Policing the Maternal Mind: Maternal Health, Psychological Government, and Swiss Pregnancy Politics

Abstract

The psychological experience of pregnancy is an issue of increasing concern to policymakers in Europe and North America. However, there are very few accounts of how the emphasis on the "psychological government of pregnancy" informs gender politics. My research approaches the politics of pregnancy as the convergence of several fields: the regulation of the pregnant body, the medicalization of pregnancy, the publicization of the fetus, and the definitions of "good mothering." Based on fieldwork in a perinatal unit in Switzerland, this article aims to uncover how these psychologically informed discourses contribute to the reproduction of gender stereotypes and naturalize sex differences.

Uncertainty, manageability and individuation: A longitudinal qualitative study of women's conceptualisations of risk from pregnancy to breastfeeding—the case of alcohol consumption

“…In addition to abstaining from alcohol, they are advised to practice prenatal physical activity, to control overweight and to avoid smoking (Harper & Rail, 2012;Lupton, 2012). Some scholars have also pointed to the psychological discourses framing pregnancy as a state of psychosocial vulnerability, where pregnant women are expected to manage negative emotions considered a risk, such as anger, guilt or distress (Ballif, 2020). From the governmentality perspective, pregnant women are positioned as self-regulated individuals who bear responsibility for ensuring the health of their foetuses by avoiding any risk.…”

Anticipatory Regimes in Pregnancy: Cross-Fertilising Reproduction and Parenting Culture Studies

“…Normalisation operates both as a disciplinary power relation – at the individual level – and as a biopolitical project – in the public health effort to improve children’s health. The analysis of ‘future images’ in the PU revealed that it is not only pregnant bodies that are targeted but pregnant people’s minds and social lives – their conformity with the dominant norms of proper motherhood ( Ballif, 2020 ). Analysing anticipatory regimes can thus further the understanding of the complex mechanisms that stratify reproduction.…”

“…The ‘government of pregnancy’ ( Ballif, 2020 ; Weir, 1996 ) illustrates the dominance of anticipatory regimes in the reproductive process. Borrowing from Foucault’s (2007) theory of a ‘government of life’, with the ‘government’ of pregnancy, I invoke the networks of power relations and knowledge aimed at regulating pregnancy.…”

“…Against this backdrop, I chose the case of the PU in French-speaking Switzerland because of its unusual ‘psychosocial’ orientation to pregnancy care. In a context where pregnancy care and birth are highly medicalised, 4 the PU’s focus on the psychological, financial and relational aspects of pregnancy signals a shift beyond the ‘medicalisation’ of pregnancy towards a more global surveillance of pregnant women and parents ( Ballif, 2017 , 2020 ). Created in 1986, its services are aimed at the general population, and not specifically at poorer or racialised families, illustrating a growing tendency to problematise all forms of parenting, including in privileged middle-class families ( Lee and Macvarish, 2020 ).…”

“…Third, foetuses can be protected in the name of their potentiality: as ‘future children’ ( Ballif, 2020 ). This is illustrated by the 1998 Reproductive Medicine Act, which sets the ‘well-being of the child’ as the first requirement for the use of ART.…”