This piece reflects on the changes in the author's relationship with her daughter over the ten years since the inaugural issue of Studies in the Maternal was published, in conjunction with the ways ...that philosophical exploration of motherhood has developed over the same period.
Susan Markens takes on one of the hottest issues on the fertility front—surrogate motherhood—in a book that illuminates the culture wars that have erupted over new reproductive technologies in the ...United States. In an innovative analysis of legislative responses to surrogacy in the bellwether states of New York and California, Markens explores how discourses about gender, family, race, genetics, rights, and choice have shaped policies aimed at this issue. She examines the views of key players, including legislators, women's organizations, religious groups, the media, and others. In a study that finds surprising ideological agreement among those with opposing views of surrogate motherhood, Markens challenges common assumptions about our responses to reproductive technologies and at the same time offers a fascinating picture of how reproductive politics shape social policy.
Sex cells Almeling, Rene
2011., 20110821, 2011, 2011-09-20, 20110101
eBook
Unimaginable until the twentieth century, the clinical practice of transferring eggs and sperm from body to body is now the basis of a bustling market. In Sex Cells, Rene Almeling provides an inside ...look at how egg agencies and sperm banks do business. Although both men and women are usually drawn to donation for financial reasons, Almeling finds that clinics encourage sperm donors to think of the payments as remuneration for an easy "job." Women receive more money but are urged to regard egg donation in feminine terms, as the ultimate "gift" from one woman to another. Sex Cells shows how the gendered framing of paid donation, as either a job or a gift, not only influences the structure of the market, but also profoundly affects the individuals whose genetic material is being purchased.
Black Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation: Another Way of Knowing' questions how the Black female body, specifically the Black maternal body, navigates interlocking structures that place a ...false narrative on her body and that of her maternal ancestors. This volume, which includes a curated selection of images, addresses the complicated relationship between Blackness and photography and, in particular, its gendered dimension, its relationship to health, sexuality, and digital culture – primarily in the context of racialized heteronormativity. With over forty contributors, this volume draws on scholarly inquiry ranging from academic essays, interviews, poetry, to documentary practice, and on contemporary art. 'Black Matrilineage, Photography, and Representation: Another Way of Knowing' thus offers a cross-section of analysis on the topic of Black motherhood, mothering, and the participation of photography in the process. This collection challenges racist images and discourses, both historically and in its persistence in contemporary society, while reclaiming the innate brilliance of Black women through personal narratives, political acts, connections to place, moments of pleasure, and communal celebration. It serves as a reflection of the past, a portal to the future, and contributes to recent scholarship on the complexities of Black life and Black joy.
Introduccion: la preparacion para la maternidad contribuye al fenomeno de convertirse en madre. Objetivo: describir los significados que las mujeres que se vuelven madres por primera vez le atribuyen ...a la preparacion para la maternidad. Metodo: estudio cualitativo, descriptivo y exploratorio que utilizo la entrevista abierta con mujeres que estaban experimentando por primera vez el proceso de convertirse en madre. Se utilizo un muestreo por conveniencia y el tamano de la muestra estuvo determinado por la saturacion teorica. Las entrevistas se grabaron y se transcribieron. Se aplico la tecnica de analisis de contenido a los relatos y todas las mujeres firmaron consentimiento informado autorizando su participacion. Resultados: se entrevistaron diez mujeres y de sus relatos emergieron cinco categorias: 1) aprender, la tarea de ser madre; 2) apoyo durante el proceso de convertirse en madre; 3) atributos de la preparacion; 4) relacion con la pareja; y 5) relacion con la madre. La preparacion para la maternidad se ve permeada y configurada por una serie de encuentros y desencuentros en una red de interacciones con el companero, la madre de la mujer, el bebe y la si misma. Conclusiones: la preparacion para la maternidad requiere del apoyo de otras personas significativas en varios momentos del proceso; es un fenomeno en el que se logran aprendizajes, se transita por aspectos emocionales y modifica la relacion con la pareja y con la madre.
Zooming in on commercial surrogacy in Russia and Ukraine, Intimate Strangers addresses market expansion into the intimate spheres of life that play out on women's bodies as mothers and workers. ...Veronika Siegl follows the inner workings of a surrogacy market marked by secrecy, distrust, and anonymous business relationships. She explores intended mothers' anxious struggles for a child in light of stigmatized infertility and the aggressive biopolitics of motherhood; the uncertain but pragmatic pathways in and out of fertility clinics as surrogates navigate harsh economic realities and resist being objectified or morally judged; and the powerful role of agents and doctors who have found a profitable niche in nurturing and facilitating other people's existential hopes. Intimate Strangers discusses these issues against the backdrop of ultra-conservatism and moral governance in Russia, the rising international popularity of the Ukrainian surrogacy market, and the pervasiveness of neo-liberal ideologies and individualized notions of reproductive freedom.
It is often thought that slaveholders only began to show an interest in female slaves' reproductive health after the British government banned the importation of Africans into its West Indian ...colonies in 1807. However, as Sasha Turner shows in this illuminating study, for almost thirty years before the slave trade ended, Jamaican slaveholders and doctors adjusted slave women's labor, discipline, and health care to increase birth rates and ensure that infants lived to become adult workers. Although slaves' interests in healthy pregnancies and babies aligned with those of their masters, enslaved mothers, healers, family, and community members distrusted their owners' medicine and benevolence. Turner contends that the social bonds and cultural practices created around reproductive health care and childbirth challenged the economic purposes slaveholders gave to birthing and raising children.
Through powerful stories that place the reader on the ground in plantation-era Jamaica,Contested Bodiesreveals enslaved women's contrasting ideas about maternity and raising children, which put them at odds not only with their owners but sometimes with abolitionists and enslaved men. Turner argues that, as the source of new labor, these women created rituals, customs, and relationships around pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing that enabled them at times to dictate the nature and pace of their work as well as their value. Drawing on a wide range of sources-including plantation records, abolitionist treatises, legislative documents, slave narratives, runaway advertisements, proslavery literature, and planter correspondence-Contested Bodiesyields a fresh account of how the end of the slave trade changed the bodily experiences of those still enslaved in Jamaica.
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