Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)
Journal of the Motherhood Initiative for Research and Community Involvement (JMI - York University)Not a member yet
1824 research outputs found
Sort by
Epistolary Labours: Reading Childbirth and the Politics of Reproductive Medicine in Two Eighteenth-Century Women’s Letters
Get PDFBirth stories, as numerous scholars have observed, are central aspects of maternal identity. Such stories build community, enabling women to navigate what Fiona Nelson (2009) has referred to as the “culture of motherhood.” In this essay, I offera detailed analysis of two eighteenth-century birth stories. I argue that these two narratives, both written by elite women during the second half of the eighteenth century, allow the contemporary reader a window not only into eighteenth-centuryexperiences of childbirth, but more importantly, into the tensions that sometimes arose between labouring women and the medical personnel who were meant to support them
Finding Maternal Histories
No full textThis article explores the challenges of finding maternal histories, challenges whichstem both from history’s emphasis on men and public institutions, and from broadcultural devaluation of maternal work in patriarchal societies. “Finding Maternal Histories” also illuminates the resourcefulness and creativity of researchers of maternal experiences and representations of motherhood. Drawing together themes from all the articles in this volume, this introductory piece points to themes in dominant depictions and discourses of motherhood. It also draws attention to women’s multi-faceted challenges, directly and indirectly, to problematic cultural representations and to social and economic restrictions imposed upon mothers in various times and places,in history and today
Mothers’ Rights are Human Rights: Reflections on Activism and History
Get PDFIn popular discourse today, mothers are often set in opposition to political and evenhuman rights. Conservatives see women’s “right to choose” as an assault on the fetus’s human rights. Feminists, recalling the equality vs. difference debate, stress the incompatibilityof organizing for mothers’ rights and advancing women’s rights more broadly. Advocates of “mothers’ rights,” at least in the U.S. and Canada, usually focuson issues—such as breastfeeding, child custody, and worklife balance—associated more with the quality of life for the middle class than with conventional human rights.This article argues for a new political discourse calling for mothers’ human rights. It first reflects on two pivotal moments when the debate over mothers’ rights and entitlements entered the mainstream: the call for motherhood endowment around 1920, and the demand for welfare rights fifty years later. Since the failure of those movements, the circumstances facing U.S. mothers today has become so dire that we cannot afford not to talk about mothers’ human rights
Medicalization of Motherhood: Modernization and Resistance in an International Context
No full textTraditionally, women’s experiences formed the basis of respected mothering practices which were seen as either part of a woman’s innate knowledge, or taught her by herown mother and other female relatives and friends. As scientific and technical expertisegained in prominence throughout the nineteenth century, increasingly womenwere told that they required scientific and medical knowledge in order to raise theirchildren appropriately and healthfully. The ideal model now became the “scientific mother.” This paper analyzes the evolution of scientific motherhood from its earliest manifest in which women were expected to learn from modern scientific and medical knowledge, through the middle decades of the twentieth century during whichmothers were viewed as incapable of such learning and were expected to follow the directions of their physicians, through the end of the century when women demanded recognition of their capabilities. Scientific motherhood affected and was affected byparticular mothers very differently over time and place, across race and ethnicity,shaped most crucially by women’s economic ability, education, and geographic location.It was not equally available to all women, nor was it totally embraced by allwomen. What is critical for this analysis of scientific motherhood in international context is the general trend that, overtime, women’s role in decision-making abouttheir children’s health and welfare was increasingly denigrated as the role of scientifically medically trained men was elevated. The paper traces out a number of thehistorically shifting power and gender relationships as women embraced, resisted,and redefined scientific motherhood
