Download or read book Conceiving the Future written by Laura L. Lovett and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009-11-30 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through nostalgic idealizations of motherhood, family, and the home, influential leaders in early twentieth-century America constructed and legitimated a range of reforms that promoted human reproduction. Their pronatalism emerged from a modernist conviction that reproduction and population could be regulated. European countries sought to regulate or encourage reproduction through legislation; America, by contrast, fostered ideological and cultural ideas of pronatalism through what Laura Lovett calls "nostalgic modernism," which romanticized agrarianism and promoted scientific racism and eugenics. Lovett looks closely at the ideologies of five influential American figures: Mary Lease's maternalist agenda, Florence Sherbon's eugenic "fitter families" campaign, George Maxwell's "homecroft" movement of land reclamation and home building, Theodore Roosevelt's campaign for conservation and country life, and Edward Ross's sociological theory of race suicide and social control. Demonstrating the historical circumstances that linked agrarianism, racism, and pronatalism, Lovett shows how reproductive conformity was manufactured, how it was promoted, and why it was coercive. In addition to contributing to scholarship in American history, gender studies, rural studies, and environmental history, Lovett's study sheds light on the rhetoric of "family values" that has regained currency in recent years.

Download or read book Conceiving the Old Regime written by Leslie Tuttle and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-25 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Early modern rulers believed that the more subjects over whom they ruled, the more powerful they would be. In 1666, France's Louis XIV and his minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert put this axiom into effect, instituting policies designed to encourage marriage and very large families. Their Edict on Marriage promised lucrative rewards to French men of all social statuses who married before age twenty-one or fathered ten or more living, legitimate children. So began a 150-year experiment in governing the reproductive process, the largest populationist initiative since the Roman Empire. Conceiving the Old Regime traces the consequences of premodern pronatalism for the women, men, and government officials tasked with procreating the abundant supply of soldiers, workers, and taxpayers deemed essential for France's glory. While everyone knew-in a practical rather than a scientific sense-how babies were made, the notion that humans should exercise control over reproduction remained deeply controversial in a Catholic nation. Drawing on a wealth of archival sources, Leslie Tuttle shows how royal bureaucrats mobilized the limited power of the premodern state in an attempt to shape procreation in the king's interest. By the late eighteenth century, marriage, reproduction, and family size came to be hot-button political issues, inspiring debates that contributed to the character of the modern French nation. Conceiving the Old Regime reveals the deep historical roots of France's perennial concern with population, and connects the intimate lives of men and women to the public world of power and the state.

Download or read book Pronatalism written by Ellen Peck and published by New York : Crowell. This book was released on 1974 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Do your really want to have a baby? This provocative question is examined by the 23 authorities contributing to this volume. What we don't know about parenthood can - and has - hurt us, and we are all subject to the scores of unseen pressures and hidden forces that urge young people to have babies, regardless of personal preference or even competence. No one is actually forced to have children in our society and we continue to think of ourselves as free. And yet, as each article in this collection convincingly argues, the compulsions are there. Try choosing not to have children and you become a lightning rod that attracts every argument - religious, social, and psychological - in favor of parenthood. What of a woman who is not advanced in her career in expectation of the children she must one day bear? Or the man who is thought a bad job risk because the lack of family pictures on his desk indicates instability? And what of the couple who is judged selfish, immature, and socially unacceptable simply because they refuse to have children? Businesses coax, parents cajole, the army encourages, and Uncle Sam throws in a small financial reward for being a parent which is at the same time, a financial penalty for not having a child. This is not a book that warns against having children. It is, instead, a unique volume that insists it is time we realize that motives for parenthood are individual, not universal, and the decision to procreate must be made by each individual and by every couple in the light of their own needs, preferences, and abilities. " --

Download or read book Pronatalism written by Ellen Peck and published by New York : Crowell. This book was released on 1974-01-01 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Marx Women and Capitalist Social Reproduction written by Martha E. Giménez and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-10-08 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Marx, Women and Capitalist Social Reproduction, Martha E. Gimenez offers a distinctive perspective on social reproduction which posits that the relations of production determine the relations of social reproduction, and links the effects of class exploitation and location to forms of oppression predominantly theorised in terms of identity. Grounding her analysis on Marx’s theory and methodology, Gimenez examines the relationship between class, reproduction and the oppression of women in different contexts such as the reproduction of labour power, domestic labour, feminisation of poverty, and reproductive technologies. Because most women and men, whether members of dominant or oppressed groups, are working class, she argues that the future of feminist politics is inextricably tied to class politics and the fate of capitalism.

Download or read book Regeneration Through Empire written by Margaret Cook Andersen and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2015-01-01 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870–71, French patriots feared that their country was in danger of becoming a second-rate power in Europe. Decreasing birth rates had largely slowed French population growth, and the country’s population was not keeping pace with that of its European neighbors. To regain its standing in the European world, France set its sights on building a vast colonial empire while simultaneously developing a policy of pronatalism to reverse these demographic trends. Though representing distinct political movements, colonial supporters and pronatalist organizations were born of the same crisis and reflected similar anxieties concerning France’s trajectory and position in the world. Regeneration through Empire explores the intersection between colonial lobbyists and pronatalists in France’s Third Republic. Margaret Cook Andersen argues that as the pronatalist movement became more organized at the end of the nineteenth century, pronatalists increasingly understood their demographic crisis in terms that transcended the boundaries of the metropole and began to position the French empire, specifically its colonial holdings in North Africa and Madagascar, as a key component in the nation’s regeneration. Drawing on an array of primary sources from French archives, Regeneration through Empire is the first book to analyze the relationship between depopulation and imperialism.

Download or read book Reproducing Persons written by Laura Martha Purdy and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pt. I. The Right to Reproduce: Limits and Caveats. 1. Genetics and Reproductive Risk: Can Having Children Be Immoral? 2. Loving Future People. 3. What Can Progress in Reproductive Technology Mean for Women? 4. Are Pregnant Women Fetal Containers? -- pt. II. Abortion and the Right Not to Reproduce. 5. Is Abortion Murder? / Laura M. Purdy and Michael Tooley. 6. Abortion, Potentiality, and Conferred Claims: A Response to Langerak. 7. Abortion and the Argument from Convenience. 8. Abortion, Forced Labor, and War. 9. Abortion and the Husband's Rights: A Reply to Teo -- pt. III. New Worlds: Collaborative Reproduction. 10. The Morality of New Reproductive Technologies. 11. Surrogate Mothering: Exploitation or Empowerment? 12. Another Look at Contract Pregnancy. 13. Children of Choice: Whose Children? At What Cost?

Download or read book God s Babies written by John McKeown and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2014-12-17 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The human population's annual total consumption is not sustainable by one planet. This unprecedented situation calls for a reform of religious cultures that promote a large ideal family size. Many observers assume that Christianity is inevitably part of this problem because it promotes "family values" and statistically, in America and elsewhere, has a higher birthrate than nonreligious people. This book explores diverse ideas about human reproduction in the church past and present. It investigates an extreme fringe of U.S. Protestantism, including the Quiverfull movement, that use Old Testament "fruitful" verses to support natalist ideas explicitly promoting higher fecundity. It also challenges the claim by some natalists that Martin Luther in the 16th century advocated similar ideas. This book argues that natalism is inappropriate as a Christian application of Scripture, especially since rich populations’ total footprints are detrimental to biodiversity and to human welfare. It explores the ancient cultural context of the Bible verses quoted by natalists. Challenging the assumption that religion normally promotes fecundity, the book finds surprising exceptions among early Christians (with a special focus on Saint Augustine) since they advocated spiritual fecundity in preference to biological fecundity. Finally the book uses a hermeneutic lens derived from Genesis 1, and prioritising the modern problem of biodiversity, to provide ecological interpretations of the Bible's "fruitful" verses.

Download or read book The Baby Matrix written by Laura Carroll and published by Laura Carroll. This book was released on 2012-05-17 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the movie The Matrix, the character Morpheus offers two pills to Neo—if he takes the blue pill, he will go on with life as he has before, believing what he has always believed. If he takes the red pill, he will find out what the “matrix” really is, and many of his earlier beliefs will be shattered. When it comes to taking a hard look at a specific set of beliefs about parenthood and reproduction that has driven our society for generations, The Baby Matrix is the red pill. The Baby Matrix looks at long-held beliefs about parenthood and reproduction, and unravels why we believe what we believe. It lays out:We commonly think our desire to have children boils down to our biological wiring, but author Laura Carroll says it’s much more than that. Unlike other books on parenthood, The Baby Matrix: Why Freeing Our Minds From Outmoded Thinking About Parenthood & Reproduction Will Create a Better World takes a serious look at powerful social and cultural influences that drive the desire for the parenthood experience, and lays out why we need to be very aware of these influences to make the most informed decisions about parenthood. -the historical origins of beliefs about parenthood and reproduction -why many of these beliefs no longer work for society or were never true in the first place -why we continue to believe them anyway -the prices society pays as a result The Baby Matrix shows us how we got here, brings to light what is true, which includes knowing about the powerful influence of “pronatalism,” and explains why society can no longer afford to leave pronatalism unquestioned. “This is not a book about convincing people not to have children,” says Carroll. “I want people to be very aware of the long-held social and cultural pressures, and be able to free themselves from those pressures when making parenthood choices. This will result in more people making the best decisions for themselves, will foster a society in which those who are best suited to become parents are the ones who have children and one that knows what it means to bring a child into the world today.” This book will make you examine your own intentions and beliefs, will rile you, and might just change your mind. Whether you are already a parent, want to become a parent, are still making up your mind, or know you don’t want children, you’ll never think about parenthood in the same way. The Baby Matrix is a must-read for anyone interested in psychology, sociology, anthropology, parenting issues, environmentalism, and social justice. But most of all, it’s for anyone, parent or not, who reveres the truth and wants the best for themselves, their families, and our world.

Download or read book Analyzing Violence Against Women written by Wanda Teays and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-04-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This timely anthology brings into sharp relief the extent of violence against women. Its range is global and far reaching in terms of the number of victims. There are deeply entrenched values that need to be rooted out and laid bare. This text offers a philosophical analysis of the problem, with important insights from the various contributors. Topics range from sexual assault to media violence, prostitution and pornography, domestic violence, and sexual harassment. Each of the four parts include essays which tackle these issues and provide us with tools for bringing about change. The philosophical approaches to the topic give readers insight into the harms of interpersonal violence and its impact on the lives of its victims. Analyzing Violence Against Women calls us to examine public policies and work for systemic change. In the process, we are reminded that the concerns of the discipline of Philosophy encompasses issues with a wider scope. Students will especially benefit from seeing how the various authors grapple with this pressing issue and clarify why we need to bring about change.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of Motherhood written by Andrea O'Reilly and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2010-04-06 with total page 1521 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last decade, the topic of motherhood has emerged as a distinct and established field of scholarly inquiry. A cursory review of motherhood research reveals that hundreds of scholarly articles have been published on almost every motherhood theme imaginable. The Encyclopedia of Motherhood is a collection of approximately 700 articles in a three-volume, A-to-Z set exploring major topics related to motherhood, from geographical, historical and cultural entries to anthropological and psychological contributions. In human society, few institutions are as important as motherhood, and this unique encyclopedia captures the interdisciplinary foundation of the subject in one convenient reference. The Encyclopedia is a comprehensive resource designed to provide an understanding of the complexities of motherhood for academic and public libraries, and is written by academics and institutional experts in the social and behavioural sciences.

Download or read book Replacing the Dead written by Mie Nakachi and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2021 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In 1955 the Soviet Union re-legalized abortion on the basis of women's rights. However, this fact is not widely known. In the absence of a feminist movement, how did the idea of women's rights to abortion emerge in an authoritarian society, decades before it appeared in the West? The answer is found in the history of the Soviet politics of reproduction after World War II, a devastation in which 27 million Soviet soldiers and civilians perished. This enormous loss of predominantly adult males posed a threat to economic recovery. In order to replace the dead, the Soviet Union introduced the 1944 Family Law based on the proposal submitted by Nikita S. Khrushchev. This extreme pronatalist policy encouraged men to father out-of-wedlock children and celebrated "Mother Heroines." However, Replacing the Dead argues that in the absence of serious commitment to supporting Soviet women who worked full-time, the policy actually did extensive collateral damage to gender relations and the welfare of women and children. Replacing the Dead finds the origin of the movement to improve women's reproductive environment in postwar social critique arising from women and Soviet professionals. Neither Stalin, nor Khrushchev allowed any major reform, but the movement did not die out. With relegalization and lack of contraception, an abortion culture grew among Soviet women. The model of socialist reproduction continues to set socialist and postsocialist countries apart. This history is a cautionary tale for today's Russia, as well as other countries that attempt to promote births"--

Download or read book Modernizing Tradition written by Adam C. Stanley and published by LSU Press. This book was released on 2008-12-15 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the turbulent decades after World War I, both France and Germany sought to return to an idealized, prewar past. Many people believed they could recapture a sense of order and stability by reinstituting traditional gender roles, which the war had thrown off balance. While French and German women necessarily filled men's roles in factories and other jobs during the war, those who continued to lead active working lives after World War I risked being called "modern women." Far from a compliment, this derogatory label encompassed everything society found threatening about women's new place in public life: smoking, working women who preferred independence and sexual freedom to a traditional role in the home. Society felt threatened by the image of the "modern woman," yet also realized that conceptions of femininity needed to accommodate the cultural changes brought about by the Great War. In Modernizing Tradition, Adam C. Stanley explores how interwar French and German popular culture used commercial images to redefine femininity in a way that granted women some access to modern life without encouraging the assertion of female independence. Examining advertisements, articles, and cartoons, as well as department store publicity materials from the popular press of each nation, Stanley reveals how the media attempted to convince women that--with the help of newly available consumer goods such as washing machines, refrigerators, and vacuum cleaners--being a mother or a housewife could be empowering, even liberating. A life devoted to the home, these images promised, need not be an unmitigated return to old-fashioned tradition but could offer a rewarding lifestyle based on the wonders and benefits of modern technology. Stanley shows that the media carefully limited women's association with modernity to those activities that reinforced women's traditional roles or highlighted their continued dependence on masculine guidance, expertise, and authority. In this cross-national study, Stanley brings into sharp relief issues of gender and consumerism and reveals that, despite the larger political differences between France and Germany, gender ideals in the two countries remained virtually identical between the world wars. That these concepts of gender stayed static over the course of two decades--years when nearly every other aspect of society and culture seemed to be in constant flux--attests to their extraordinary power as a force in French and German society.

Download or read book Trust Women written by Rebecca Todd Peters and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2018-04-10 with total page 250 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As women’s reproductive rights are increasingly under attack, a minister and ethicist weighs in on the abortion debate—offering a stirring argument that “the best arbiter of a woman’s reproductive destiny is herself” (Cecile Richards, former President of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America) Here’s a fact that we often ignore: unplanned pregnancy and abortion are a normal part of women’s reproductive lives. Roughly one-third of US women will have an abortion by age forty-five, and fifty to sixty percent of the women who have abortions were using birth control during the month they got pregnant. Yet women who have abortions are routinely shamed and judged, and safe and affordable access to abortion is under relentless assault, with the most devastating impact on poor women and women of color. Rebecca Todd Peters, a Presbyterian minister and social ethicist, argues that this shaming and judging reflects deep, often unspoken patriarchal and racist assumptions about women and women’s sexual activity. These assumptions are at the heart of what she calls the justification framework, which governs our public debate about abortion, and disrupts our ability to have authentic public discussions about the health and well-being of women and their families. Abortion, then, isn’t the social problem we should be focusing on. The problem is our inability to trust women to act as rational, capable, responsible moral agents who must weigh the concrete moral question of what to do when they are pregnant or when there are problems during a pregnancy. Ambitious in method and scope, Trust Women skillfully interweaves political analysis, sociology, ancient and modern philosophy, Christian tradition, and medical history, and grounds its analysis in the material reality of women’s lives and their decisions about sexuality, abortion, and child-bearing. It ends with a powerful re-imagining of the moral contours of pre-natal life and suggests we recognize pregnancy as a time when a woman must assent, again and again, to an ethical relationship with the prenate.

Download or read book The Upheaval of War written by Richard Wall and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-03-17 with total page 516 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique examination of the effects of the First World War on family life.

Download or read book Motherhood and Choice written by Amrita Nandy and published by Zubaan. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can women live fully? If autonomy is critical for humans, why do women have little or no choice vis-à-vis motherhood? Do women know they have a choice, if they do? How 'free' are these choices in a context where the self is socially mired and deeply enmeshed into the familial? What are implications of motherhood on how human relatedness and belonging are defined? These questions underlie Amrita Nandy's remarkable research on motherhood as an institution, one that conflates 'woman' with 'mother' and 'personal' with 'political'. As the bedrock of human survival and an unchallenged norm of 'normal' female lives, motherhood expects and even compels women to be mothers—symbolic and corporeal. Even though the ideology of pronatalism and motherhood reinforce reproductive technology and vice versa, the care work of mothering suffers political neglect and economic devaluation. However, motherhood (and non-motherhood) is not just physiological. As the pivot to a web of heteronormative institutions (such as marriage and the family), motherhood bears an overwhelming and decisive influence on women's lives. Against the weight of traditional and contemporary histories, socio-political discourse and policies, this study explores how women, as embodiments of multiple identities, could live stigma-free, 'authentic' lives without having to abandon reproductive 'self'-determination. Published by Zubaan.

Download or read book Maternal Abandonment and Queer Resistance in Twenty First Century Swedish Literature written by Jenny Björklund and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-06-03 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book questions why so many mothers leave their families in twenty-first-century Swedish literature, analyzing literary representations of maternal abandonment in relation to sociopolitical discourses. The volume draws on a queer-theoretical framework in order to highlight norm-critical dimensions, failure, and resistance in literature about motherhood. Jenny Björklund argues that novels about mothers who leave can be understood as ways to problematize and challenge Swedish-branded values like gender equality and a progressive family politics that promotes ideals of involved parenthood, the nuclear family, and pronatalism. The book also raises questions beyond the Swedish context about maternal ambivalence, family politics, and privilege and discusses how literature can work as resistance and provide alternatives to the current social order.