Making Modern Mothers: Ethics and Family Planning in Urban Greece / Edition 1

by Heather Paxson

Overview

In Greece, women speak of mothering as "within the nature" of a woman. But this durable association of motherhood with femininity exists in tension with the highest incidence of abortion and one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe. In this setting, how do women think of themselves as proper individuals, mothers, and Greek citizens? In this anthropological study of reproductive politics and ethics in Athens, Greece, Heather Paxson tracks the effects of increasing consumerism and imported biomedical family planning methods, showing how women's "nature" is being transformed to meet crosscutting claims of the contemporary world. Locating profound ambivalence in people's ethical evaluations of gender and fertility control, Paxson offers a far-reaching analysis of conflicting assumptions about what it takes to be a good mother and a good woman in modern Greece, where assertions of cultural tradition unfold against a backdrop of European Union integration, economic struggle, and national demographic anxiety over a falling birth rate.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520238206
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	02/12/2004
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	351
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Heather Paxson is Lecturer in Anthropology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
A Note on Transliteration
Prologue: Varnava Square

1. Realizing Nature
2. Remaking Mothers: From an Ethic of Service to an Ethic of Choice
3. Rationalizing Sex: Family Planning and an Ethic of Well-Being
4. Maternal Citizens: Demographics, Pronatalism, and Population Policy
5. Technologies of Greek Motherhood

Appendix 1: Total Fertility Rates: Children per Woman Age 15-49
Appendix 2: Legislation of the Greek State Pertaining to Gender Equality, Marriage, Family, and Reproduction
Appendix 3: Birthrates, 1934-1999
Notes
References
Index