Coming to Life: Philosophies of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Mothering

by Sarah LaChance Adams (Editor), Caroline R. Lundquist (Editor)

Overview

Coming to Life does what too few scholarly works have dared to attempt: It takes seriously the philosophical significance of women's lived experience. Every woman, regardless of her own reproductive story, is touched by the beliefs and norms governing discourses about pregnancy, childbirth, and mothering.

The volume's contributors engage in sustained reflection on women's experiences and on the beliefs, customs, and political institutions by which they are informed. They think beyond the traditional pro-choice/pro-life dichotomy, speak to the manifold nature of mothering by considering the experiences of adoptive mothers and birthmothers, and upend the belief that childrearing practices must be uniform, despite psychosexual differences in children. Many chapters reveal the radical shortcomings of conventional philosophical wisdom by placing trenchant assumptions about subjectivity, gender, power and virtue in dialogue with women's experience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823244607
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	12/24/2012
Series:	Perspectives in Continental Philosophy
Pages:	424
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Sarah LaChance Adams is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Superior.

Caroline R. Lundquist is a Ph.D. candidate in Philosophy at the University of Oregon.

Table of Contents

Foreword Eva Kittay xi

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction: The Philosophical Significance of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Mothering Sarah LaChance Adams Caroline R. Lundquist 1

Part I The Philosophical Canon

1 Plato, Maternity, and Power: Can We Get a Different Midwife? Cynthia D. Coe 31

2 Of Courage Born: Reflections on Childbirth and Manly Courage Kayley Varnallis 47

3 Original Habitation: Pregnant Flesh as Absolute Hospitality Frances Gray 71

4 The Birth of Sexual Difference: A Feminist Response to Merleau-Ponty Lisa Guenther 88

Part II Ethics

5 Birthing Responsibility: A Phenomenological Perspective on the Moral Significance of Birth Gail Weiss 109

6 Birthmothers and Maternal Identity: The Terms of Relinquishment Dorothy Rogers 120

7 What's an Adoptive Mother to Do? When Your Child's Desires Are a Problem Melissa Burchard 138

Part III Politics

8 The Pro-Choice Pro-Lifer: Battling the False Dichotomy Bertha Alvarez Manninen 171

9 The Political "Nature" of Pregnancy and Childbirth Candace Johnson 193

10 Disempowered Women? The Midwifery Model and Medical Intervention Sonya Charles 215

Part IV Popular Culture

11 Knock Me Up, Knock Me Down: Images of Pregnancy in Hollywood Film and Popular Culture Kelly Oliver 241

12 Exposing the Breast: The Animal and the Abject in American Attitudes Toward Breastfeeding Rebecca Tuvel 263

Part V Feminist Phenomenology

13 The Order of Life: How Phenomenologies of Pregnancy Revise and Reject Theories of the Subject Talia Welsh 283

14 The Vision of the Artist/Mother: The Strange Creativity of Painting and Pregnancy Florentien Verhage 300

Notes 321

Bibliography 371

List of Contributors 393

Index 397

Editorial Reviews

Very little philosophical attention—and certainly little positive attention—has been paid to women’s experiences of pregnancy, childbirth and mothering. Critically focusing on those experiences, this groundbreaking collection explores how pregnancy and childbirth have been portrayed in the philosophical canon; the variety of forms that mothering and motherhood can take; how feminist phenomenology can illuminate the experiences of pregnancy, birth, and miscarriage; ethical and political questions surrounding pregnancy and childbirth; and how pregnancy and mothering are viewed by mainstream media and popular culture. This book is a must-read for feminists and philosophers of all stripes.

Pennsylvania State University - Shannon Sullivan

Recent years have shown a renewed scholarly interest in motherhood and pregnancy, and Coming to Life: Philosophies of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and Motherhood is an important addition to the literature. Sarah LaChance Adams and Caroline R. Lundquist’s anthology is both firmly rooted in philosophical theory and accessible to the non-specialist, a rare combination. In bringing their own experiences as mothers to bear on canonical accounts of personhood and moral theory, contributors to the volume extend the second-wave project of identifying gendered and sexist frameworks underlying seemingly gender-neutral philosophies. New to the literature is Coming to Life’s extensive, critical attention to phenomenology, an area of philosophy often seen, incorrectly, as motherhood and pregnancy-friendly. In addition, Dorothy Roger’s essay on women who experience pregnancy and/or childbirth, but not motherhood, brings attention to an all too often unrecognized, and certainly under-theorized, phenomenon of women’s experience—miscarriage and the giving up of a child for adoption.

Notre Dame of Maryland University - Maeve O'Donovan

This book produces what is for the most part little-known material, the result of recent research, and also contributes a new understanding of some familiar phenomenological material.

University of Toronto Mississauga - Amy Mullin

This consistently rigorous and original collection is a joy to read. From the most metaphorical and metaphysical claims about the pregnant subject to the most practical political arguments about the day-to-day of mothering, these essays draw us in with their careful and passionate scholarship. LaChance Adams and Lundquist have provided not only a primer for those trying to understand what is philosophical in pregnancy, birth, and mothering, but show that thinking about these topics should change the way everyone philosophizes. The discipline—and the canon—look different after Coming To Life.

University of Alberta, Edmonton - Cressida Heyes

The volume contributors, all female philosophy scholars, remedy [a] gap in the literature by approaching questions about reproductive rights, the status of the fetus, and the medicalization of childbirth.

Choice

This book produces what is for the most part little-known material, the result of recent research, and also contributes a new understanding of some familiar phenomenological material.”——Amy Mullin, University of Toronto Mississauga

From the Publisher