Motherhood in Spain: From the “Baby Boom” to “Structural Infertility”

ABSTRACT

We analyze the mechanisms of reproductive governance that influence reproduction in Spain through 66 semi-structured interviews with heterosexual parents. We examine reproductive governance through moral regimes surrounding four arenas: the labor market, gender relations at home, institutional feminist discourses, and the narrative of choice. We show that mothers are considered to be socially responsible for children, a fact that is key to understanding how Spain went from a “baby boom” between the 1950 and 1970s to “structural infertility” since the 1990s.

RESUMEN

Esta investigación aborda la gobernanza reproductiva en España a través de cuatro dimensiones de regímenes morales: el mercado laboral, las relaciones de género, el discurso del feminismo institucional y las narrativas de la elección. Los resultados de 66 entrevistas semiestructuradas a padres y madres heterosexuales muestran que las madres son socialmente consideradas responsables de hijos e hijas, un factor clave para entender cómo España pasó del “baby boom” de las décadas 1950–1970 a la “infertilidad estructural” desde los años 1990.

KEYWORDS:

• Spain
• feminism
• motherhood
• reproductive governance
• structural infertility
• work-family balance

Acknowledgments

To all (non)mothers who are struggling in the reproductive Spanish context. This research has followed the code of good practices of the UAB.

Notes

1. This article is in memory of Carmen Alborch, who died in 2018. I thank her for the afternoon we spent in the Hotel Sants lobby talking about feminism, motherhood, and life in general. We include her full name because, unlike other participants, Alborch spoke on the record as a former politician.

2. Marre, herself an immigrant mother of two children, experienced something similar while doing her PhD in the 90s. She was not allowed to bring her children to her university office, where she worked alone, when it was a holiday at her children’s school.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education under Grant FPU12/04629, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under Grant PID2020-112692RB-C21 and Marre’s ICREA Acadèmia Award.

Notes on contributors

Bruna Alvarez

Bruna Alvarez’s research is about motherhood, reproduction, and sexuality. She received her PhD in Anthropology in 2017 where she analyzed the politics of motherhood in Spain, asking how labor conditions and gender relations influence reproductive decisions of heterosexual couples. Since then, she has been doing research about sex education and family diversity at primary schools using participatory methodologies in Barcelona (Spain) and Ciudad Juárez (México). Her new research is about the process of how single and lesbian mothers in Spain become mothers through gamete donation, and reproductive mobilities between México and USA as women search for assisted reproduction care or medical care for abortion.

Diana Marre

Diana Marre is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology and the Director of AFIN Research Group and Outreach Centre at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. She has been PI and researcher on over 20 research projects. Marre has authored and coauthored more than 80 publications in her fields of research. She was visiting Fellow/Professor at several institutions. Marre regularly participates in knowledge transfer activities on assisted human reproduction—adoption, gamete and embryo provision, surrogacy—for government, policy makers, civic and users’ institutions and associations. In 2020 Marre received the ICREA Acadèmia award for her work in the fields of Medical Anthropology.