1,311
Views
32
CrossRef citations to date
0
Altmetric
The Emergence of Risk Discourses in Pregnancy and Childbirth: Medicalisation, Feminism and Eugenics

‘Knowledge is power’: risk and the moral responsibilities of the expectant mother at the turn of the twentieth century

&
Pages 7-21 | Received 20 Aug 2013, Accepted 11 Nov 2013, Published online: 19 Dec 2013

Archival sources

  • Ballantyne, J.W., 1914. Expectant motherhood: its supervision and hygiene. Toronto, ON: Cassell & Company.
  • Bishop, H.D., 1910. Motherhood: a manual on the management of pregnancy. Cleveland, OH: Rose Publishing Company.
  • Bland-Sutton, J. and Giles, A.E., 1906. The diseases of women. 5th ed. With 129 illustrations. London: Rebman Limited.
  • Capp, W.M., 1891. The daughter, her health, education and wedlock. Philadelphia, PA: F.A. Davis.
  • Chavasse, P.H., 1882. Advice to a wife on the management of her own health and on the treatment of some of the complaints incidental to pregnancy, labour, and suckling with an introductory chapter especially addressed to a young wife. Toronto, ON: Willing & Williamson.
  • Johnson, I.D., 1889. Counsel to parents, and how to save the baby. Kennett Square, PA: I.D. Johnson.
  • Kellog, J.H., 1886. Ladies’ guide in health and disease: girlhood, maidenhood, wifehood, motherhood. Des Moines, IA: W.D. Condit.
  • Napheys, G., 1890. The physical life of woman: advice to the maiden, wife, and mother. Toronto, ON: Maclear & Company.
  • Norman, R., 1914. The wife’s handbook. Menasha, WI: G. Banta.
  • Saur, P., 1888. Maternity, a book for every wife and mother. Chicago, IL: L. P. Miller & Company.
  • Scharlieb, M., 1919. The welfare of the expectant mother. Toronto, ON: Cassell and Company.
  • Scovil, E., 1896. Preparation for motherhood. Philadelphia, PA: Henry Altemus.
  • Slemons, J.M., 1919. The prospective mother: a handbook for women during pregnancy. New York: D Appleton and Company.
  • West, J.D., 1887. Maidenhood and motherhood (or ten phases of woman’s life). San Francisco, CA: Law, King & Law.

References

  • Apple, R.D., 1995. Constructing mothers: scientific motherhood in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Social history of medicine, 8 (2), 161–178.
  • Armstrong, D., 1995. The rise of surveillance medicine. Sociology of health & illness, 17 (3), 393–404.
  • Arney, W.R., 1982. Power and the profession of obstetrics. University of Chicago Press.
  • Bacchi, C.L. and Beasley, C., 2002. Citizen bodies: is embodied citizenship a contradiction in terms? Critical social policy, 22 (2), 324–352.
  • Backhouse, C.B., 1983. Involuntary motherhood: abortion, birth control and the law in nineteenth century Canada. Windsor YB access just, 3, 61.
  • Bauer, S. and Olsén, J.E., 2009. Observing the others, watching over oneself: themes of medical surveillance in post-panoptic society. Surveillance & society, 6 (2), 116–127.
  • Beck, U., 1999. World risk society. Cambridge: Polity Press. 
  • Benoit, C., et al., 2010. Medical dominance and neoliberalisation in maternal care provision: the evidence from Canada and Australia. Social science & medicine, 71 (3), 475–481.
  • Budds, K., Locke, A., and Burr, V., 2012. Risky business. Feminist media studies, 13 (1), 132–147.
  • Burton-Jeangros, C., 2011. Surveillance of risks in everyday life: the agency of pregnant women and its limitations. Social theory & health, 9 (4), 419–436.
  • Statistics Canada., ed., 2008. Children of older first-time mothers: their health and development Children and youth series papers. Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada.
  • Carolan, M., 2003. The graying of the obstetric population: implications for the older mother. Journal of obstetric, gynecologic, & neonatal nursing, 32 (1), 19–27.
  • Chamberlain, J.M., 2012. The sociology of medical regulation. Dordrecht: Springer. 
  • Coburn, D., 1993. State authority, medical dominance, and trends in the regulation of the health professions: the Ontario case. Social science & medicine, 37 (2), 129–138.
  • Coburn, D., 2006. Medical dominance then and now: critical reflections. Health sociology review, 15 (5), 432–443.
  • Coburn, D., Torrance, G.M., and Kaufert, J.M., 1983. Medical dominance in Canada in historical perspective: the rise and fall of medicine? International journal of health services, 13 (3), 407–432.
  • Conrad, P., 1992. Medicalization and social control. Annual review of Sociology, 13, 209–32.
  • Conti, S.L. and Eisenberg, M.L., 2013. Paternal aging and increased risk of congenital disease, psychiatric disorders, and cancer. In: D.T. Carroll, ed. Paternal influences on human reproductive success. Cambridge University Press, 93–101.
  • Crawford, R., 1994. The boundaries of the self and the unhealthy other: reflections on health, culture and AIDS. Social science & medicine, 38 (10), 1347–1365.
  • Dean, M., 1998. Risk, calculable and incalculable. Soziale welt, 49, 25–42.
  • Fahy, K., 2007. An Australian history of the subordination of midwifery. Women and birth, 20 (1), 25.
  • Fairclough, N., Mulderrig, J., and Wodak, R., 2011. Critical discourse analysis. In: T.A. Van Dijk, ed. Discourse studies: a multidisciplinary introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 357–378. 
  • Fisch, H., et al., 2003. The influence of paternal age on Down syndrome. The journal of urology, 169 (6), 2275–2278.
  • Foucault, M., 1973. The birth of the clinic: an archaeology of medical perception. New York: Vintage.
  • Frans, E.M., et al., 2008. Advancing paternal age and bipolar disorder. Archives of general psychiatry, 65 (9), 1034.
  • Giddens, A., 1998. Risk society: the context of British politics. In: J. Franklin, ed. The politics of risk society. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 23–34.
  • Gross, S.E. and Shuval, J.T., 2008. On knowing and believing: prenatal genetic screening and resistance to ‘risk-medicine’. Health, risk & society, 10 (6), 549–564.
  • Hallgrimsdottir, H.K., Benoit, C., and Phillips, R., 2013. The mother‐citizen and the working girl: first‐wave feminist citizenship claims in Canada and discursive opportunities for twenty‐first century childcare policy. Canadian review of sociology/revue canadienne de sociologie, 50 (1), 27–51.
  • Hallgrimsdottir, H.K., Phillips, R., and Benoit, C., 2006. Fallen women and rescued girls: social stigma and media narratives of the sex industry in Victoria, BC, from 1980 to 2005*. Canadian review of sociology/revue canadienne de sociologie, 43 (3), 265–280.
  • Hanson, B., 2003. Questioning the construction of maternal age as a fertility problem. Health care for women international, 24 (3), 166–176.
  • Hays, S., 1996. The cultural contradictions of motherhood. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
  • Jahromi, B.N. and Husseini, Z., 2008. Pregnancy outcome at maternal age 40 and older. Taiwanese journal of obstetrics and gynecology, 47 (3), 318–321.
  • Jasen, P., 1997. Race, culture, and the colonization of childbirth in northern Canada. Social history of medicine, 10 (3), 383–400.
  • Koven, S. and Michel, S., 1990. Womanly duties: maternalist politics and the origins of welfare states in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, 1880–1920. The American historical review, 95 (4), 1076–1108.
  • Lagerwey, M.D., 1999. Nursing, social contexts, and ideologies in the early United States birth control movement*. Nursing inquiry, 6 (4), 250–258.
  • Leavitt, J.W., 1987. The growth of medical authority: technology and morals in turn‐of‐the‐century obstetrics. Medical anthropology quarterly, 1 (3), 230–255.
  • Lisonkova, S., et al., 2011. Effect of older maternal age on birth outcomes in twin pregnancies: a population-based study. Journal of perinatology, 31 (2), 85–91.
  • Locke, A. and Budds, K., 2013. ‘We thought if it’s going to take two years then we need to start that now’: age, infertility risk and the timing of pregnancy in older first-time mothers. Health, risk & society, 15, 525–542.
  • Loudon, I., 1992. Death in childbirth: an international study of maternal care and maternal mortality 1800–1950. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • Lupton, D., 2012. ‘Precious cargo’: foetal subjects, risk and reproductive citizenship. Critical public health, 22 (3), 329–340.
  • Lyon, D., 2001. Surveillance society. Buckingham: Open University Press.
  • Lyon, D., 2003. Surveillance technology and surveillance society. In: T.J. Misa, P. Brey, and A. Feenberg, eds. Modernity and technology. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 161.
  • Markens, S., Browner, C.H., and Mabel Preloran, H., 2010. Interrogating the dynamics between power, knowledge and pregnant bodies in amniocentesis decision making. Sociology of health & illness, 32 (1), 37–56.
  • McDonald, K., Amir, L., and Davey, M.-A., 2011. Maternal bodies and medicines: a commentary on risk and decision-making of pregnant and breastfeeding women and health professionals. BMC public health, 11 (Suppl. 5), S5.
  • McLaren, A., 1978. Birth Control and Abortion in Canada, 1870–1920. Canadian historical review, 59 (3), 319–340.
  • Morantz, R.M., 1977. Making women modern: middle class women and health reform in 19th century America. Journal of social history, 10 (4), 490–507.
  • OECD, 2012. OECD family database. Paris: OECD.
  • Perrier, M., 2013. No right time: the significance of reproductive timing for younger and older mothers' moralities. The sociological review, 61 (1), 69–87.
  • Pierce, J.B., 2008. Science, advocacy, and the sacred and intimate things of life: representing motherhood as a progressive era cause in women’s magazines. American periodicals: a journal of history, criticism, and bibliography, 18 (1), 69–95.
  • Plant, R.J. and Van Der Klein, M., 2012. Introduction. In: M. Van Der Klein, eds. Maternalism reconsidered: motherhood, welfare and social policy in the twentieth century. New York: Berghahn Books, 1–21.
  • Richardson, E.H. and Turner, B.S., 2001. Sexual, intimate or reproductive citizenship? Citizenship studies, 5 (3), 329–338.
  • Richardson, T.R., 1989. The century of the child: the mental hygiene movement and social policy in the United States and Canada. Albany: State University of New York Press.
  • Riessman, C.K., 1983. Women and medicalization: a new perspective. Social policy, 14 (1), 3–18.
  • Root, R. and Browner, C.H., 2011. Cultural context of reproductive health. In: P. Van Look, K. Heggenhougen, and S.R. Quah, eds. Sexual and reproductive health: a public health perspective. Burlington, MA: Academic Press, 314–319.
  • Ruhl, L., 1999. Liberal governance and prenatal care: risk and regulation in pregnancy. Economy and society, 28 (1), 95–117.
  • Shaw, R.L. and Giles, D.C., 2009. Motherhood on ice? A media framing analysis of older mothers in the UK news. Psychology & health, 24 (2), 221–236.
  • Shelton, N. and Johnson, S., 2006. ‘I think motherhood for me was a bit like a double‐edged sword’: the narratives of older mothers. Journal of community & applied social psychology, 16 (4), 316–330.
  • Shuttleworth, S., 1993/1994. A mother’s place is in the wrong. New scientist, December/January, 38–40.
  • Silva, S. and Machado, H., 2010. Uncertainty, risks and ethics in unsuccessful in vitro fertilisation treatment cycles. Health, risk & society, 12 (6), 531–545.
  • Smajdor, A., 2009. Between fecklessness and selfishness: is there a biologically optimal time for motherhood? In: F. Simonstein, ed. Reprogen-ethics and the future of gender. New York: Springer, 105–117.
  • Smith-Rosenberg, C. and Rosenberg, C., 1973. The female animal: medical and biological views of woman and her role in nineteenth-century America. The journal of American history, 60 (2), 332–356.
  • Sutcliffe, A.G., et al., 2012. The health and development of children born to older mothers in the United Kingdom: observational study using longitudinal cohort data. British medical journal, 345, 318. 
  • Szreter, S., 2003. The population health approach in historical perspective. American journal of public health, 93 (3), 421–431.
  • Torrey, E.F., et al., 2009. Paternal age as a risk factor for schizophrenia: how important is it? Schizophrenia research, 114 (1), 1–5.
  • Tucker, W.H., 1998. Keeping America sane: psychiatry and eugenics in the United States and Canada, 1880–1940. Journal of the American Medical Association, 279 (6), 477–478.
  • Valverde, M., 2008a. The age of light, soap, and water: moral reform in English Canada, 1885–1925. Toronto, ON: University of Toronto Press.
  • Valverde, M., 2008b. Racial purity, sexual purity, and immigration policy. In: W.B. Toronto, ed. The history of immigration and Racism in Canada: essential readings. Toronto, ON: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 175–187.
  • Vézina, M. and Turcotte, M., 2009. Forty-year-old mothers of pre-school children: a profile. In: Statistics Canada, ed. Canadian social trends. Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada.
  • Webster, A., 2002. Innovative health technologies and the social: redefining health, medicine and the body. Current sociology, 50 (3), 443–457.
  • Weir, L., 2006. Pregnancy, risk, and biopolitics: on the threshold of the living subject. New York: Routledge.
  • White, L.A., 2002. Ideas and the welfare state explaining child care policy development in Canada and the United States. Comparative political studies, 35 (6), 713–743.
  • Wrede, S., Benoit, C., and Einarsdottir, T., 2008. Equity and dignity in maternity care provision in Canada, Finland and Iceland. The Canadian journal of public health, 99, S16–S21.
  • Wrede, S., Benoit, C., and Einarsdottir, T., 2009. Equity and dignity in maternity care provision in Canada, Finland and Iceland. The Canadian journal of public health, 99, S16–S21.

Reprints and Corporate Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

To request a reprint or corporate permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below:

Academic Permissions

Please note: Selecting permissions does not provide access to the full text of the article, please see our help page How do I view content?

Obtain permissions instantly via Rightslink by clicking on the button below:

If you are unable to obtain permissions via Rightslink, please complete and submit this Permissions form. For more information, please visit our Permissions help page.