Reassembling Motherhood: Procreation and Care in a Globalized World

Published by Columbia University Press 2017

Reassembling Motherhood

Procreation and Care in a Globalized World

Edited by: Yasmine Ergas , Jane Jenson and Sonya Michel

https://doi.org/10.7312/erga17050

Overview
Contents

About this book

Reassembling Motherhood brings together contributors from across the disciplines to examine the transformation of motherhood as both an identity and a role. It examines how the processes of bearing and rearing a child are being restructured as reproductive labor and care work change around the globe. The authors examine issues such as artificial reproductive technologies, surrogacy, fetal ultrasounds, adoption, nonparental care, and the legal status of kinship, showing how complex chains of procreation and childcare have simultaneously generated greater liberty and new forms of constraint.

Reassembling Motherhood brings together contributors from across the disciplines to consider the transformation of motherhood as both an identity and a role. It examines how bearing and rearing a child are being restructured as reproductive labor and care work change around the globe, emphasizing the limits imposed by race, class, and inequality.

Author / Editor information

Yasmine Ergas is the director of the gender and public policy specialization at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs.

Jane Jenson is professor emerita of political science at the Université de Montréal.

Sonya Michel is professor emerita of history, American studies, and women's studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Reviews

Eileen Boris, University of California, Santa Barbara, coauthor of Caring for America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State:
Ergas, Jenson, and Michel have edited an important collection that crystallizes the unequal and uneven transformations in the legal, social, economic, and biological relations of motherhood in the twenty-first century. Together, Reassembling Motherhood explores what we know, pushes the boundaries of knowledge, and raises new questions for further research. The collection is provocative in the best sense.

Ito Peng, University of Toronto, coeditor of Gender, Migration, and the Work of Care: A Multi-Scalar Approach to the Pacific Rim:
This fabulous collection challenges our conventional understanding of motherhood and its connection to bodies, technologies, global migration, and policy, and pushes the debate to the next level. Ergas, Jenson, Michel and their contributing authors masterfully and convincingly trace the dismantling of the traditional notion of motherhood and the expansion of its choices, and how these in turn create different forms of social inequalities, and physical, emotional, and global connections and disconnections. This volume is a must read for anyone interested in the issues of motherhood, care, social inequality, and public policy.

Viviana A. Zelizer, Lloyd Cotsen ’50 Professor of Sociology at Princeton University and author of Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy:
What does motherhood mean in the twenty-first century? If you want informed and fascinating answers, read Reassembling Motherhood. A stellar interdisciplinary team of international scholars report on how technological advances, cultural changes, global migration, and variable state policies have transformed mothering. This landmark book will not only shape scholarly research but also instruct policymakers and engage a wide audience.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
List of Illustrations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xiii
INTRODUCTION. NEGOTIATING “MOTHER” IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY: BETWEEN CHOICE AND CONSTRAINT Yasmine Ergas, Jane Jenson and Sonya Michel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. CERTAIN MOTHERS, UNCERTAIN FATHERS: PLACING ASSISTED REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE Nara Milanich Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	17
2. ASSISTED REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES AND THE BIOLOGICAL BOTTOM LINE Linda G. Kahn and Wendy Chavkin Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	38
3. MULTIPLE “MOTHERS,” MANY REQUIREMENTS FOR PROTECTION: CHILDREN’S RIGHTS AND THE STATUS OF MOTHERS IN THE CONTEXT OF INTERNATIONAL COMMERCIAL SURROGACY Claire Achmad Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	55
4. THE BORDERS OF LEGAL MOTHERHOOD: RETHINKING ACCESS TO ASSISTED REPRODUCTIVE TECHNOLOGIES IN EUROPE Letizia Palumbo Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	76
5. PREGNANT BODIES AND THE SUBJECTS OF RIGHTS: THE SURROGACY–ABORTION NEXUS Yasmine Ergas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	99
6. THE MOTHERLESS FETUS: ULTRASOUND PICTURES AND THEIR MAGIC DISAPPEARING TRICK Anne Higonnet Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	125
7. CONTRACTING FOR MOTHERHOOD: POSTADOPTION VISITATION AGREEMENTS Carol Sanger Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	144
8. RELINQUISHMENT AND ADOPTION IN TAMIL SOCIETY: MOTHERS’ EXPERIENCES WITH DE-KINNING Pien Bos Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	162
9. MARGINALIZED MOTHERS AND INTERSECTING SYSTEMS OF SURVEILLANCE: PRISONS AND FOSTER CARE Dorothy Roberts Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185
10. CARE AND GENDER Martha Albertson Fineman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	202
11. THE DOUBLE LIVES OF TRANSNATIONAL MOTHERS Sonya Michel and Gabrielle Oliveira Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223
12. EURO-ORPHANS AND THE STIGMATIZATION OF MIGRANT MOTHERHOOD Helma Lutz Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	247
13. THE NEW MATERNALISM: CHILDREN FIRST; WOMEN SECOND Jane Jenson Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	269
AFTERWORD: CROSSING INTO THE FUTURE Alice Kessler-Harris Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	287
CONTRIBUTORS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	307

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;

eBook

Published: July 9, 2018
ISBN: 9780231538077