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Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes

Works Count: 37732

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This cluster of papers explores the history of reproduction, gender, and healthcare in Britain, covering topics such as medicine, sexuality, pregnancy, psychoanalysis, and childbirth. It delves into the evolution of reproductive practices, societal attitudes towards reproduction, and the intersection of gender with healthcare and medicine throughout history.

Keywords

Reproduction; Gender; Healthcare; Medicine; Britain; Sexuality; Pregnancy; Psychoanalysis; Childbirth; History

The Captured Womb: A History of the Medical Care of Pregnant Women

1988-01-01

Cecilia Benoit , Ann Oakley

How sex changed: a history of transsexuality in the United States

2003-05-01

Joanne Meyerowitz

How Sex Changed is a fascinating social, cultural and medical history of transsexuality in the United States. Joanne Meyerowitz tells a powerful human story about people who had a deep … How Sex Changed is a fascinating social, cultural and medical history of transsexuality in the United States. Joanne Meyerowitz tells a powerful human story about people who had a deep and unshakable desire to transform their bodily sex. In the last century when many challenged the social categories and hierarchies of race, class and gender, transsexuals questioned biological sex itself, the category that seemed most fundamental and fixed of all. From early 20th-century sex experiments in Europe, to the saga of Christine Jorgensen, whose change surgery made headlines in 1952, to today's growing transgender movement, Meyerowitz gives us the first serious history of transsexuality. She focuses on the stories of transsexual men and women themselves, as well as a large supporting cast of doctors, scientists, journalists, lawyers, judges, feminists and gay liberationists, as they debated the big questions of medical ethics, nature versus nurture, self and society, and the scope of human rights. In this story of transsexuality, Meyerowitz shows how new definitions of sex circulated in popular culture, science, medicine and the law, and she elucidates the tidal shifts in our social, moral and medical beliefs over the 20th century, away from sex as an evident biological certainty and toward an understanding of sex as something malleable and complex. How Sex Changed is an intimate story that illuminates the very changes that shape our understanding of sex, gender and sexuality today.

The Second Demographic Transition in Western Countries: An Interpretation

1995-09-28

Ronny Lesthaeghe

Abstract The direction of Western family changes since the 1960s is well known. During the initial phase, roughly between 1955 and 1970, there were three major components of change. First, … Abstract The direction of Western family changes since the 1960s is well known. During the initial phase, roughly between 1955 and 1970, there were three major components of change. First, the already upward divorce trend accelerated considerably. Second, the baby boom came to an end. Fertility declined at all ages and marriage durations simultaneously. These trends coincided with the contraceptive revolution, based on new hormonal contraceptives and the rediscovery of the intra-uterine device. Third, the decline in ages at marriage, which had started between 1880 and 1920 in most Western countries, stopped. Instead, the proportion of marriages occurring before the age of 25 dropped considerably. Near the end of the 1960s, several countries also experienced a temporary increase in shotgun marriages: premarital sex had been on the increase throughout the 1960s, and contraceptive protection in such relations was not yet efficient enough. In most countries this feature disappeared during the early 1970s. In others, a problem of teenage pregnancy persisted.

Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750 to 1950

1987-06-01

Sylvia D. Hoffert , Judith Walzer Leavitt

Journal Article Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750 to 1950. By Judith Walzer Leavitt. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. xi + 284 pp. $21.95.) Get access Sylvia D. … Journal Article Brought to Bed: Childbearing in America, 1750 to 1950. By Judith Walzer Leavitt. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. xi + 284 pp. $21.95.) Get access Sylvia D. Hoffert Sylvia D. Hoffert St. Louis Country Day School Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 74, Issue 1, June 1987, Pages 145–146, https://doi.org/10.2307/1908517 Published: 01 June 1987

Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives

1998-01-01

Jeremy Freese , Brian Powell , Frank J. Sulloway

Why do people raised in the same families often differ more dramatically in personality than those from different families? What made Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin and Voltaire uniquely suited to … Why do people raised in the same families often differ more dramatically in personality than those from different families? What made Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin and Voltaire uniquely suited to challenge the conventional wisdom of their times? This pioneering inquiry into the significance of birth order answers both these questions with a conceptional boldness that has made critics compare it with the work of Freud and of Darwin himself. During Frank Sulloway's 20-year-research, he combed through thousands of lives in politics, science and religion, demonstrating that first-born children are more likely to identify with authority whereas their younger siblings are predisposed to rise against it. Family dynamics, Sulloway concludes, is a primary engine of historical change. Elegantly written, masterfully researched, BORN TO REBEL is a grand achievement that has galvanised historians and social scientists and will fascinate anyone who has ever pondered the enigma of human character.

The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction

1988-06-01

Sylvia D. Hoffert , Emily Martin

Journal Article The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. By Emily Martin. (Boston: Beacon, 1987. xiii + 276 pp. $21.95.) Get access Sylvia D. Hoffert Sylvia D. … Journal Article The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction. By Emily Martin. (Boston: Beacon, 1987. xiii + 276 pp. $21.95.) Get access Sylvia D. Hoffert Sylvia D. Hoffert St. Louis Country Day School Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 75, Issue 1, June 1988, Pages 228–229, https://doi.org/10.2307/1889681 Published: 01 June 1988

Golden age to separate spheres? A review of the categories and chronology of English women's history

1993-06-01

Amanda Vickery

ABSTRACT Two very powerful stories structure the history of the changing roles of English women. The tale of the nineteenth-century separation of the spheres of public power and private domesticity … ABSTRACT Two very powerful stories structure the history of the changing roles of English women. The tale of the nineteenth-century separation of the spheres of public power and private domesticity relates principally to the experience of middle-class women. The other story, emerging from early modern scholarship, recounts the social and economic marginalization of propertied women and the degradation of working women as a consequence of capitalism. Both narratives echo each other in important ways, although strangely the capacity of women's history to repeat itself is rarely openly discussed. This paper critically reviews the two historiographies in order to open debate on the basic categories and chronologies we employ in discussing the experience, power and identity of women in past time.

Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel.

1989-01-01

James Grantham Turner , Nancy Armstrong

In this strikingly original treatment of the rise of the novel, Nancy Armstrong argues that the novels and non- fiction written by and for women in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England … In this strikingly original treatment of the rise of the novel, Nancy Armstrong argues that the novels and non- fiction written by and for women in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England paved the way for the rise of the modern English middle class. Most critical studies of the novel mistakenly locate political power exclusively in the official institutions of state, ignoring the political domain over which women hold authority, which includes courtship practices, family relations, and the use of leisure time. To remedy this, Armstrong provides a dual analysis, tracing both the rise of the novel and the evolution of female authority as part of one phenomenon.

The Making of Man-Midwifery: Childbirth in England, 1660-1770.

1996-05-01

Ann Giardina Hess , Adrian Wilson

In England in the seventeenth century, childbirth was the province of women. The midwife ran the birth, helped by female gossips; men, including the doctors of the day, were excluded … In England in the seventeenth century, childbirth was the province of women. The midwife ran the birth, helped by female gossips; men, including the doctors of the day, were excluded both from the delivery and from the subsequent month of lying-in.But in the eighteenth century there emerged a new practitioner: the man-midwife who acted in lieu of a midwife and delivered normal births. By the late eighteenth century, men-midwives had achieved a permanent place in the management of childbirth, especially in the most lucrative spheres of practice.Why did women desert the traditional midwife? How was it that a domain of female control and collective solidarity became instead a region of male medical practice? What had broken down the barrier that had formerly excluded the male practitioner from the management of birth?This confident and authoritative work explores and explains a remarkable transformation--a shift not just in medical practices but in gender relations. Exploring the sociocultural dimensions of childbirth, Wilson argues with great skill that it was not the desires of medical men but the choices of mothers that summoned man-midwifery into being.

The science of woman: gynaecology and gender in England, 1800-1929

1991-01-01

Ornella Moscucci

Introduction Part I. The Problem of Femininity: 1. Woman's sexuality and population concerns 2. Woman's place in nature 3. Nature and the environment 4. A theory of femininity 5. Physiology … Introduction Part I. The Problem of Femininity: 1. Woman's sexuality and population concerns 2. Woman's place in nature 3. Nature and the environment 4. A theory of femininity 5. Physiology and social roles Part II. Men-Midwives and Medicine: The Origins of a Profession: 6. Midwives and accoucheurs 7. The 'obstetric revolution' and eighteenth-century medical politics 8. The nineteenth century: obstetrics, gynaecology and general practice 9. Educated accoucheurs Part III. The Rise of the Women's Hospitals: 10. Hospitals, specialists and nineteenth-century medicine 11. The first women's hospital 12. A moral institution 13. The Chelsea Hospital for Women Part IV. Woman and her diseases: 14. The pathology of femininity 15. Surgical analysis 16. Penetrating private parts: the 'speculum question' 17. Precept and practice Part V. The 'Unsexing' of Women: 18. Early controversies 19. A question of values 20. Pathological pregnancies 21. The triumph of ovariotomy 22. The Imlach affair Part VI. From the British Gynaecological Society to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists: 23. The 'handcuffed obstetrician' 24. The Meadows incident 25. A British gynaecological society 26. A college of obstetricians and gynaecologists 27. Restructuring the profession Conclusion Appendix Notes Bibliography.

Contested Lives: The Abortion Debate in an American Community

1991-01-01

Carol J. Greenhouse , Faye Ginsburg

Based on the struggle over a Fargo, North Dakota, abortion clinic, Contested Lives explores one of the central social conflicts of our time. Both wide-ranging and rich in detail, it … Based on the struggle over a Fargo, North Dakota, abortion clinic, Contested Lives explores one of the central social conflicts of our time. Both wide-ranging and rich in detail, it speaks not simply to the abortion issue but also to the critical role of women s political activism.

Racism and Research: The Case of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study

1978-12-01

Allan M. Brandt

In 1932 the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) initiated an experiment in Macon County, Alabama, to determine the natural course of untreated, latent syphilis in black males. The test comprised … In 1932 the U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) initiated an experiment in Macon County, Alabama, to determine the natural course of untreated, latent syphilis in black males. The test comprised 400 syphilitic men, as well as 200 uninfected men who served as controls. The first published report of the study appeared in 1936 with subsequent papers issued every four to six years, through the 1960s. When penicillin became widely available by the early 1950s as the preferred treatment for syphilis, the men did not receive therapy. In fact on several occasions, the USPHS actually sought to prevent treatment. Moreover, a committee at the federally operated Center for Disease Control decided in 1969 that the study should be continued. Only in 1972, when accounts of the study first appeared in the national press, did the Department of Health, Education and Welfare halt the experiment.

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Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England.

1990-06-01

Susan Kingsley Kent , Mary Poovey

Mary Poovey's Proper Lady and the Woman Writer has become a standard text in feminist literary discourse. In Uneven Developments Poovey turns to broader historical concerns in an analysis of … Mary Poovey's Proper Lady and the Woman Writer has become a standard text in feminist literary discourse. In Uneven Developments Poovey turns to broader historical concerns in an analysis of how notions of gender shape ideology. Asserting that the organization of sexual difference is a social, not natural, phenomenon, Poovey shows how representations of gender took the form of a binary opposition in mid-Victorian culture. She then reveals the role of this opposition in various discourses and institutions-medical, legal, moral, and literary. The resulting oppositions, partly because they depended on the subordination of one term to another, were always unstable. Poovey contends that this instability helps explain why various institutional versions of binary logic developed unevenly. This unevenness, in turn, helped to account for the emergence in the 1850s of a genuine oppositional voice: the voice of an organized, politicized feminist movement. Drawing on a wide range of sources-parliamentary debates, novels, medical lectures, feminist analyses of work, middle-class periodicals on demesticity-Poovey examines various controversies that provide glimpses of the ways in which representations of gender were simultaneously constructed, deployed, and contested. These include debates about the use of chloroform in childbirth, the first divorce law, the professional status of writers, the plight of governesses, and the nature of the nursing corps. Uneven Developments is a contribution to the feminist analysis of culture and ideology that challenges the isolation of literary texts from other kinds of writing and the isolation of women's issues from economic and political histories.

Brave new families: stories of domestic upheaval in late twentieth century America

1991-01-01

Judith Stacey

Judith Stacey has added a new preface to her classic study of how the traditional nuclear family has been supplanted by a variety of new relationships that are not defined … Judith Stacey has added a new preface to her classic study of how the traditional nuclear family has been supplanted by a variety of new relationships that are not defined by blood ties and traditional gender roles.

Organizational Repertoires and Institutional Change: Women's Groups and the Transformation of U.S. Politics, 1890-1920

1993-01-01

Elisabeth S. Clemens

Although social movements are often presumed to cause change, the dominant theoretical accounts lead to the opposite conclusion. To explain how challenging movements do produce institutional change, this article introduces … Although social movements are often presumed to cause change, the dominant theoretical accounts lead to the opposite conclusion. To explain how challenging movements do produce institutional change, this article introduces the concept of organizational repertoires. Groups marginalized by existing political institutions have an incentive to develop alternative models of organization. These alternative models, in turn, are more likely to be adopted by other political actors to the extent that they embody familiar, but previously nonpolitical, forms of organization. This argument is illustrated with an analysis of political innovation by women's groups in the United States at the trun of the century.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study, 1932 to 1972: implications for HIV education and AIDS risk education programs in the black community.

1991-11-01

Stephen B. Thomas , Sandra Crouse Quinn

The Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis in the Negro male is the longest nontherapeutic experiment on human beings in medical history. The strategies used to recruit and retain participants were … The Tuskegee study of untreated syphilis in the Negro male is the longest nontherapeutic experiment on human beings in medical history. The strategies used to recruit and retain participants were quite similar to those being advocated for HIV/AIDS prevention programs today. Almost 60 years after the study began, there remains a trail of distrust and suspicion that hampers HIV education efforts in Black communities. The AIDS epidemic has exposed the Tuskegee study as a historical marker for the legitimate discontent of Blacks with the public health system. The belief that AIDS is a form of genocide is rooted in a social context in which Black Americans, faced with persistent inequality, believe in conspiracy theories about Whites against Blacks. These theories range from the belief that the government promotes drug abuse in Black communities to the belief that HIV is a manmade weapon of racial warfare. An open and honest discussion of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study can facilitate the process of rebuilding trust between the Black community and public health authorities. This dialogue can contribute to the development of HIV education programs that are scientifically sound, culturally sensitive, and ethnically acceptable.

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Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud

1994-01-01

Susan D. Amussen , Thomas Laqueur

This is a book about the making and unmaking of sex over the centuries. It tells the astonishing story of sex in the West from the ancients to the moderns … This is a book about the making and unmaking of sex over the centuries. It tells the astonishing story of sex in the West from the ancients to the moderns in a precise account of developments in reproductive anatomy and physiology. We cannot fail to recognize the players in Thomas Laqueur's story--the human sexual organs and pleasures, food, blood, semen, egg, sperm--but we will be amazed at the plots into which they have been woven by scientists, political activists, literary figures, and theorists of every stripe. Laqueur begins with the question of why, in the late eighteenth century, woman's orgasm came to be regarded as irrelevant to conception, and he then proceeds to retrace the dramatic changes in Western views of sexual characteristics over two millennia. Along the way, two masterplots emerge. In the one-sex story, woman is an imperfect version of man, and her anatomy and physiology are construed accordingly: the vagina is seen as an interior penis, the womb as a scrotum, the ovaries as testicles. The body is thus a representation, not the foundation, of social gender. The second plot tends to dominate post-Enlightenment thinking while the one-sex model is firmly rooted in classical learning. The two-sex story says that the body determines gender differences, that woman is the opposite of man with incommensurably different organs, functions, and feelings. The two plots overlap; neither ever holds a monopoly. Science may establish many new facts, but even so, Laqueur argues, science was only providing a new way of speaking, a rhetoric and not a key to female liberation or to social progress. Making Sex ends with Freud, who denied the neurological evidence to insistthat, as a girl becomes a woman, the locus of her sexual pleasure shifts from the clitoris to the vagina; she becomes what culture demands despite, not because of, the body. Turning Freud's famous dictum around, Laqueur posits that destiny is anatomy. Sex, in other words, is an artifice. This is a powerful story, written with verve and a keen sense of telling detail (be it technically rigorous or scabrously fanciful). Making Sex will stimulate thought, whether argument or surprised agreement, in a wide range of readers.

The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800.

1979-02-01

Alan Macfarlane , Lawrence Stone

This book studies the evolution of the family from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century and how the process radically influenced child-rearing, education, contraception, sexual behaviour and marriage. This book studies the evolution of the family from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century and how the process radically influenced child-rearing, education, contraception, sexual behaviour and marriage.

Goodman and Gilman's the Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics

2002-06-01

J Thompson Coon

The Importance of Social Intervention in Britain's Mortality Decline c.1850–1914: a Re-interpretation of the Role of Public Health

1988-01-01

Simon Szreter

The Importance of Social Intervention in Britain's Mortality Decline c.1850–1914: a Re-interpretation of the Role of Public Health Get access SIMON SZRETER SIMON SZRETER *Gonville and Caius CollegeCambridge CB2 1TA … The Importance of Social Intervention in Britain's Mortality Decline c.1850–1914: a Re-interpretation of the Role of Public Health Get access SIMON SZRETER SIMON SZRETER *Gonville and Caius CollegeCambridge CB2 1TA Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social History of Medicine, Volume 1, Issue 1, April 1988, Pages 1–38, https://doi.org/10.1093/shm/1.1.1 Published: 01 April 1988

The descent of man and selection in relation to sex

1907-01-01

ダーウィンチャールス , 田中茂穂

Introduction <sc>The</sc> nature of the following work will be best understood by a brief account of how it came to be written. During many years I collected notes on the … Introduction <sc>The</sc> nature of the following work will be best understood by a brief account of how it came to be written. During many years I collected notes on the origin or descent of man, without any intention of publishing on the subject, but...

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The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830-1980

1986-01-01

Suzann Bick , Elaine Showalter

Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America.

1993-09-01

Ann J. Lane , Ellen Chesler

Journal Article Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America. By Ellen Chesler. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. 639 pp. $27.50, ISBN 0-671-60088-5.) Get access … Journal Article Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America. By Ellen Chesler. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992. 639 pp. $27.50, ISBN 0-671-60088-5.) Get access Ann J. Lane Ann J. Lane University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 80, Issue 2, September 1993, Pages 722–723, https://doi.org/10.2307/2079984 Published: 01 September 1993

Midwives in history and society

1987-01-01

Margaret Stacey

Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance.

1993-06-01

James A. Brundage , John M. Riddle

Tribute to Patrick Steptoe: beginnings of laparoscopy

1989-11-01

R. G. Edwards

Journal Article Tribute to Patrick Steptoe: beginnings of laparoscopy Get access R. G. Edwards R. G. Edwards Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar … Journal Article Tribute to Patrick Steptoe: beginnings of laparoscopy Get access R. G. Edwards R. G. Edwards Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Human Reproduction, Volume 4, Issue suppl_1, 1 November 1989, Pages 1–9, https://doi.org/10.1093/humrep/4.suppl_1.1 Published: 01 November 1989

The captured womb: A history of the medical care of pregnant women

1985-01-01

Meg Stacey

A critical assessment of the “sterile womb” and “in utero colonization” hypotheses: implications for research on the pioneer infant microbiome

2017-04-28

María Elisa Pérez-Muñoz , Marie‐Claire Arrieta , Amanda E. Ramer‐Tait +1 more

After more than a century of active research, the notion that the human fetal environment is sterile and that the neonate's microbiome is acquired during and after birth was an … After more than a century of active research, the notion that the human fetal environment is sterile and that the neonate's microbiome is acquired during and after birth was an accepted dogma. However, recent studies using molecular techniques suggest bacterial communities in the placenta, amniotic fluid, and meconium from healthy pregnancies. These findings have led many scientists to challenge the "sterile womb paradigm" and propose that microbiome acquisition instead begins in utero, an idea that would fundamentally change our understanding of gut microbiota acquisition and its role in human development. In this review, we provide a critical assessment of the evidence supporting these two opposing hypotheses, specifically as it relates to (i) anatomical, immunological, and physiological characteristics of the placenta and fetus; (ii) the research methods currently used to study microbial populations in the intrauterine environment; (iii) the fecal microbiome during the first days of life; and (iv) the generation of axenic animals and humans. Based on this analysis, we argue that the evidence in support of the "in utero colonization hypothesis" is extremely weak as it is founded almost entirely on studies that (i) used molecular approaches with an insufficient detection limit to study "low-biomass" microbial populations, (ii) lacked appropriate controls for contamination, and (iii) failed to provide evidence of bacterial viability. Most importantly, the ability to reliably derive axenic animals via cesarean sections strongly supports sterility of the fetal environment in mammals. We conclude that current scientific evidence does not support the existence of microbiomes within the healthy fetal milieu, which has implications for the development of clinical practices that prevent microbiome perturbations after birth and the establishment of future research priorities.

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Lying-In: A History of Childbirth in America

1978-12-01

Ronald L. Numbers , Richard W. Wertz , Dorothy C. Wertz

Journal Article Lying-In: A History of Childbirth in America. By Richard W. Wertz and Dorothy C. Wertz. (New York: Free Press, 1977. xii + 260 pp. Illustrations, charts, notes, bibliography, … Journal Article Lying-In: A History of Childbirth in America. By Richard W. Wertz and Dorothy C. Wertz. (New York: Free Press, 1977. xii + 260 pp. Illustrations, charts, notes, bibliography, and index. $10.00.) Get access Ronald L. Numbers Ronald L. Numbers University of Wisconsin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 65, Issue 3, December 1978, Pages 743–744, https://doi.org/10.2307/1901434 Published: 01 December 1978

Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality since 1800

1983-02-01

D. L. LeMahieu , Jeffery Weeks

A pioneering study which has become an established classic in its field, Sex, Politics and Society provides a lucid and comprehensive analysis of the transformations of British sexual life from … A pioneering study which has become an established classic in its field, Sex, Politics and Society provides a lucid and comprehensive analysis of the transformations of British sexual life from 1800 to the present. These changes are firmly located in the wider context of British social, political and cultural life, from industrialization, urbanisation and the impact of Empire and colonisation, through the experience of economic disruption, World Wars, the establishment of the welfare state, changing patterns of gender and the emergence of new sexual identities. This book also charts the rise of both progressive and conservative social movements, including feminism, LGBT activism, and fundamentalist movements. It is a history where the past continues to live in the present, and where the present provides ever more complex, and often controversial patterns of sexual life, with sexual and gender issues at the heart of contemporary politics. 　 Now fully revised and updated, this edition examines key new developments including: the impact of globalisation, and the digital revolution; gender nonconformity and the rise of transgender consciousness; shifting family and relational patterns, and new forms of intimacy; changes in reproductive technology including the debates on IVF and surrogacy;　　　　　　　　 new discourses of equality and sexual rights for LGBT people; the irresistible rise of same-sex marriage; the weakening of the heterosexual/ homosexual binary divide and the development of new lines of concern and divisions in the politics of sexuality. Combining rich empirical detail with innovative theoretical insights, Sex, Politics and Society remains at the cutting edge of the subject, and this fourth edition will inspire and provoke a whole new generation of readers in history, sociology, social policy and critical sexuality studies.

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Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood

1985-12-01

Mary Joe Neitz , Kristin Luker

A new paradigm for the sociology of childhood?

2015-05-08

Alan Prout , Allison James

This chapter presents emergent paradigm as an approach to the study of childhood and encapsulates what people feel to be the nature of the social institution of childhood. The immaturity … This chapter presents emergent paradigm as an approach to the study of childhood and encapsulates what people feel to be the nature of the social institution of childhood. The immaturity of children is a biological fact of life but the ways in which this immaturity is understood and made meaningful are a fact of culture. It is these facts of culture which may vary and which can be said to make of childhood a social institution. This chapter traces the origins of the approach, analyzes its benefits and outlines some issues confronted in its further development. It also shows the ways in which the socio-political context made possible alternative approaches to childhood study as the experience of childhood changed for children. People locate these changes in relation to the new theoretical directions taken by the social sciences and points to the potential which the emergent paradigm has for future developments in childhood sociology.

Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era

1989-01-01

Winifred D. Wandersee , Elaine Tyler May

Rewriting the soul: multiple personality and the sciences of memory

1995-11-01

Some years ago, one could list by name the tiny number of multiple personalities recorded in the history of Western medicine, but today hundreds of people receive treatment for dissociative … Some years ago, one could list by name the tiny number of multiple personalities recorded in the history of Western medicine, but today hundreds of people receive treatment for dissociative disorders in every sizeable town in North America. Clinicians, backed by a grassroots movement of patients and therapists, find child sexual abuse to be the primary cause of the illness, while critics accuse the community of fostering false memories of childhood trauma. Here, the distinguished philosopher Ian Hacking uses the MPD epidemic and its links with the contemporary concept of child abuse to scrutinize today's moral and political climate, especially our power struggles about memory and our efforts to cope with psychological injury. What is it like to suffer from multiple personality? Most diagnosed patients are women: why should gender matter? How does defining an illness affect the behaviour of those who suffer from it, And, more generally, how do systems of knowledge about kinds of people interact with the people who are known about? Answering these and similar questions, Hacking explores the development of the modern multiple personality movement. He then turns to a fascinating series of historical vignettes about an earlier wave of multiples, people who were diagnosed when new ways of thinking about memory emerged, particularly in France, toward the end of the nineteenth century. Made possible by these nineteenth-century developments, the current outbreak of dissociative disorders is embedded in new political settings. This study concludes with a powerful analysis linking historical and contemporary material in a fresh contribution to the archaeology of knowledge.

Sexual Dissidence

1991-08-22

Jonathan Dollimore

Abstract Why is homosexuality socially marginal yet symbolically central? Why, in other words, is it so strangely integral to the very societies which obsessively denounce it, and why is it … Abstract Why is homosexuality socially marginal yet symbolically central? Why, in other words, is it so strangely integral to the very societies which obsessively denounce it, and why is it history, rather than human nature, which has produced this paradoxical position? These are just some of the questions explored in this wide-ranging study of sexual dissidence which returns to the early modern period in order to focus, question, and develop issues of postmodernity. In the process, it links writers as diverse as William Shakespeare, André Gide, Oscar Wilde, and Jean Genet, and cultural critics as different as St. Augustine, Sigmund Freud, Frantz Fanon, Michel Foucault, and Monique Wittig. Freud's theory of perversion is discovered to be more challenging than either his critics or his advocates usually allow, especially when approached via the earlier period's archetypal perverts, the religious heretic and the wayward woman, Satan and Eve. The book further shows how the literature, histories, and sub-cultures of sexual and gender dissidence prove remarkably illuminating for current debates in literary theory, psychoanalysis, and cultural materialism. It includes chapters on transgression and its containment, contemporary theories of sexual difference, homophobia, the gay sensibility, transvestite literature in the culture and theatre of Renaissance England, homosexuality, and race.

Disciplining Reproduction

1998-12-31

Adele E. Clarke

Reproductive issues from sex and contraception to abortion and cloning have been controversial for centuries, and scientists who attempted to turn the study of reproduction into a discipline faced an … Reproductive issues from sex and contraception to abortion and cloning have been controversial for centuries, and scientists who attempted to turn the study of reproduction into a discipline faced an uphill struggle. Adele Clarke's engrossing story of the search for reproductive knowledge across the twentieth century is colorful and fraught with conflict. Modern scientific study of reproduction, human and animal, began in the United States in an overlapping triad of fields: biology, medicine, and agriculture. Clarke traces the complicated paths through which physiological approaches to reproduction led to endocrinological approaches, creating along the way new technoscientific products from contraceptives to hormone therapies to new modes of assisted conception--for both humans and animals. She focuses on the changing relations and often uneasy collaborations among scientists and the key social worlds most interested in their work--major philanthropists and a wide array of feminist and medical birth control and eugenics advocates--and recounts vividly how the reproductive sciences slowly acquired standing. By the 1960s, reproduction was disciplined, and the young and contested scientific enterprise proved remarkably successful at attracting private funding and support. But the controversies continue as women--the targeted consumers--create their own reproductive agendas around the world. Elucidating the deep cultural tensions that have permeated reproductive topics historically and in the present, Disciplining Reproduction gets to the heart of the twentieth century's drive to rationalize reproduction, human and nonhuman, in order to control life itself.

A manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s

1987-03-01

Donna Haraway

The mind has no sex?: women in the origins of modern science

1990-02-01

Introduction

2025-06-24

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Branding Birth Control

2025-06-24

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Conclusion

2025-06-24

| Cambridge University Press eBooks

Anna Bonnell Freidin, Birthing Romans: Childbearing and Its Risks in Imperial Rome (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2024). Pages xxi + 314. Hardback £38.00, eBook £38.00.

2025-06-23

Sheena Finnigan | Continuity and Change

Zur Visualisierung von „Unaussprechlichem“: Geschlechtskrankheiten auf der „Großen Ausstellung für Gesundheitspflege, soziale Fürsorge und Leibesübungen“ (GeSoLei) 1926

2025-06-20

Matthis Krischel , Sarah Czirr , Friedrich Moll | Deleted Journal

Zusammenfassung Die GeSoLei (Große Ausstellung für Gesundheitspflege, soziale Fürsorge und Leibesübungen) in Düsseldorf im Jahr 1926 war nicht nur eine der größten Ausstellungen der Weimarer Republik. Im Zentrum stand die … Zusammenfassung Die GeSoLei (Große Ausstellung für Gesundheitspflege, soziale Fürsorge und Leibesübungen) in Düsseldorf im Jahr 1926 war nicht nur eine der größten Ausstellungen der Weimarer Republik. Im Zentrum stand die oft visuelle Vermittlung von Gesundheitsthemen – darunter auch die Präsentation von Geschlechtskrankheiten. Diese Themen wurden im Spannungsfeld von medizinischer Aufklärung, moralischer Normierung und ästhetischer Inszenierung vermittelt. Die Abteilung „Volkskrankheiten, Volksgebrechen, Volksunsitten“ (Hauptabteilung Soziale Fürsorge) vermittelte Informationen über Tuberkulose, Alkoholismus und Syphiliserkrankungen, die nicht nur medizinisch, sondern auch sozial und moralisch aufgeladen waren. Anhand von Schautafeln, Moulagen und interaktiven Exponaten wurde der Zusammenhang von Sexualität, Krankheit und gesellschaftlicher Verantwortung betont. Die visuelle Strategie folgte dabei einem pädagogischen und oft abschreckenden Prinzip, das durch standardisierte Darstellungsformen eine massentaugliche Ansprache ermöglichte. Die Ausstellung integrierte neben dem Leitkonzept der Sozialhygiene auch Rassen- und Erbgesundheitslehre und rückte Geschlechtskrankheiten in den Kontext der „Volksgesundheit“ und „rationalen Menschenwirtschaft“. Aspekte sexueller Vielfalt oder der Sexualwissenschaft, wie sie etwa von Magnus Hirschfeld vertreten wurden, blieben hingegen ausgespart. Dieser Beitrag analysiert die visuelle und konzeptionelle Ausstellung von Geschlechtskrankheiten auf der GeSoLei als exemplarisches Beispiel für die Medikalisierung und Moralisierung von Sexualität im frühen 20. Jahrhundert – eingebettet in ein komplexes Gefüge aus Wissenschaft, Gesellschaft, Politik und Ästhetik.

Discomforting the Binary: Genealogical and Somaesthetic Critiques of Sex Designation

2025-06-19

Mark Tschaepe | Contemporary Pragmatism

Abstract This paper draws on Michel Foucault’s genealogy and Richard Shusterman’s somaesthetics to analyze and resist the resurgence of legally enforced sexual binarism in the U.S., U.K., and New Zealand. … Abstract This paper draws on Michel Foucault’s genealogy and Richard Shusterman’s somaesthetics to analyze and resist the resurgence of legally enforced sexual binarism in the U.S., U.K., and New Zealand. These laws reflect biopolitical mechanisms that normalize and exclude intersex, trans, and non-binary individuals. Framing “sex” as a regulatory fiction, the paper integrates Foucault’s critique of biopower with Shusterman’s pragmatic focus on embodied experience. I propose a somaesthetics of discomfort —a practice that views bodily misfitting not as pathology but as a prompt for critical inquiry. Through recent biological inquiry and memoir, the paper offers a pragmatist intervention that resists essentialism and affirms somatic experience as a site of knowledge and transformative resistance.

Lineage

2025-06-19

Karin Wulf | Oxford University Press eBooks

Abstract Lineage tells the story of genealogy’s attraction and power, for individuals, families, and institutions alike, in eighteenth-century British America. In early America, people produced a profusion of information about … Abstract Lineage tells the story of genealogy’s attraction and power, for individuals, families, and institutions alike, in eighteenth-century British America. In early America, people produced a profusion of information about their family connections, often because they were moved to write or create genealogies but also because they were required to by their church or their local government or a court. They created all manner of textual genealogies on sheets and scraps of bound and loose paper, in account books and in the blank pages and margins of printed books, but also in images and material form. The power in family connections was governmental, legal, and religious, as well as cultural and social, echoing the structures of Britain itself—but in the American context it also structured slavery and freedom in which, despite the patriarchy of law and society, children’s status was determined by their mother’s. The twin forces of intimate meaning and instrumental purpose made genealogy in British America distinctly potent. In archives from across British America, from Georgia to Maine, the importance of genealogy is clear through family records, private and public material culture, court records, and more, created by people across the socioeconomic spectrum, from enslaved people seeking freedom as well as “founding fathers” seeking status. While the American Revolution wrought changes in American society, it did not disrupt the signal importance of genealogy or the powerful cultural logic of lineage—a legacy from the colonial period that would continue to mark the United States beyond its early history.

Making New York City the Abortion Capital

2025-06-17

| University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc. eBooks

Follies (1836–1837)

2025-06-17

| Yale University Press eBooks

Turning points in socialist medicine: transnational influences, psychologization and class in East-Central European expertise on premature children, 1950s–1980s

2025-06-16

Kateřina Lišková , Natalia Jarska , Annina Gagyiova +2 more | Continuity and Change

Abstract Socialist states aspired to create modern, egalitarian societies with healthy citizens. Over the four decades of state socialism, experts debated whether premature children could achieve normal long-term mental development … Abstract Socialist states aspired to create modern, egalitarian societies with healthy citizens. Over the four decades of state socialism, experts debated whether premature children could achieve normal long-term mental development and full societal integration. This article analyses expertise networks to comparatively explore medical discussions regarding premature infants’ long-term development in Hungary, Poland, East Germany and Czechoslovakia. We examine how medical expertise interacted with psychology and sociology, analysing the shifting impact of these disciplines across time and space and how state–expertise relationships differed among disciplines. Two significant turning points emerge. First, in the late 1950s and early 1960s, psychology’s resurgence facilitated the identification of mental delays in preterm children, sparking systematic expert interest in their development. Second, beginning in the early 1970s, experts inspired by transnational knowledge exchange emphasized socio-environmental factors’ influence. While East-Central European experts referenced their Western counterparts, they diverged in framing gender and class dynamics. Socialist experts adopted a less gendered approach to parental roles, contrasting with Western studies emphasizing maternal care and paternal occupation. Although less classist than Western perspectives, 1970s medical expertise incorporated class indicators to analyse premature children’s socio-environments, aligning with country-specific sociological approaches. These developments indicate broader societal shifts within socialist societies.

Book Review: Hot Flash: How the Law Ignores Menopause and What We Can Do About It , By Emily Gold Waldman, Bridget J. Crawford, and Naomi R. Cahn Hot Flash: How the Law Ignores Menopause and What We Can Do About It. By WaldmanEmily GoldCrawfordBridget J.CahnNaomi R.Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2024, 216 pp., $25.00 (cloth and e-book).

2025-06-12

Naomi Schoenbaum | Gender & Society

“Saying Madness”

2025-06-12

Suzanne Scafe | Routledge eBooks

Ari Friedlander. Rogue Sexuality in Early Modern English Literature: Desire, Status, Biopolitics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.

2025-06-10

Gillian Knoll | Early Theatre

This review considers Ari Friedlander's Rogue Sexuality in Early Modern English Literature: Desire, Status, Biopolitics. This review considers Ari Friedlander's Rogue Sexuality in Early Modern English Literature: Desire, Status, Biopolitics.

Joseph Gamble. Sex Lives: Intimate Infrastructures in Early Modernity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023.

2025-06-10

Mario DiGangi | Early Theatre

This review considers Joseph Gamble's Sex Lives: Intimate Infrastructures in Early Modernity. This review considers Joseph Gamble's Sex Lives: Intimate Infrastructures in Early Modernity.

‘For the benefit of mothers and children:’ welfare, daycare, and cheap labor in the 1960s

2025-06-09

Vanessa May | Women s History Review

Looking at Laurie; reconsidering an image of ‘madness’

2025-06-06

David Staton | Visual Studies

« Un cerveau d’homme dans un corps de femme » : le problème du sexe « psychique » chez Valentin Magnan et Samuel Pozzi (1911)

2025-06-01

Mathias Winter | L Évolution Psychiatrique

Geburtsräume

2025-06-01

Anka Dür | Hebamme

The Garden in Our Backyard—The Postwar Decades

2025-05-31

| Amsterdam University Press eBooks

<The Bride Who Had a Child on Her First Night> and <The Husband Who Was Too Generous> the Epic Meaning of ‘Telling’ and ‘Not Telling’ of Trust

2025-05-31

Juong-Hee Kim | The Research of the Korean Classic

This paper analyzes how ‘telling’ and ‘not telling’ affect trust in a couple’s relationship by comparing ‘The Bride Who Gave Birth on the First Night’ and ‘The Generous Husband’. To … This paper analyzes how ‘telling’ and ‘not telling’ affect trust in a couple’s relationship by comparing ‘The Bride Who Gave Birth on the First Night’ and ‘The Generous Husband’. To this end, Chapter 2 discusses the overcoming of marital crises and the development of trust in the two works, and Chapter 3 discusses the narrative differences between ‘telling’ and ‘not telling’ as a sign of trust. The narrative structure of both works is based on two embraces. In the first event, the wife’s infidelity (giving birth on the first night or adultery) occurs and the husband embraces it to preserve the relationship, but the relationship is one-sided. This imbalance is restored in the second event. In the second case, a past incident involving the wife’s infidelity is brought up again after the passage of time, proving that trust has been built up in the couple’s relationship during the intervening time. The comparison of the two works also reveals the usefulness of both ‘telling’ and ‘not telling’ strategies in a trusting relationship. <In “The Bride Who Gave Birth on the First Night,” the strategy of ‘telling’ appears, where ‘telling’ is a necessary process for establishing the son’s identity or deepening the husband’s understanding of his wife, and explaining past events is necessary in the present. On the other hand, the strategy of ‘not telling’ is emphasized in ‘The Generous Husband’. When the husband witnesses his wife sleeping with an executive, he covers it up, and when the executive later tries to mention the incident, the husband stops him. Here, “not telling” is a way of maintaining the stability of the couple’s relationship, and a strategy to block the negative impact that bringing up the past would have on the relationship. This is because the speaker is the cadre, and the cadre is revisiting the events that brought the couple to the brink of crisis in order to resolve his own emotional pending issues. The comparison of the two stories shows that both ‘telling’ and ‘not telling’ can be ways of preserving trust, depending on the context of the situation. In conclusion, the message of the comparison between the two stories is that building and maintaining trust in a relationship is not reducible to a single method, and that true trust is demonstrated through a process of building over time.

Farmer, Sarah F.: Restorative Hope: Creative Pathways of Connection in Women’s Prisons Restorative Hope: Creative Pathways of Connection in Women’s Prisons. By FarmerSarah F.Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2024. Pp. xviii + 205. $29.99 (ppb/eb).

2025-05-30

S Slusarski | Theological Studies

The toll of tariffs: The impact of protectionism on education and fertility in late 19th century France

2025-05-30

Vincent Bignon , Cecilia Garcı́a-Peñalosa | Journal of Economic Growth

Uniting women and midwives

2025-05-30

Joanna Amala Mulongo | British Journal of Midwifery

Joanna Amala Mulongo discusses her experiences of providing midwifery care around the world, reflecting on both the similarities and differences to UK care Joanna Amala Mulongo discusses her experiences of providing midwifery care around the world, reflecting on both the similarities and differences to UK care

Margaret and Maria and Moesha and More: Perimenopause Fiction Comes of (Middle) Age

2025-05-28

Sarah E. Whitney | Women s Reproductive Health

Ansteckende Fragen Zur Kulturgeschichte der Suizidepidemien

2025-05-28

Thomas Macho | mdwPress eBooks

Emily Davies and the Mid-Victorian Women’s Movement, By John Hendry

2025-05-27

Elizabeth Crawford

Environment/Mother: Psychological Ecology, Gender, and Backlash, 1940–1990

2025-05-23

Susanne I. Schmidt

:Modern Flu: British Medical Science and the Viralisation of Influenza, 1890–1950

2025-05-23

Robert Peckham

Book Review: The Arms-Bearing Woman and British Theatre in the Age of Revolution, 1789–1815 by Sarah Burdett BurdettSarah, The Arms-Bearing Woman and British Theatre in the Age of Revolution, 1789–1815 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), 293 pp. $129.99

2025-05-22

Marjean D. Purinton

Friends in youth: choosing sides in the English Civil War

2025-05-19

N. H. Keeble

Illegitimacy, Infanticide, and Child Abuse Maidservants and Motherhood in Nineteenth Century Vienna

2025-05-19

Ambika Natarajan

Abstract The servant occupation includes an extraordinarily diverse range of working-class people (diverse with respect to gender, ethnicity, geography, legal recognition, and even class). However, a servant is often described … Abstract The servant occupation includes an extraordinarily diverse range of working-class people (diverse with respect to gender, ethnicity, geography, legal recognition, and even class). However, a servant is often described as a monolithic entity: poor, migrant, female, and at the mercy of her master. To understand the exact nature of the problems confronted by members of this occupational category historically, the narratives about this occupational group require analysis. This article uses the example of one such narrative that connected such complex social phenomena as illegitimacy and infanticide with employer-perpetrated abuse of maidservants in fin-de-siècle Vienna to highlight the problems with presenting servants solely as objects of their masters’ actions. The core argument of this article is that presenting servants as objects of their master’s actions rather than subjects in their own right not only masks the socio-economic conditions faced by poor, working-class people who compose the servant class but also fails to acknowledge and address factors that contribute to issues as serious as infanticide and child abuse.

The Woman’s Body in Expert Discourses on Abortion in Interwar Czechoslovakia

2025-05-19

Vivian Šefrna

Abstract This study examines the conceptualization of the woman’s body in the medical and juridical discourses that significantly influenced debates concerning the legalization of abortion on demand during the First … Abstract This study examines the conceptualization of the woman’s body in the medical and juridical discourses that significantly influenced debates concerning the legalization of abortion on demand during the First Czechoslovak Republic (1918–1938). Drawing on critical discourse analysis, the study argues that in these expert discourses, scientific and ideological elements converged to advance the body politics of the time, and that nationalistic factors – previously neglected in the Czech scholarship – played a substantial role in shaping views on the woman’s body. The study further reveals the links between eugenics and social welfare practices aimed at preventing the reproduction of so-called “undesirable” individuals in arguments about the legalization of abortion. Finally, it asserts that agitation against lay abortionists, ostensibly framed as an effort to protect women’s health, may actually have been part of a broader attempt by the medical profession to assert control over women’s bodies.

Who Gets to End the World? Trans, Abortion, and the Possibility of Natality

2025-05-18

Mijke van der Drift

In this article the violence surrounding reproductive issues, by example of forced sterilisation of trans people and abortion access, is used to ask fundamental questions about the role of institutions. … In this article the violence surrounding reproductive issues, by example of forced sterilisation of trans people and abortion access, is used to ask fundamental questions about the role of institutions. New right-wing laws that aim to block access to abortion and trans healthcare are reviewed to highlight the link between gender and the state. It is argued that the weaponisation of law is used to individualise people and hinder access to care, disrupt choice, and minimise agency. Instead of presenting liberalism as an alternative to protect an individualised choice-model that safeguards people’s needs, the case is made that the idea of autonomy enables violence by institutions to more marginalised members of democracies. By drawing on a wide range of insights, the argument is made that institutional functioning is the source of significant violence to those not empowered by institutions and interrupts people giving direction to their lives. Instead of institutional power, Hannah Arendt’s concept of natality is understood as a condition of life, indicating how social movements can birth new collective directions as a form of abolition.