When a woman in the United States becomes pregnant or tries to become pregnant, she enters a world of information, technology, and expertise. Suddenly her body becomes public in a new way: medicine, law, and popular culture all offer her sometimes contradictory "expert" advice. This text explores the advice offered to pregnant and infertile women by examining assumptions about femininity, class, and the reproductive body that structure the language of expertise. Even advice books written from a specifically countercultural or feminist point of view often attempt to police the way women think about their bodies. The authors here argue that our perceptions about both pregnancy and infertility are limited by our culture's battles over the meaning of choice and control, arguments over what is natural or unnatural, and the troubled relationship between reproduction and the domestic sphere.
- ISBN10 0813524326
- ISBN13 9780813524320
- Publish Date 1 June 1997
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 25 June 2013
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Rutgers University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 224
- Language English