Responsible Bodies: Self-Care and State Power in the U.S. Women, Infants, and Children Program

Mason, Katherine

doi:10.1093/sp/jxv014

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Beginning with this fundamental recognition that parenthood, normative and non-normative, is made through cultural assumptions, social institutions, laboratory techniques and other forces, we can then think more broadly about mass incarceration itself as a reproductive technology. Mass incarceration's reproductive tools are not the Petri dish or embryo transfer catheter, but are the iron bars of jail cells, prison medical systems, institution-sponsored parenting classes, and the policies that preferentially incarcerate the poor and people of colour (Mason, 2016). Thinking more broadly about the carceral system as not simply restricting reproduction and kinship, but as managing and crafting them in particular ways is an important lens through which to understand the robust connections between laboratory reproductive technologies, non-normative kinship, sociopolitically emergent reproductive technologies and reproductive justice.…”

Section: Mothers Behind Barsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Furthermore, social programmes can also operate as technologies in crafting specific forms of familial relatedness and reproduction. Katherine Mason, for instance, demonstrates how the women, infant and children food assistance programme demands and reinforces – in common with many welfare programmes in the USA – an idealized, normative, self-reliant motherhood (Mason, 2016).…”

Section: Mass Incarceration As a Reproductive Technologymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Making mothers in jail: carceral reproduction of normative motherhood

Sufrin¹

2018

Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online

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The over-reliance on incarceration in the USA is a racialized phenomenon which has affected millions of families – disproportionately people of colour – reconfiguring kinship around the criminal legal system. Mass incarceration, then, disrupts conventional modes of reproduction and threatens reproductive justice, separates families and funnels children into foster care, diverts funds from social services into prisons, restricts women's access to abortion and adequate pregnancy care, shackles women in childbirth, and incarcerates people during their prime reproductive years. Beyond these obvious disruptions to reproduction, incarceration also cultivates certain ways of being a parent. Much of the critical literature on mass incarceration focuses on men, largely because of fewer women and masculinist assumptions of the carceral system. This paper looks specifically at how women's reproduction is experienced and managed by carceral institutions, and how mass incarceration itself is a reproductive technology. Based on ethnographic fieldwork at a women's jail, I explore pregnancy and motherhood behind bars. Certain types of mothering are foreclosed, while an idealized version of maternal identity is simultaneously promoted. For many incarcerated women, jail is the only place where they can experience this form of motherhood, as forces of structural violence outside of jail often limit their ability to parent, such as involvement of child welfare institutions, addiction and homelessness. The myriad ways in which incarcerated women's reproduction is suppressed and enabled is a critical lens through which to understand how institutions and forces of racial oppression reinforce idealized notions of motherhood while making them categorically unattainable.

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Section: Mothers Behind Barsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Mass Incarceration As a Reproductive Technologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Making mothers in jail: carceral reproduction of normative motherhood

Sufrin¹

2018

Reproductive Biomedicine & Society Online

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“…First, while there's much valuable research on the disciplining power of institutions that aim at inculcating independence in their subjects, we argue that it is key to examine the interpretive grounds on which this discipline operates. For instance, research on state interventions such as nutrition programs for mothers and infants (Mason 2016), group homes for incarcerated women (Haney 2010), or welfare-to-work programs (Little 1999), show that discourses of dependency as undeserving and morally taint are mobilized to produce self-surveilling subjects that must work toward independence. By applying our insights about the temporal construction of autonomy, as an ever-moving target, we can better understand how this discourse becomes effective.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sociological attention to autonomy has also translated into critical scholarship on people who have lost their legal claims to autonomy, such as the unemployed, mentally ill, addicted, and incarcerated (Gong 2017;Haney 2010;Little 1999;Mason 2016;Seim 2017;Wacquant 2009). For these stigmatized populations, dependence is socially presumed to be a pathological choice (Brodwin 2013;Estroff 1981) and the various transitional institutions designed to deal with them (re-entry programs, welfare reforms, rehabilitation, etc.)…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Autonomy on the horizon: comparing institutional approaches to disability and elder care

Altomonte

Munson

2021

Theor Soc

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This article asks how people come to interpret themselves and others as autonomous given their multiple dependencies. We draw on a cross-case comparison of ethnographic studies with two populations for whom autonomy is both central and problematic: elderly patients in post-acute care, and young adults with disabilities in an independent living program. Analyzing the institutional efforts to make their clients "as independent as possible," we find that staff members at each organization formulate autonomy as a temporal project through an ongoing calibration of open futures, ideal pasts, and situational competence. Constantly adjusting and fine-tuning where in time autonomy "really" is, workers arrange present dependence so that the contours of the future remain open for their clients. In other words, they make use of temporal markers to produce recognizable autonomous subjects whose dependencies are momentary. Theorizing this temporal project enables us to see more clearly how all of us engage in the constant business of "doing" autonomy, and to better understand the role of institutions in producing autonomous selves.

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“…Neoliberal ideologies characterize the work of proper motherhood as expertly and actively managing calculable risks to children, and they ignore how stratified access to public and private resources constrains individual mothers' abilities to do so (Reich 2014). Even safety net programs such as the Women, Infants, and Children Supplemental Nutrition Program (WIC), which specifically support lowincome mothers and children, dictate food choices to encourage mothers' frugality rather than offer adequate assistance to meet families' full nutritional needs (Mason 2016).…”

Section: Gendered Binds Of Providing Basic Needsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Why Don’t They Just Use Cloth?” Gender Policy Vacuums and the Inequalities of Diapering

Randles

2022

Gender & Society

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Drawing on feminist theories of parenting and the welfare state, I analyze experiences of diaper need as a case of how gender, class, and race inequalities shape the social organization of caregiving and limited policy responses. Data from in-depth interviews with 70 mothers who experienced diaper need and 40 diaper bank staff revealed obstacles low-income mothers face in managing lack of access to children’s basic needs and how gendered assumptions of parental responsibility thwart public diaper support efforts. I use this case to theorize gender policy vacuums: These occur when gender disparities and ideologies prevent systematic responses to structural problems. Empirically this study contributes to understandings of diaper need as a problem of the gender structure that cannot be solved with alternative diapering methods that assume middle-class, white, androcentric privileges. Theoretically it illuminates key mechanisms by which feminized care labor is devalued and rendered invisible and how this erasure rationalizes lack of redress for gendered inequalities and creates policy gaps around caregiving.

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Responsible Bodies: Self-Care and State Power in the U.S. Women, Infants, and Children Program

Cited by 8 publications

References 21 publications

Making mothers in jail: carceral reproduction of normative motherhood

Making mothers in jail: carceral reproduction of normative motherhood

Autonomy on the horizon: comparing institutional approaches to disability and elder care

“Why Don’t They Just Use Cloth?” Gender Policy Vacuums and the Inequalities of Diapering

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