Daddy Plants a Seed: Personhood under Patriarchy

In her essay, Professor Rothman challenges the ability of the legal structure to address adequately the problems created by the new reproductive technologies. She argues that conceiving of such issues in terms of rights or individual liberties denies our interconnectedness. Rothman fears the new technologies promote patriarchy by emphasizing the genetic tie over the nurturance, the connection people experience during gestation. Patriarchal social theories operate on the premise that people spring forth out of nowhere, self-interested and ready to form social contracts. Such theories deemphasize the connection with which humans enter the world-after nine months cradled in their mothers\u27 wombs-and the relation that connection bears to our need to form social contracts. Rothman predicts that as the new technologies develop, defined as they are by the notion of individual liberties, we will be remade in partriarcy\u27s image-separate individuals springing forth from artificial wombs without that preceding connectedness and trust that allows us to be social

New breast milk in old bottles

This paper identifies how the different ideologies of patriarchy, technology, capitalism, race and feminism shape how we see breastfeeding and the breastfeeding mother with child. Ultimately, while we can make good strong arguments for breastfeeding from the perspective of health, of outcome, of good scientific data, we need to appreciate that they are only rationalizations for a shared belief that the image of the breastfeeding woman with baby represents something precious and valuable. So while it may be important to make arguments that draw on what is valued in society, we need to think hard about what it is that we value so that as we move forward with our efforts to make breastfeeding safe, we can use but not be used by, the various ideologies or claims

Motherhood: Beyond Patriarchy

Law works by precedent and by analogy

Testing times: the social life of non-invasive prenatal testing

Non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT) is a genomic technology used to predict the chance of a foetus having a genetic condition. Despite the immediacy of this technology’s integration into clinical practice, there is a dearth of evidence outlining how both patients and professionals experience NIPT on the ground. In this article, we draw upon our collective empirical research – specifically on earlier screening technologies (BKR), Down syndrome screening (GT), genetic screening/testing (JL), and NIPT (HS) – to outline the most pressing, and often controversial, issues which, we argue, remain unresolved and vital to consider regarding NIPT. We begin with a brief introduction to NIPT as a prenatal technology and the bodies of literature which unpack its ‘social life’. In what follows, BKR discusses NIPT within the context of her research on ‘the tentative pregnancy’ and diagnostic testing in the USA. In the following sections, GT, HS, and JL identify different, but related, concerns with respect to NIPT, particularly around routinisation, commercialisation, choice, abortion, and configurations of disability and ‘normalcy’

“Putting the baby back in the body”: The re-embodiment of pregnancy to enhance safety in a free-standing birth centre

The general discourse in most countries is that technological surveillance during pregnancy and childbirth is synonymous with safety, while women's individual experiences are less likely regarded as critical. The aim of this ethnographic study at a birth centre in Germany was to describe how midwives and their clients construct risk and safety. The data collection methods included participant observation and semi-structured interviews. ‘Putting the baby back in the body’ was the major theme that emerged, supported by three sub-themes. The women in this study relied on scans at the beginning of pregnancy to make their baby real to them, but became more confident in their capacity to sense their baby after experiencing the first fetal movements. The midwives fostered this confidence by using interactive palpation of the abdomen with the women, thus supporting their individual sensory experience, and, in the midwives’ view, enhancing overall safety during pregnancy and at birth

Mothers construct fathers: Destabilized patriarchy in La Leche League

This paper examines changing masculine ideals from the point of view of women homemakers through a case study of La Leche League, a maternalist organization dedicated to breastfeeding and mother primacy. We suggest two reasons for studying the League: first, an emerging literature suggests that changing norms are seeping into many such seemingly conservative groups, and second, the League continues to be highly successful among white, middle-class, married women. The paper looks at two aspects of masculinity, examining changes in the League through fieldwork, interviews, and content analysis, and finds that new norms of increased father involvement and decreased rights over women's bodies have both influenced League philosophy. We conclude that while in some respects a measure of the decline of men's patriarchal privileges, the League's changes also may contribute to a “restabilization” of male dominance in a modified, partial form.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/43548/1/11133_2004_Article_BF00990071.pd