Abstract
Drawing on a wide range of recent research in the areas of reproductive health, gender and parenting culture studies, and adopting a broadly Foucauldian approach to theorising, this book by Pam Lowe suggests that whilst ideologies of parenthood are subject to change over time, the requirement for maternal sacrifice remains constant. As such she suggests that this concept is deserving of closer scrutiny. In this book Lowe foregrounds the concept of maternal sacrifice and traces it through different stages of reproduction from preconception through to infant feeding and development. In addition to exploring this concept and examining its effects on women, Lowe also problematises the concept of ‘choice’ as it pertains to decisions about motherhood. She demonstrates how, alongside ideas of maternal sacrifice, a rhetoric of choice, and the (often highly moralised) responsibility to make the ‘right-choice’, is a form of disciplinary power exercised over women.
This book has eight chapters which can be read together or independently. In the first chapter Lowe provides a short introduction to the concepts of good motherhood and maternal sacrifice and suggests why the latter warrants independent examination. The second chapter provides a conceptual and theoretical overview, introducing key concepts of surveillance, responsibilisation, individualisation and risk. In Chapters 3 through 7 Lowe examines the way maternal sacrifice shapes women’s experience of contraception and abortion (Chapter 3); infertility, assisted reproduction and pregnancy loss (Chapter 4); behaviour regulation during pregnancy (Chapter 5); childbirth (Chapter 6); and infant feeding and early years parenting (Chapter 7).
Lowe demonstrates how women are expected to minimise risks not only after birth but also during pregnancy and even during the preconception period. She also notes how the positioning of women’s reproductive bodies as ‘at risk’ is used to justify increased levels of surveillance and further demonstrates how the culture of individualised risk and responsibility acts as a moralising framework in which women’s choices are enabled and constrained.
In Chapter 3 Lowe shows how, whilst they come from different positions, advocates of both abstinence and birth control draw on ideas of good motherhood and suggest that women need to make individual sacrifices. For chastity campaigners the sacrifice is that of a sexual relationship, those advocating birth control require the toleration of side effects of some forms of contraception and the sacrificing of child desire until specific conditions enabling good motherhood are met. Lowe also shows how notions of sacrifice are used to justify two seemingly incompatible positions on abortion. In Chapter four the author suggests that maternal sacrifice can be seen in women’s willingness to try and persist with infertility treatments which are often painful. Furthermore, she notes how by choosing to endure the hardship of these treatments women can demonstrate their suitability for motherhood. Lowe convincingly argues the significance of maternal sacrifice in relation to women’s use of IVF; however, this was not as clear in her discussion of gamete donation and surrogacy. Lowe may have developed a stronger argument linking maternal sacrifice and use of a wider range of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) by considering the compelling nature of ARTs under neoliberalism, which often places the responsible reproductive citizen under pressure to draw on new biomedical technologies in the pursuit of parenthood.
In Chapter 5 Lowe demonstrates how the requirements for maternal sacrifice can go beyond what is needed to ensure the safety and wellbeing of offspring even when no scientific basis is provided. As such, Lowe usefully problematises and calls into question the regulation of pregnant women by social policy initiatives. Similarly, in Chapter 7 Lowe notes how the promotion of breastfeeding, a highly moralised activity, can be seen to be relying on scientific authority rather than evidence. In Chapter 6 Lowe demonstrates how notions of idealised motherhood, and the need for women to make appropriate sacrifices, are used by women to explain a desire for a variety of birthing decisions from ‘freebirthing’ to caesarean section by maternal request. Chapter 7 explores the ‘scientisation of parenting’ as well as the rise of ‘neuroparenting’ and examines the pressure this places on women to draw on expert knowledge and make required maternal sacrifices or suffer sanctions for failing to perform motherhood in the right way. An inclusion of current debates around foetal programming and epigenetics would have added to the value of this chapter. In the final chapter Lowe summarises her argument concluding, somewhat grimly, that ‘women’s reproductive lives are still bound by idealised notions of responsibility, and the ideological use of maternal sacrifice is used to justify positions that undermine women’s autonomy’. This does, however, leave some important questions unanswered, for example what does the pervasiveness of this form of disciplinary power mean for women? And how can it be resisted or modified to benefit women?