(M)otherhood

On the choices of being a woman

Pragya Agarwal

• Publisher: Canongate Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9781838853211
  9781838853167
• eBook ISBN:
  9781838853198
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Extremely open in its honesty and meticulously researched, (M)otherhood probes themes of infertility, childbirth and reproductive justice, and makes a powerful and urgent argument for the need to tackle society's obsession with women's bodies and fertility.

ENDNOTES

INTRODUCTION

1 Swir, A. (1996). Talking to my Body. Washington: Copper Canyon Press.

2 Definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary.

3 Swir, Talking to my Body. Washington: Copper Canyon Press.

4 Cusk, R. (2001). A Life’s Work. Faber & Faber.

5 Friedmann, J. (10 May 2019). ‘Motherhood Is a Political Category’. Medium. https://humanparts.medium.com/motherhood-is-a-political-category-5b5be72b5531

6 Rich, A. (1977). Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution. W.W. Norton & Company.

7 Weil, S. (2001). The Need for Roots: Prelude to a Declaration of Duties Towards Mankind, Routledge 2nd Edn.

8 Shaughnessy, B. (2010). Our Andromeda. Washington: Copper Canyon Press.

9 O’Brien, M. (1981). The Politics of Reproduction. London, Boston and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

10 Schmidt, S. (16 August 2019).‘A Mother, but not a Woman’. Washington Post.

11 Foucault, M. (1978). The History of Sexuality: Volume 1, An Introduction. Translated by R. Hurley. New York: Pantheon Books.

CHAPTER I

1 Brown Sherborn, F. (1925). ‘Preparing the Girl for Motherhood’. The Iowa Homemaker. 5 (7), Article 9.

2 Martin, E. (1991). ‘The Egg and the Sperm: How science has constructed a romance based on stereotypical male–female roles. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 16 (31), 485–501.

3 Campo-Engelstein, L. & Johnson, N.L. (2014). ‘Revisiting “The fertilization fairytale”: an analysis of gendered language used to describe fertilization in science textbooks from middle school to medical school’. Cultural Studies of Science Education. 9, 201–220.

4 Wassarman, P.M. (1999). ‘Mammalian fertilization: Molecular aspects of gamete adhesion, exocytosis, and fusion’. Cell. 96, 175–183.

5 de Beauvoir, S. (1989). The Second Sex. Translated by H.M. Parshley. New York: Vintage.

6 Metoyer, A.B. & Rust, R. (2011). ‘The egg, sperm, and beyond: gendered assumptions in gynecology textbooks’. Women’s Studies. 40 (2), 177–205.

7 Pabst, K., Cépeda, P. et al. (2018). ‘Gender bias in linguistics textbooks: Has anything changed since Macaulay & Brice (1997)?’ Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America. Salt Lake City, UT.

8 Lawrence, S.C., & Bendixen, K. (1992). ‘His and Hers: Male and female anatomy in anatomy texts for US medical students, 1890–1989’. Social Science and Medicine. 35 (7), 925–934.

9 Moore, L.J. & Clarke, A.E. (1995). ‘Clitorial conventions and transgressions: Graphic representations in anatomy texts, c. 1900–1991’. Feminist Studies. 21 (2), 255–301.

10 Braun, V. & Kitzinger, C. (2001). ‘The perfectible vagina: Size matters’, Culture, Health & Sexuality. 3:3, 263–277.

11 Lloyd, E.A. (2005). The Case of the Female Orgasm: Bias in the science of evolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

12 Doan, A.E. & Williams, J.C. (2008). The Politics of Virginity: Abstinence in sex education. Westport, CT: Praeger.

13 Bergvall, V.L., Bing, J.M. & Freed, A.F. (eds). (1996). Rethinking Language and Gender Research: Theory and Practice. London and New York: Longman.

14 Menstrual Health in India, Country Landscape Analysis. Report sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, 2016. National Family Health Survey 2015–16 available from the World Bank.

15 Dasra is one of many new NGOs in India challenging taboos associated with menstruation and working with local government and international partners through grassroot and media campaigns.

16 Pruthi, S. (2012). ‘The Case of Goonj’. Contemporary Issues in Entrepreneurship Research. Volume 2, 1-24. See also: Goonj Blog, 24 August 2020. https://goonj.org/not-just-a-piece-of-cloth/

17 Doniger, W. & Smith, B.K. (1991). The Laws of Manu. London: Penguin Books.

18 Oudshoorn, Merel. (18 April 2019). ‘Indian Temples, Pollution and Menstruating Women’, Leiden Arts in Society blog, https://leidenarts-insocietyblog.nl/articles/indian-temples-pollution-and-menstruating-women">https://leidenarts-insocietyblog.nl/articles/indian-temples-pollution-and-menstruating-women.

19 Jones, I.H. (6 March 1980). ‘Menstruation: the Curse of Eve’. Nursing Times. 76 (10), 404–6.

20 Green, M. (2000). ‘From “Diseases of Women” to “Secrets of Women”: The Transformation of Gynecological Literature in the Later Middle Ages’. Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. 30 (1), 5–39.

21 Clancy, K. (2011). ‘Menstruation is just blood and tissue you ended up not using’. Scientific American blog.

22 McCracken, P. (2003). The Curse of Eve, the Wound of the Hero Blood, Gender, and Medieval Literature. Pennsylvania: University of Pennsylvania Press.

23 Quoted in Webster, S. (2017). ‘The History of the Curse: A Comparative Look at the Religious and Social Taboos of Menstruation and the Influence They Have on American Society Today’, Charlotte: University of North Carolina.

24 Clancy, K. (2011). ‘Menstruation Is Just Blood and Tissue You Ended Up Not Using’. Scientific American blog.

25 Macht, D.I. & Lubin, D.S. (1923). ‘A Phyto-Pharmacological Study of Menstrual Toxin’. Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics. 22 (5) 413–466.

26 Rozin, P., Haidt, J. et al. (1999). ‘Individual Differences in Disgust Sensitivity: Comparisons and Evaluations of Paper-and-Pencil versus Behavioral Measures’. Journal of Research in Personality. 33 (3).

27 Roberts, T.A., Goldenberg, J.L. et al. (2002). ‘“Feminine Protection”: The Effects of Menstruation on Attitudes Towards Women’. Psychology of Women Quarterly. 26 (2), 131–139.

28 The research, which was commissioned by THINX, an innovative period solutions company and makers of period-proof underwear, was reported in the New York Post on 3 January 2018 by Valerie Siebert.

29 Freidenfelds, L. (2009). The Modern Period: Menstruation in Twentieth-Century America. Maryla...

Table of contents

• Introduction
• I. The Age of Innocence
• II. The Age of Defiance
• III. Hobson’s Choice
• IV. Tick-Tock, Tick-Tock
• V. Fruitless Crown
• VI. Half-women Creatures
• VII. The Blue Line
• VIII. Fork in the Road
• IX. Umbilical Cord
• Coda
• Author’s Note
• Acknowledgements
• Resources
• Endnotes
• Permission credits