How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics

From Welfare Reform to Foreclosure to Trump

Laura Briggs

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9780520281912
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520957725
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social History
• Index: Social Sciences

Today all politics are reproductive politics, argues esteemed feminist critic Laura Briggs. From longer work hours to the election of Donald Trump, our current political crisis is above all about reproduction. Households are where we face our economic realities as social safety nets get cut and wages decline. Briggs brilliantly outlines how politicians' racist accounts of reproduction—stories of Black "welfare queens" and Latina "breeding machines"—were the leading wedge in the government and business disinvestment in families. With decreasing wages, rising McJobs, and no resources for family care, our households have grown ever more precarious over the past forty years in sharply race-and class-stratified ways. This crisis, argues Briggs, fuels all others—from immigration to gay marriage, anti-feminism to the rise of the Tea Party.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. “Radical Feminism’s Misogynistic Crusade” or the Conservative Tax Revolt?
• 2. Welfare Reform: The Vicious Campaign to Reform 1 Percent of the Budget
• 3. Offshoring Reproduction
• 4. The Politics and Economy of Reproductive Technology and Black Infant Mortality
• 5. Gay Married, with Children
• Epilogue: The Subprime
• Notes
• Index