New Motherhood Cultural and Personal Transitions in the 1980s

This Australian study of pregnancy, birth and early motherhood in the 1980s explores women's perceptions of childbearing in the context of an examination of social changes and ideological shifts over the last few decades. Drawing on an eclectic selection of sources from sociology, anthropology, psychology, medicine and popular literature, the authors provide fresh insights into the symbolic significance of social practices and imagery of reproduction and, in particular, the contemporary experience of labour in its cultural setting. Economically written and elegantly argued, the book addresses a wide range of issues in its treatment of birth and maternity as both substantive and theoretical concerns which extend the limits of current feminist prespectives on these matters. Womens and mens attitudes to childbearing, enmeshed in a web of social and political relationships, are shown to be seduced, as well as coerced, by pressures and influences from many conflicting sources. The authors consider thesCrouch, Mira is the author of 'New Motherhood Cultural and Personal Transitions in the 1980s' with ISBN 9782881249457 and ISBN 2881249450.