Feminist Perspectives on Motherhood and Reproduction
Details
Serval ID
serval:BIB_8FF98A94CBF7
Type
Article: article from journal or magazin.
Collection
Publications
Institution
Title
Feminist Perspectives on Motherhood and Reproduction
Journal
Historical Social Research
Publication state
Published
Issued date
2011
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
36
Number
2
Pages
162-176
Language
english
Abstract
Motherhood and reproduction have been at the core of the feminist discourse about women's rights ever since its onset. For the first and second feminist movements, the right to abortion and the public recognition of motherhood have been main issues in the discourse on reproduction. Since the last two dec- ades of the 20th century, the potentials of assisted reproductive technologies (ART) have opened up new venues of feminist discourse.In this paper we sketch the main feminist lines of argumentation regarding motherhood and reproduction since the 1970s, and we identify specific shifts in their recurrent issues. We argue that an essential contribution of feminism to the understanding of motherhood as a structuring category has been its insis- tence on the distinction between biological and social motherhood. Feminist discourse shows how ART has further decomposed biological motherhood and has altered the meaning of motherhood and reproduction. Feminist analysis maintains that despite the rhetoric of choice surrounding ART, these technolo- gies have not increased women's reproductive freedom. The decomposition of biological motherhood, the medical, legal, and commercial development of re- production, and the change in the social perception of motherhood have rather established new forms of control over female reproduction.
Keywords
reproduction, motherhood, feminism, ART (or assisted reproduc- tion technologies), feminism, feminist discourse
Create date
19/05/2011 16:40
Last modification date
20/08/2019 14:53