Recreating Motherhood
Selling “genetically gifted” human eggs on the free market for a hefty price. In vitro fertilization. Fetal rights. Prenatal diagnosis. Surrogacy. All are instances of biomedical and social “advancements” with which we have become familiar in recent years. Yet these issues are often regarded as distinct or only loosely related under the rubric of reproduction.
Barbara Katz Rothman demonstrates how they form a complex whole that demands of us in response a woman-centered, class-sensitive way of understanding motherhood. We need a social policy for dealing with mothers and motherhood that is consistent with feminist politics and feminist theory. Her book show how we as a society must first recognize that the real needs of mother, father, and children have been swept aside in an attempt to reduce the complex process of human reproduction to a clinical event that can be controlled by medical technology. Rothman suggests ways to accomplish social and legal change that would allow technological advances to affirm motherhood and the mother-child relationship without cost to women’s identity.
This new edition of Recreating Motherhood contains exciting updates. Rothman shows how this material is key in understanding the family, not just motherhood. And a new chapter, “Reflections on a Decade,” explores how new reproductive technologies combine with new marketing and new genetics to pose troubling social questions.
Rereading Recreating Motherhood should be high up on the agenda of everyone interested in women's health.
Written with force, grace and great humanity. Barbara Katz Rothman's disciplined, informed, passionately careful thinking on gender and genetics makes Recreating Motherhood a sound, wise guide both to the politics of motherhood and to private moral decision-making. This is an invaluable book.
This wonderful and classic feminist text has been beautifully revised for the new millennium. Rothman's incisive analysis of the culture of motherhood is a must read for scholars, activists, policy makers, students, parents, parents-to-beùfor anyone interested in procreative and family issues. I rarely say so about sociological writing: you won't be able to put it down!
A lively, sensible work, connecting different aspects of women's reproductive freedom, exploring the various assaults against those freedoms, and positing feminist alternatives in a hopeful and practical manner.
Who counts as a parent? The egg donor? The sperm donor? The contractor? The surrogate mother? When can human beings in the activity of reproduction be required to ætreat' their fetuses according to legal standards? And who should set those standards? Recreating Motherhood offers a coherent feminist approach to these issues . . . A learned, tolerant, yet forceful analysis.
Powerful and heartfelt book . . . eloquent in defending the dignity of motherhood and in showing how it has become devalued.
Brilliant, compassionate, and feminist analysis of surrogacy that finally puts the volatile subject into perspective.
A fine exploration of the issues that the new technologies present. More than that, it provides a humane, coherent, and feminist way of viewing all our concerns about birth, adoption, infertility, and abortion. . . . Rothman is clear without being too polemical or angry, and she is always focused on the human experience of nursing, caring, and kinship.
This is a powerful, compassionate analysis . . . Rothman brilliant interweaves personal narrative with documentary evidence to create an important, perhaps vital book.
Readers may quarrel with some of the author's convictions but they will agree with her argument that it's past time for women to restore motherhood to its proper status.
A thoughtful, well-written analysis of contemporary issues for a wide audience.
A significant addition to the growing literature on the sociology of gender and technology.
This book should be read to update attitudes on motherhood. It is forcefully written with convincing honesty.
A perceptive analysis of how technology, capitalism, and patriarchy function in society to undermine the dignity of women, especially of mothers.
Engrossing and clearly written. . . . should be required reading for all students of women's studies.
A riveting and well written book. It is must reading for people concerned with how all these advances are affecting human relations and the future role of motherhood.
Once in a long while a book comes along that I've been waiting for, even though I hadn't known it. Barbara K. Rothman's Recreating Motherhood is such a book. Here, at last, is a discussion of today's troublesome reproductive issues that is scholarly, theoretically exciting, but also compassionate. . . . Rothman's cultural analysis helps me understand why women are in conflict, and why feminists are divided against one another over these matters. . . . a very important book.
Acknowledgments to the First Edition
Part I
Introduction
On Family
Mothering in America
Three Ideologies
Motherhood under Patriarchy
The Seeds of Women
The Genetic Tie
Patriarchal Ideology and New Procreative Technology
Motherhood in a Technological Society
The Mechanical Mother
Technological Society and Liberal Philosophy
Motherhood under Capitalism
The Owned Body
A Child of One's Own
Part II
Introduction
An Alternative Vision
Pregnancy as a Relationship
The Physical Relationship
The Social Relationship
Redefining Abortion
The History of Abortion
Constructing the Fetus
The Medicalization of Abortion
Reconstructing Abortion
The Give and Take of Adoption
Solving Problems with Problems
Orphans Real and Imaginary
Infertility
Infertility as Disability
Medicalizing Motherhood
Fetal Power
Midwifery as Feminist Praxis
Will the Circle Be Unbroken?
Baby Doe: The Relationship Continues
In Defense of Mothers: A Rebuttal
Child Care
The Managerial Mother
Motherworker
Mid-revolutionary Mores
Fatherhood
What the Problem Is Not
The Capacity to Nurture
Fathering as a Relationship
On ``Surrogacy''
A Question of Policy
A Question of Values
Reflections on a Decade
The Best Money Can Buy
A Note on the Intersection of Infertility and Genetic Research
Selling Choice in Procreation
Gender, Race, and Class: Situating Procreative Choice
Beyond Choice
Converging Streams
Recreating Motherhood: Toward Feminist Social Policy
New Technologies in Old Bottles
Constructing Feminist Social Policy Regarding Motherhood
A Last Word to the New Edition
Notes
Index
