Introduction: Reproduction Matters

Transformations: Gender, Reproduction and Contemporary Society

Week 2

Caroline Wright

Structure of lecture Practicalities Key concepts

Daily and Generational Reproduction

The Family / Families

Motherhood/Fatherhood

Reproductive Rights

Why Reproduction matters in Sociology

Reproduction in the headlines

PracticalitiesModule Handbook

Module Page: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/sociology/prospective/undergraduate/modules/so231/2013-14/

Powerpoint Lecture Hand-outs

Seminars and Seminar Preparation

Group Research Project

Reading Week: Term 2 only

Any Questions?

Free Word Association Jot down everything you associate with the term

Reproduction, in all contexts you can think of

ReproductionGenerationalReproducing the next generation of workers

DailyOngoing reproduction of workers

‘According to the materialistic conception, the determining factor in history is, in the last resort, the production and reproduction of immediate life. But this itself is of a twofold character. On the one hand, the production of the means of subsistence, of food, clothing and shelter and the tools requisite therefore; on the other, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the species. The social institutions under which men of a definite historical epoch and of a definite country live are conditioned by both kinds of production: by the stage of development of labour … and of the family.’ Preface to Engels, Friedrich (1884) The Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State

A materialist feminist perspective Mariarosa Dalla Costa: focused on functions of generational reproduction for capitalism

Women work to ‘reproduce’ labour on a day to day basis – enabling (male) workers to face another shift – and on a generational basis – replacing spent (male) workers with young (male) workers

The Power of Women & the Subversion of the Community (with Selma James) (1972) Women, Development and Labor of Reproduction: Struggles and Movements (edited

with Giovanna F. Dalla Costa) (1997)

Unequal gender division of labour Men’s biological contribution = seconds

Women’s = 9 months of embodied work, then labour ‘Women’s role in the reproduction of the species is more

onerous, more time-consuming, and more dangerous than men’s. A father can father a hundred children at no risk to himself, a woman cannot even have ten children without running considerable risks of lasting physical impairment and even death’ (Moi, 1999, pp. 61-2).

Women also typically do greater share of daily reproductive work, to a rhythm dictated by labour market and education system

Does one-sided division of biological labour lead to one-sided division of social relations of reproduction?

Moi, Toril (1999) What is a Woman? And other essays, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Contribution of Marxist feminism Recognised women in industrial society both produced and serviced next generation of workers

Blurred boundaries between production and reproduction Blurred boundaries between production and consumption Full-time housewives are producers of value, not just consumers Led to domestic labour debate, Wages for housework campaigns Postmodernism swept away‘Grand theories’ like Marxist-feminism. But we must hold

onto centrality of reproductive labour to economy

The Family / Families Social relations of reproduction found in institutions of

(heterosexual) family and kinship

Engels’ stages of family; nuclear family is inevitable and natural

Feminist perspectives: nuclear family neither inevitable nor natural, and major site of women’s subordination

Norm of heterosexual, nuclear, biologically- based family challenged by diversity of social relationships children are conceived, carried to term, and raised in

Barrett, Michèle and Mary McIntosh (1982) The Anti-social Family, London: NLB

Motherhood and Fatherhood What does ‘to father’ a child mean? What

is conjured up by the phrase: ‘He fathered three children’?

What does ‘to mother’ a child mean? What is conjured up by the phrase ‘She mothered three children’?

Fragmentation of Parenthood Biological parenting - Social parenting ‘recombinant families’ (Giddens 1992) break link between

biological and social parenting No necessary or inevitable relationship between biological

and social parenting Adoption/fostering breaks link Institutions can be social ‘parent’ Gamete donation breaks link Diversity in social relations of reproductionGiddens, Anthony (1992) The Transformation of Intimacy, Cambridge: Polity

 

Fragmentation of Motherhood Genetic Mother Gestational Mother Social Mother (the potential) Mitochondrial Mother Who is the ‘real’ mother?

Reproductive Rights Definition from 1994 Cairo Conference on Population

and Development:

‘reproductive rights rest on the recognition of the basic right of all couples and individuals to decide freely and responsibly the number, spacing and timing of their children and to have the information and means to do so, and the right to attain the highest level of sexual and reproductive health’.

What do women and men need to ensure their reproductive rights?

Reproductive Rights & the State Pro-natalist states

Anti-natalist states Religious beliefs may be encoded in state law Global variation Ideas about ‘fitness’ to parent have seen

various groups denied full reproductive rights: People with disabilities People who identify as LGBT Working classes Non-white people

Reproduction Matters in Sociology Tension between deconstruction of sex-gender

and materiality of reproductive bodies as male or female

Reproduction interfaces with:

- Neoliberalism - privileging free market

- Commodification - things becoming commodities to be bought and sold, price value displacing social value

- Consumerism - prioritization and promotion of a culture of consumption, we are what we buy

- Choice - linked to ideas of agency, freedom but how free are our choices, how are they shaped?

- Technologising - applying scientific knowledge to meet human needs, but who defines needs, is more T better?

Reproduction Matters in Sociology Imperative of Intersectionality – paying attention to intersections between gender, ‘race’/ethnicity, age, location,class (dis)ability, sexuality etc.

Multiplicity of knowledges: Expert Experiential Lay Feminist

Exemplars of structure-agency dilemmas

Reproduction in the Headlines ‘£164,000: the true cost of bringing up baby. Raising a

child in Britain costs more than the average house’.  ‘Work-obsessed, individualistic and sub-fertile – it’s time

men (and women) went back to having children in their 20s’.

 ‘“My sister is my son’s mother”: The answer to this riddle is egg donation’.

 ‘Visa for twins born to their grandmother’.  ‘Wife hid baby from husband. Lawyers and social

workers… were deciding last night how to break it to a man that his wife went through pregnancy, gave birth to a girl and gave her up for adoption, all without his knowledge’.

Reproduction in the Headlines ‘Does a cleft palate justify an abortion?’ 

‘Women lose right to use their “own” embryos’ [their then partners, whose sperm was mixed with their egg to produce the embryos, have changed their mind about fatherhood]

‘Do women have the right to a caesarean?’ ‘Coming of age: baby born from 21-year-old frozen sperm’. ‘New man – same old prejudices. What life is really like

today for the men who choose to stay at home to look after their children… isolated in a sea of women’s faces’.

‘Abortions at record level, despite better contraception services. The number of abortions in England and Wales rose to a record 181,600 last year’.

Reproduction in the Headlines ‘Today, angry fathers are marching on the high court to demand more access to their children’.

‘Marriage and family divorced as 41% of children reared in alternative ways’

‘Making Babies the Gay Way: follows the stories of four gay and lesbian couples through the trials and tribulations of trying to make babies’ [Channel 4, 2004]

‘“I knelt day after day, scrubbing the steps, atoning for my sin”. Maryanne Kerr goes back to the home for unmarried mothers in Belfast where she had a baby nearly half a century ago’. 

‘A girl’s right to choose: A mother is furious because her 14-year old daughter’s school arranged an abortion without telling her. Were they right?’

Conclusions Distinction between daily and generational reproduction

Women do greater share than men of both; inevitable?

Traditional nuclear family no longer the norm

Fatherhood can be genetic and/or social

Motherhood can be genetic and/or gestational and/or social Genetic motherhood may split further

Exercising right to decide if, when and how many children to have varies geographically and between social groups

Reproduction speaks to many key issues in post-modernity

Take your sociological imagination with you from this module into your everyday life