conception and Pregnancy Loss Among American
Surrogate Mothers’, in Sarah Earle, Carol Komarory and Linda Layne (Eds) Understanding
Reproductive Loss: Perspectives on Life, Death and Fertility, Farnham: Ashgate Publishing, pp. 93104
Burfoot, A. (1995) ‘In-Appropriation: A Critique of Proceed with Care, Final Report of the Royal
Commission on New Reproductive Technologies’, Women’s Studies International Forum, Vol. 18,
No. 4, pp. 499-506
Collins, Catherine Ruth, Damien W. Riggs and Clemence Due (2014) ‘Constructions of the “Best
Interests of the Child” in New South Wales Parliamentary Debates on Surrogacy’, in Meredith Nash
(Ed.) Reframing Reproduction: Conceiving Gendered Experiences, Basingstoke; New York:
Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 39-53
Cook, Rachel and Shelley Day Sclater with Felicity Kaganas (Eds) (2003) Surrogate Motherhood:
International Perspectives, Oxford, Portland Oregan: Hart Publishing
Corea, G. (1988) The Mother Machine, London: The Women's Press (Chapter on Surrogate
Motherhood)
Davis, A. Y. (1993) ‘Outcast mothers and surrogates: racism and reproductive politics in the
nineties’, in L.S. Kauffman (Ed.) American Feminist Thought at the Century’s end: A Reader,
Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell
Farquhar, D. (1996) The Other Machine, New York: Routledge (Ch. 6 ‘Surrogate Mothers: Victims
or Monsters’)
Greenfield, J. and S. Jennings (1995) ‘From surrogacy to contested adoption: what went wrong?’,
Adoption and Fostering, Vol. 19, No. 4, pp. 34-40
Hartouni, V. (1997) Cultural Conceptions, Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press
(Ch. 4 ‘Reproducing Public Meanings: in the Matter of Baby M’ and Ch. 5 ‘Breached Birth: Anna
Johnson and the Reproduction of Raced Bodies’)
Jackson, Emily (2001) Regulating Reproduction: Law, Technology and Autonomy, Oxford, Portland
Oregan: Hart Publishing (Ch. 6 ‘Surrogacy’)
Lee, R. G. (2001) Human Fertilisation and Embryology: Regulating the Reproduction Revolution,
London: Blackstone (Ch. 8)
Markens, S. (2007) Surrogate Motherhood and the Politics of Reproduction, Berkeley: University of
California Press
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Morgan, D. (1994) ‘A surrogacy issue: who is the other mother?’, International Journal of Law and
the Family, Vol. 8, No. 3 pp. 386-412
Norton, Wendy, Nicky Hudsen and Lorraine Culley (2013) ‘Symposium: Men, Fertility and Assisted
Reproductive Technologies: Gay men seeking surrogacy to achieve parenthood, Reproductive
BioMedicine Online, Vol. 27, No. 3, pp. 271-279
Philips, A. (2011) ‘It’s my body and I’ll do what I like with it: Bodies as Objects and Property’,
Political Theory, Vol. 39, No. 6, pp. 724-748
Purdey, L.M. (2006) ‘Surrogate Mothers: Exploitation or Empowerment’, in H. Kuhse and P. Singer
(Eds) Bioethics: An Anthology (2nd edition), Malden, MA, Oxford, Victoria: Blackwell, pp. 90-99
Ragone, H. (1994) Surrogate Motherhood: Conception in the Heart, Boulder: Westview Press
Ragone, H. (1999) ‘The gift of life: surrogate motherhood, gamete donation and constructions of
altruism’, in L. Layne (Ed.) Transformative Motherhood: On Giving and Getting in Consumer
Culture New York: New York University Press
Roberts, Dorothy (1999) Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty,
New York: Vintage Books (Ch. 6)
Rowland, R. (1992) Living Laboratories: Women and Reproductive Technology, London: Lime Tree
(Ch. 4 ‘The De-personalisation of birth-mothers in so-called surrogacy’)
Stanworth, M. (1990) ‘Birth Pangs: Conceptive Technologies and the Threat to Motherhood’ in M.
Hirsch and E. Fox Keller (Eds) Conflicts in Feminism, New York & London: Routledge
Trimmings, Katarina and Paul Beaumont (Eds) (2013) International Surrogacy Arrangements: Legal
Regulation at the International Level, Oxford; Portland: Hart Publishing
Twine, France Winddance (2011) Outsourcing the Womb: Race, Class and Gestational Surrogacy in
a Global Market, London: Routledge
Zipper, J. and S. Sevenhuijsen (1987) ‘Surrogacy: Feminist Notions of Motherhood Reconsidered’ in
M. Stanworth (Ed.) Reproductive Technologies, Cambridge: Polity Press
Van Niekerk, A. and L. Van Zyl (1995) ‘The Ethics of Surrogacy: Women’s Reproductive Labour’,
Journal of Medical Ethics, Vol. 21, No. 6, pp. 345-349
Van Zyl, L. and A. van Niekerk (2000) ‘Interpretations, perspectives and intentions in surrogate
motherhood’, Journal of Medical Ethics, Vol. 26, No. 5, pp. 404-409
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Websites
Affordable Surrogates: http://www.affordablesurrogacy.com/33.html
Circle Surrogacy: http://www.circlesurrogacy.com/
COTS UK (surrogacy support group): http://www.surrogacy.org.uk
European Women’s Lobby Campaign Against Surrogacy:
http://www.womenlobby.org/spip.php?article3281
FINNRAGE: http://www.finrrage.org/
Organisation of Parents through Surrogacy (OPTS): http://www.opts.com/
Surrogacy UK: http://www.surrogacyuk.org/
Successful Parents (India): http://successful-parents.in/main/aboutus/
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