| Inventing Maternity Contributor(s): Greenfield, Susan C. (Editor), Barash, Carol (Editor) |
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ISBN: 0813120780 ISBN-13: 9780813120782 Publisher: University Press of Kentucky OUR PRICE: $33.25 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: January 1999 Annotation: Women's social purposes began to be narrowly defined in terms of the bearing, nurturing, and educating of children between 1650 and 1865. The eleven contributors to Inventing Maternity survey a wide range of sources including medical texts, religious doctrine, poems, and slave narratives to examine the political, scientific, and literary uses of maternity during and shortly after the long eighteenth century. These essays reveal that maternity remained contested terrain despite its association with an increasingly standardized set of values. They also provide historical context for issues -- including reproductive rights and child custody -- that remain unresolved today. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Women's Studies - Family & Relationships | Parenting - Motherhood - History | Women |
| Dewey: 306.874 |
| LCCN: 98044190 |
| Physical Information: 1.08" H x 6.32" W x 9.33" (1.43 lbs) 256 pages |
| Themes: - Chronological Period - 17th Century - Chronological Period - 18th Century - Chronological Period - 19th Century - Holiday - Mother's Day - Sex & Gender - Feminine - Topical - Family |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Not until the eighteenth century was the image of the tender, full-time mother invented. This image retains its power today. Inventing Maternity demonstrates that, despite its association with an increasingly standardized set of values, motherhood remained contested terrain. Drawing on feminist, cultural, and postcolonial theory, Inventing Maternity surveys a wide range of sources--medical texts, political tracts, religious doctrine, poems, novels, slave narratives, conduct books, and cookbooks. The first half of the volume, covering the mid-seventeenth to the late eighteenth centuries, considers central debates about fetal development, pregnancy, breastfeeding, and childbearing. The second half, covering the late eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth centuries, charts a historical shift to the regulation of reproduction as maternity is increasingly associated with infanticide, population control, poverty, and colonial, national, and racial instability. In her introduction, Greenfield provides a historical overview of early modern interpretations of maternity. She concludes with a consideration of their impact on current debates about reproductive rights and technologies, child custody, and the cycles of poverty. |