Abstract
In How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics, Laura Briggs makes a clear and significant contribution to our understandings of reproductive politics. Briggs offers a nuanced, complex, and intersectional analysis of how changes in public policy and economics in the last few decades have profoundly affected families. In particular, she focuses on the neoliberal shift that has privatized reproduction. With the thesis that reproduction and care work (from giving birth, to child care, to elder care) is the essence of politics, Briggs deconstructs topics central to political life today including immigration and welfare policy, pregnancy and child care, and same-sex marriage. Underlying each of the chapters are two core arguments: First, public policies have shifted the responsibility of reproductive work to the individual, resulting in the scarcity of both time and money, and disproportionally burdening women and communities of color. Second, many of the changes in reproductive politics are driven by white people working to maintain the racial hierarchy. The book moves between personal, first-person accounts of reproductive labor, and more macro policy analysis, illustrating the dynamic interplay and the significance of the relationship between the personal and structural in reproductive labor.
Each chapter in How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics traces how we got to where we are today, which Briggs argues is a time when it is “so hard to figure out how to both earn enough to eat and take care of children, elders, neighborhoods, and communities” (p. 6). She begins with an exploration of how progressive social movement participants in the twentieth century fought for the support of and time for reproductive labor—including participants in feminist, racial justice, and labor movements, as well as the backlash and undoing of these advancements. Next begins the deep dive into the bulk of Briggs’ argument, the author contending that racist and sexist reproductive political ideologies drove welfare reform. This paved the way for economic and political changes in which those living in poverty (particularly mothers and women of color) are ultimately blamed for “poor decisions” such as being a single parent or not being able to find steady employment, thus justifying the erosion of social support. Changes in welfare reform and the accompanying narratives in media and politics, argues Briggs, drove a shift in power away from institutions such as unions and towards corporations, leading to the growing privatization and individualization of reproduction. While most of the book focuses on the United States, she also makes the connections between globalization and reproduction. Briggs’ view on reproductive politics contends that it was declining real wages and the failure of the government to respond to feminist demands such as high-quality, affordable day care, that drove what Briggs calls the “offshoring of reproduction.” Briggs argues that infertility and infant mortality alike are deeply political and economic, related to declining social services and workplaces that do not accommodate the realities of the family. Extending her reproductive politics lens to queer families, Briggs argues that gay communities’ political demands are reproductive politics—same-sex marriage, caring for family, etc. Briggs concludes that gay marriage paradoxically “facilitated the privatization of dependency in both a queerly affirming and profoundly conservative way” (p. 187). Briggs ends the book with the argument that the evolution of reproductive politics has led the United States to be in crisis—asserting that the outcome of the 2017 presidential election is a logical continuation of decades of racism and sexism in public policy.
The book is an important addition to the lineage of feminist scholarship that makes visible both the faultiness and dominance of the assumption the home/family and the economy can be disentangled. One inconsistency in the book is the unevenness of its attention to the dynamic relationship between social movement actors and policy: the chapter on same-sex marriage focuses significantly on these relationships but not quite as much in the other chapters. Woven throughout the book are implicit and explicit calls for action, although it concludes with a list of suggestions for a reinvestment in reproductive labor, such as paid parental leave, living wages for hourly workers, and free higher education. While these ideas are certainly consistent with Briggs’ overall perspective, after such a tour de force, readers may desire more in-depth or innovative recommendations.
How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics will be of interest to a wide range of gender and feminist scholars and graduate students, as well as scholars of race, class, inequality, political science, public policy, and social movements. The book brightly illuminates the plethora of links between reproduction and politics—with such a clear lens on current political life that the reader can never quite view reproduction or politics the same again. Even those readers who are familiar with feminist critiques of reproduction will have a fresh and renewed view of the lasting cost and evolving ramifications of marginalizing and underinvesting in care work. An educated lay audience will also find Briggs’ sophisticated yet readable prose appealing, her arguments made with clarity and dynamism. Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics is the simultaneous timelessness and timeliness of the work. The book is at once urgent, current, and steeped in historical context, ensuring its durability and significance.