Mothers at Large: Responsibilizing the Pregnant Self for the “Obesity Epidemic”

Abstract

‘Maternal obesity’ has recently been linked with poor childbirth outcomes and health effects on the developing fetus and future person. These studies have been sensationally reported in the Australasian news media, resulting in a reorientation of public health policy toward the management and prevention of ‘risky’ fat pregnant bodies. This article draws on Foucauldian governmentality theory and intersectional analysis to argue that the framing of ‘maternal obesity’ as a public health crisis represents a gendered, raced and classed biopolitical technology of governance with implications for fat women who reproduce, and for social justice in health more generally. It concludes by arguing for the potential of the intersectional concept of reproductive justice to provide a more complex and socially just view of the relationship between maternal body weight and reproductive health outcomes.

KEYWORDS:

• fetal programming
• intersectionality
• gender
• maternal obesity
• maternal responsibilization
• neoliberalism
• pregnancy
• reproductive justice

Notes

1. Powell and Fitzpatrick’s (2013) research suggests that children are not immune to individual responsibilization for weight, despite the responsibilization of their mothers. Powell and Fitzpatrick found that New Zealand school-aged children understood the purpose of fitness lessons at school as primarily about avoiding fatness. Powell and Fitzpatrick (2013, p. 13) conclude, ‘Children’s bodies then are directly governed by discourses of morality and behavior. This is especially powerful because they make children themselves morally responsible for their fitness and health.’

2. The HEHA strategy provided a population-based approach to tackling “obesity” primarily by promoting adult behavior change with regard to nutrition and physical activity, but also including some focus on environmental determinants to reduce the barriers to individual behavior change.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

George Parker

George Parker is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Auckland. George’s doctoral research is drawing on feminist, intersectional, and governmentality theories to examine the construction of “maternal obesity” and fetal programming as significant new public health problems. George is interested in the relationship between these evolving biomedical knowledges and the strategies of neoliberal government, and the implications for the reproductive health care experiences and maternal subjectivities of fat women, and for social justice in health more generally.