The Corporeal Generosity of Maternity

Hird, Myra J.

doi:10.1177/1357034x07074760

Cited by 61 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 38 publications

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“…Hird, 2007;Malson and Swann, 2003). To some extent the women even agreed with pronatalist norms, that wanting a child is the natural order of things, and that a woman who mothers has also achieved her biological destiny.…”

Section: Constructing Differencementioning

confidence: 97%

Silent bodies: Childfree women’s gendered and embodied experiences

Peterson

Engwall

2013

European Journal of Women's Studies

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This article reports from the first studies on voluntary childlessness in Sweden and addresses a so far neglected issue -the embodied experiences of childfree women. These childfree women reject and resist pronatalist understandings that conflate being a woman with being a mother. However, instead of explaining their childlessness by external factors, mentioned in previous research, the interviewed women created a positive feminine identity separated from motherhood with reference to their 'silent bodies', i.e. bodies without a biological urge to reproduce. Reducing voluntary childlessness to a mere result of biological determinism, the article argues, establishes a legitimate, natural position, less provocative and stigmatized in a pronatalist society. Nevertheless, paradoxically, drawing on biological determinism both challenges and reinstates pronatalism as it builds on the simultaneous acceptance of, and detachment from, the biological reproductive urge. The study hence highlights how persistent the social and cultural link between motherhood and womanhood is, but also how this relationship can be challenged.

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Section: Constructing Differencementioning

confidence: 97%

Silent bodies: Childfree women’s gendered and embodied experiences

Peterson

Engwall

2013

European Journal of Women's Studies

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“…Corporeal generosity is particularly evident in the biological and social reproduction so often carried out by women. Drawing on Diprose's work, Hird suggests that what makes pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding potentially transformative is the ‘unanticipated excess of its corporeal generosity, which often goes unrecognized’ (Hird, , p. 5).…”

Section: Corporeal Generositymentioning

confidence: 99%

Breastfeeding Bodies: Intimacies at Work

Lee¹

2017

Gender Work & Organization

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This paper will combine a review of literature on breastfeeding and work with an examination of feminist theory and theories of embodiment. Difficulties accommodating breastfeeding in contemporary workplaces result from problems with how bodies and intimacies are understood. The concept of corporeal generosity is useful in theorizing the intimate relationship involved in breastfeeding. However, it is also essential to recognize that the labour involved in this embodied, relational practice goes largely unvalued. Womenˈs long association with giving has led to the devaluing of reproductive labour and care work. Reconceptualizing work by rethinking the division between productive and reproductive labour is necessary to allow more space for bodies and intimacies.Keywords: breastfeeding, bodies, intimacies, work, social reproduction B reastfeeding involves an embodied, intimate relationship between mother and child. As such, it confounds dualistic ideas about the separation between mind and body, upon which rests our assumptions about the discrete, independent selfhood of the ideal worker. This paper will review literature on breastfeeding and work with feminist theory and theories of embodiment. It will argue that difficulties accommodating breastfeeding in contemporary workplaces result from theoretical issues with how bodies and intimacies are understood, and that addressing these difficulties requires a reconceptualization of bodies, intimacies, and work.The contradictions for women's participation in the public sphere that breastfeeding poses were identified by feminists in both the United Kingdom and the United States (Blum, 2000;Carter, 1995). There is a substantial conflict of interest between the valuing of maternal bodies and worker bodies. Breastfeeding is a key component of intensive mothering, which requires women to be primarily responsible for childcare, at the cost of substantial physical and emotional labour and financial expense. As Hays (1996) argued, intensive mothering represents a central ambivalence about the individualistic requirements of the contemporary labour market. Despite widespread public health promotion campaigns promoting breastfeeding, there continues to be a failure to appropriately recognize and value the corporeal realities of its practice in organizations. Childcare remains highly gendered while the materiality of lactating bodies is rejected.The concept of corporeal generosity (Diprose, 2002) is useful in theorizing the intimate relationship involved in breastfeeding. However, it is also essential to recognize that the labour involved in this embodied, relational practice goes largely unvalued. Women's long association with giving has led to the devaluing of reproductive labour and care work. Rethinking the division between productive and reproductive labour is therefore necessary to allow more space for bodies and intimacies.The first section of this paper explores how currently dominant understandings of bodies shape breastfeeding practices, limiting recognition of the rela...

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“…Where the body does appear in research and scholarship on parental care giving, it is largely in relation to women's bodies through infertility, pregnancy, and breastfeeding (Avishai 2007;Clarke, Martin-Matthews, and Matthews 2006;Draper 2003;Hird 2007;Tapias 2006). In these studies, men enter the picture as people who "encounter" women's bodies (Draper 2003) rather than as embodied beings themselves.…”

Section: Invisible Bodiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A “Choreography of Becoming”: Fathering, Embodied Care, and New Materialisms

Doucet

2013

Canadian Review of Sociology

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Cet article souligne l'absence du corps dans les études sur la division sexuelle des responsabilités parentales et soutient qu'on doit y intégrer le concept clé de l'embodiment masculin dans les soins proférés aux enfants. Issue d'une recherche qualitative qui se penche depuis vingt ans sur les mères pourvoyeuses économiques et les pères pourvoyeurs des soins, je cite les penseurs fondateurs de ce concept (Dorothy E. Smith, Merleau‐Ponty, Bourdieu, Goffman) et aboutis à une réflexion informée par de nouvelles approches matérialistes, en postulant l'indivisibilité ontologique du lien corps/social et l'interrelation entre donneurs et receveurs de soins. L'article se veut une invitation au débat, une réponse tentative à l'exhortation d'Anne Fausto‐Sterling () de “reformuler nos vieilles questions pour pouvoir arriver à une façon systématique d'aborder l'entrelacement corps‐culture” (pp. 1516–1517). This article points to the recurring invisibility of the body in studies of parental care giving and argues that one critical missing link within our understandings of gender differences in care work is that of male embodiment in care giving. Rooted in a two‐decade‐long qualitative and ethnographic research program on breadwinning mothers and care‐giving fathers, I begin with several key thinkers on embodiment (Dorothy E. Smith, Merleau‐Ponty, Bourdieu, Goffman) and I end the article with thinking‐in‐progress, informed by new materialist lenses, and argue for the ontological inseparability of body‐social linkages and care‐giving relations between carers and the cared‐for. This article is an invitation to debate and a quiet taking up of Anne Fausto‐Sterling's (2005) plea that “(w)e need to ask old questions in new ways so that we can think systematically about the interweaving of bodies and culture” (pp. 1516–1517).

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The Corporeal Generosity of Maternity

Cited by 61 publications

References 38 publications

Silent bodies: Childfree women’s gendered and embodied experiences

Silent bodies: Childfree women’s gendered and embodied experiences

Breastfeeding Bodies: Intimacies at Work

A “Choreography of Becoming”: Fathering, Embodied Care, and New Materialisms

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