Maternalism to Consumerism and Beyond? Mothers and the Politics of Care in Childbirth

Campo, Monica; Reiger, Kerreen

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-20267-5_12

Monica Campo³ &
Kerreen Reiger⁴

642 Accesses

Abstract

In this chapter, we consider shifts in how reproductive work and (white) motherhood are socially constructed. We examine debates in recent years about maternal care provision and ‘consumer’ choices, including those over homebirth. Attention to women’s human rights in childbirth has increased but has yet to influence mainstream Australian services. Some innovative exceptions include Birthing on Country movements in Australian indigenous communities and the Birth for HumanKind programme for socially disadvantaged mothers. Importantly, we draw on contemporary feminist theoretical developments to suggest basing policy and professional practice on recognition of the challenges of mothers’ lives, but without re-categorising women in maternalist terms.

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Notes

1.
Monica Campo, ‘Delivering Hegemony: Contemporary Childbirth Discourses and Obstetric Hegemony in Australia’ (PhD diss., La Trobe University, 2013).
2.
Jane Yelland et al., Having a Baby in a New Country: The Views and Experiences of Afghan Families and Stakeholders (Melbourne: Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture), http://refugeehealthnetwork.org.au/wp-content/uploads/Afghan-Families-Project-final-report.pdf; Rhonda Small et al., ‘Immigrant Women’s Views about Care During Labour and Birth: An Australian Study of Vietnamese, Turkish, and Filipino Women,’ Birth 29 (2002): 266–277; Sue Kildea et al., ‘Improving Maternity Services for Indigenous Women in Australia: Moving from Policy to Practice,’ Medical Journal of Australia 205, no. 8 (2016): 375–379.
3.
Seth Koven and Sonya Michel, eds., Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States (New York: Routledge, 1993); Marian van der Klein et al., eds., Maternalism Reconsidered: Motherhood, Welfare and Social Policy in the Twentieth Century (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2012).
4.
Alison Stone, ‘Female Subjectivity and Mother-Daughter Relations,’ Women: A Cultural Review 22, no. 2–3 (2012): 168–179; Petra Bueskens, ‘Maternal Subjectivity: From Containing to Creating,’ in Dangerous Ideas about Mothers, eds. Camilla Nelson and Rachel Robertson (Perth: UWA Publishing, 2018).
5.
For excellent analyses of the history, politics and context of the term ‘maternalism,’ see Rebecca Plant and Marian van der Klein, ‘Introduction,’ in Maternalism Reconsidered: Motherhood, Welfare and Social Policy in the Twentieth Century, eds. Marian van der Klein et al. (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2012); Sonya Michel, ‘Maternalism and Beyond,’ in Maternalism Reconsidered: Motherhood, Welfare and Social Policy in the Twentieth Century, eds. Marian van der Klein et al. (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2012), 22–38; Catherine Kevin, ‘Maternity and Freedom: Australian Feminist Encounters with the Reproductive Body,’ Australian Feminist Studies 20, no. 46 (2005): 3–15.
6.
Michel, ‘Maternalism and Beyond,’ 23.
7.
Kerreen Reiger, The Disenchantment of the Home: Modernising the Australian Family, 1880–1940 (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1985).
8.
Lynda Bryder, A Voice for Mothers: The Plunket Society and Infant Welfare 1907–2000 (University of Auckland Press, 2003).
9.
Kerreen Reiger, Our Bodies Our Babies: The Forgotten Women’s Movement (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2001).
10.
Reiger, ‘Conclusion: Women’s Rights in Childbearing,’ Our Bodies Our Babies.
11.
Kerreen Reiger and Karen Lane, ‘“How Can We Go on Caring When Nobody Here Cares about Us?” Australian Public Maternity Units as Contested Care Sites,’ Women and Birth 26 (2013): 133–137.
12.
Kerreen Reiger, ‘“Sort of Part of the Women’s Movement. But Different”: Mothers’ Organisations and Australian Feminism,’ Women’s Studies International Forum 22, no. 6 (1999): 585–595.
13.
Kevin, ‘Maternity and Freedom,’ 5.
14.
See, for example, Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Talking Up to the White Woman: Indigenous Women and Feminism (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2000).
15.
Koven and Michel, Mothers of a New World. See also L.Y. Weiner, ‘Introduction and Comment,’ in Maternalism as a Paradigm: Defining the Issues: Special Issue of the Journal of Women’s History 5, no. 2 (1993): 95–96.
16.
Plant and van der Klein, ‘Introduction.’
17.
Reiger, ‘Sort of Part of the Women’s Movement.’
18.
Kerreen Reiger, ‘Birthing in the Postmodern Moment: Struggles over Defining Maternity Care Needs,’ Australian Feminist Studies 14, no. 30 (1999): 387–404.
19.
Sara Henderson and Alan Peterson, Consuming Health: The Commodification of Health Care (London: Routledge, 2002).
20.
Reiger, Our Bodies. For North America see Christa Craven, ‘Reproductive Rights in a Consumer Rights Era: Toward the Value of “Constructive” Critique,’ in Feminist Activist Ethnography: Counterpoints to Neoliberalism in North America, eds. Christa Craven and Dana Ain Davis (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2013), 101–111.
21.
Reiger, ‘Sort of Part of the Women’s Movement’; Reiger, Our Bodies; Reiger, ‘Birthing in the Postmodern Moment.’
22.
Reiger, ‘Birthing in the Postmodern Moment.’
23.
Ibid.; Campo, ‘Delivering Hegemony.’ See also Australian Government Department of Health, Improving Maternity Services in Australia: The Report of the Maternity Services Review (2009), https://tinyurl.com/ycjghp2w.
24.
Lareen Newman, Kerreen Reiger and Monica Campo, ‘Maternity Coalition: Australia’s National Maternity Consumer Advocacy Organisation,’ in The 21st Century Motherhood Movement, ed. Andrea O’Reilly (New York: Demeter Press, 2011), 102–114.
25.
Craven, ‘Reproductive rights’; Ruth De Souza, ‘“I Had to Keep My Options Open”: White Mothers and Neoliberal Maternity’ (2013), http://www.ruthdesouza.com/2016/06/11/i-had-to-keep-my-options-open-white-mothers-and-neoliberal-maternity/; Ruth De Souza, ‘Regulating Migrant Maternity: Nursing and Midwifery’s Emancipatory Aims and Assimilatory Practices,’ Nursing Inquiry 20, no. 4 (2013): 93–304; Katharine McCabe, ‘Mothercraft: Birth Work and the Making of Neoliberal Mothers,’ Social Science and Medicine 162 (2016): 177–184.
26.
De Souza, ‘Regulating Migrant Maternity’; Miranda Kiraly and Meagan Tyler, ‘Introduction,’ in The Freedom Fallacy: The Limits of Liberal Feminism, eds. Miranda Kiraly and Meagan Tyler (Ballarat: Connor Court Publishing, 2015), xi–xviii.
27.
Kate Rossiter, ‘Pushing Ecstasy: Neoliberalism, Childbirth and the Making of Mama Economics,’ Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 46, no. 1(2017): 41–59.
28.
Craven, ‘Reproductive Rights’; McCabe, ‘Mothercraft.’
29.
De Souza, ‘Regulating Migrant Maternity’; McCabe, ‘Mothercraft.’ See also Kirstie Coxon, Mandie Schamell and Andy Alaszewski, ‘Risk, Pregnancy and Childbirth: What Do We Currently Know and What Do We Need to Know? An Editorial,’ Health, Risk & Society 14, no. 6 (2012): 503–510.
30.
McCabe, ‘Mothercraft,’ 178; See also De Souza, ‘Regulating Migrant Maternity.’
31.
Campo, ‘Delivering Hegemony.’
32.
See for example Kathryn Vukovljak, ‘Mums to March against New Limits on Home Birthing,’ http://citynews.com.au/2018/midwives-to-march-against-new-limits-on-home-birthing/.
33.
Campo, ‘Delivering Hegemony’; Judith McAra-Couper, Marion Jones and Liz Smythe, ‘Caesarean Section, My Body, My Choice: The Construction of “Informed Choice” in Relation to Intervention in Childbirth,’ Feminism & Psychology 22, no. 1 (2012): 81–97.
34.
McAra-Couper et al., ‘Caesarean Section.’
35.
Monica Campo, ‘Trust, Power and Agency in Childbirth: Women’s Relationships with Obstetricians,’ Outskirts: Feminisms along the Edge 22 (2010), http://www.outskirts.arts.uwa.edu.au/volumes/volume-22/campo.
36.
Meredith J McIntyre, Karen Francis and Ysanne Chapman, ‘National Review of Maternity Services 2008: Women Influencing Change,’ BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth 11, no. 1 (2012): 53.
37.
Campo, ‘Delivering Hegemony’; Petra Bueskens, ‘Gaye Demanuele and the Politics of Homebirth,’ New Matilda, 10 June, 2016, https://newmatilda.com/2016/06/10/gaye-demanuele-and-the-politics-of-homebirth/.
38.
Christine Morton, Birth Ambassadors: Doulas and the Re-emergence of Woman-Supported Birth in America (Texas: Praeclarus Press and Armarillo Press, 2014); Jacqueline Kelleher, ‘The Postpartum Doula’s Role in Maternity Care,’ DONA International Position Paper (2016), https://www.dona.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/DONA-Postpartum-Position-Paper-FINAL.pdf.
39.
Jenny McLeish and Maggie Redshaw, ‘A Qualitative Study of Volunteer Doulas Working Alongside Midwives at Births in England: Mothers’ and Doulas’ Experiences,’ Midwifery 56 (2018): 53–60; Jenny Stevens et al., ‘Midwives’ and Doulas’ Perspectives of the Role of the Doula in Australia: A Qualitative Study,’ Midwifery 27, no. 4 (2010): 509–516.
40.
Kenneth J Gruber, Susan Cupito and Christina F Dobson, ‘Impact of Doulas on Healthy Birth Outcomes,’ The Journal of Perinatal Education 22, no. 1 (2013): 49–58.
41.
See http://www.birthforhumankind.org/.
42.
Personal communication, Birth for HumanKind, July 2018.
43.
Birth for HumanKind Annual Report 2017, http://www.birthforhumankind.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/BfHK-Annual-Report-SCREEN.pdf.
44.
Mary Thomas et al., ‘Doula Services within a Healthy Start Program: Increasing Access for an Underserved Population,’ Maternal Child Health Journal 21, no. Suppl. 1 (2017): 59–64; see also the South Community Birth Program, https://www.scbp.ca.
45.
Kerreen Reiger, Alphia Possamai-Inesedy and Karen Lane, ‘Editorial,’ Health Sociology Review 15, no. 4 (2006).
46.
Fleur Magick Dennis is the founder and convener of Aboriginal Cultural and Birthing, NSW and an Aboriginal Cultural Healing Educator at Gungarrimaa Aboriginal Corporation.
47.
Congress of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Nurses and Midwives, Australian College of Midwives & CRANA, Birthing on Country Position Statement, https://www.catsinam.org.au/static/uploads/files/birthing-on-country-position-statement-endorsed-march-2016-wfaxpyhvmxrw.pdf.
48.
Kildea et al., ‘Improving Maternity’; Sue Kildea et al., ‘Birthing on Country (in Our Community): A Case Study of Engaging Stakeholders and Developing a Best-Practice Indigenous Maternity Service in an Urban Setting,’ Australian Health Review (7 April 2017), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28384435.
49.
Sue Kildea et al., Birthing on Country Workshop Report, Alice Springs, 4 July 2012, Australian Catholic University and Mater Medical Research Unit on behalf of the Maternity Services InterJurisdictional Committee for the Australian Health Ministers’ Advisory Council (2013), https://health.act.gov.au/sites/default/files/2018-BirthingonCountryWorkshopReport.pdf.
50.
Sue Kildea and Vicky Wagner, Birthing on Country Maternity Service Delivery Models: A Rapid Review (Sax Institute & Maternity Services Inter Jurisdictional Committee), 7.
51.
Kildea et al., Birthing on Country Workshop Report.
52.
Kildea et al.
53.
www.thebusinessofbeingborn.com.
54.
Amali Lokugamage and SDC Pathberiya, ‘Human Rights in Childbirth, Narratives and Restorative Justice: A Review,’ Reproductive Health 14, no. 17 (2017): 2–8; Michelle Sadler et al., ‘Moving Beyond Disrespect and Abuse: Addressing the Structural Dimensions of Obstetric Violence,’ Reproductive Health Matters 24, no. 47 (2016): 46–55.
55.
Marsden Wagner, ‘Appropriate Technology for Birth,’ The Lancet 24, no. 2 (1985): 436–437.
56.
Suellen Miller and Andre Lalonde, ‘The Global Epidemic of Abuse and Disrespect During Childbirth: History, Evidence, Interventions, and FIGO’s Mother-baby Friendly Birthing Facilities Initiative,’ International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics 13, no. 1 (2015): S49–S52.
57.
Sadler et al., ‘Moving Beyond.’
58.
Case of Ternovszky v Hungary 2010. European Court of Human Rights. Application No. 67545/09.
59.
World Health Organisation, The Prevention and Elimination of Disrespect and Abuse During Facility-based Childbirth (2014), http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/134588/WHO_RHR_14.23_eng.pdf;jsessionid=9E2C41172F41AA123A72DA3EFB4153D4?sequence=1.
60.
United Nations, The Millennium Development Goals Report 2015, https://tinyurl.com/p92xdd3.
61.
World Health Organisation, Individualized, Supportive Care Key to Positive Childbirth Experience, says WHO (2018), https://tinyurl.com/ydd7xy3m.
62.
The authors were organisers of Human Rights in Childbirth: Dignity, Respect and Responsibility Forum in Melbourne, 22 March, 2013. See also http://www.humanrightsinchildbirth.org/; Bashi Hazard, ‘Human Rights in Childbirth and Midwifery Care—Joining Hands to Change the 21st Century for Any Woman, Anywhere,’ Women and Birth 28, no. Suppl. 1 (2015): 18.
63.
‘Tina.’ Comments provided to Human Rights in Child birth: Dignity, Respect and Responsibility Forum, Melbourne, 2013.
64.
See, for example, Kim Lock, ‘We Need to Talk about Obstetric Violence,’ Daily Life, 30 September 2014, http://www.dailylife.com.au/news-and-views/dl-opinion/we-need-to-talk-about-obstetric-violence-20140930-3gydt.html; Sarah Yahar Tucker, ‘There is a Hidden Epidemic of Doctors Abusing Women in Labor, Doulas Say,’ Broadly, 9 May 2018, https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/evqew7/obstetric-violence-doulas-abuse-giving-birth; Remma Nagarajan, ‘The Labour Room Bullies,’ Times of India, 15 May 2015, https://tinyurl.com/y8o8ojog.
65.
See: http://www.may28.org/human-rights-in-childbirth/, May 28th, International Day of Action for Women’s Health is Being Coordinated by the Women’s Global Network for Reproductive Rights (WGNRR).
66.
Mary O’Brien, The Politics of Reproduction (London, Boston and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981). See also Italian Marxist feminist Silvia Federici’s earlier manifesto on reproduction and household labour as work: Wages Against Housework (London: Power of Women’s Collective, 1975).
67.
Sara Ruddick, ‘Maternal Thinking as a Feminist Standpoint,’ in Maternal Thinking: Toward a Politics of Peace (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989).
68.
Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness and Empowerment (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1990); Patricia Hill Collins, ‘Shifting the Center: Race, Class, and Feminist Theorizing About Motherhood,’ in Mothering: Ideology, Experience, and Agency, eds. Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Grace Chang and Linda Rennie Forcey (New York and London: Routledge, 1994), 45–60; Katrina Bell McDonald, ‘Black Activist Mothering: A Historical Intersection of Race, Gender, and Class,’ Gender and Society 11, no. 6 (1997): 773–795.
69.
Moreton-Robinson, Talking Up to the White Woman; bell hooks, ‘Revolutionary Parenting,’ in Maternal Theory: Essential Readings, ed. Andrea O’Reilly (Bradford, ON: Demeter Press, 2007), 145–156; Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought.
70.
Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought, 11.
71.
Hill Collins. See also the analysis of black feminist standpoint theory by Andrea O’Reilly, Matricentric Feminism: Theory, Activism and Practice (Bradford, ON: Demeter Press, 2016), 77–79.
72.
Marilyn Waring, Counting for Nothing: What Men Value and What Women are Worth (Wellington: Allen & Unwin, 1988 and later editions).
73.
Julie Stephens, Confronting Maternal Thinking: Feminism, Memory, and Care (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), Conclusion.
74.
Sara Ruddick, Maternal Thinking.
75.
Jessica Benjamin, Like Subjects, Love Objects: Essays on Recognition and Sexual Difference (Newhaven and London: Yale University Press, 1995).
76.
See Marcel Stoetzier and Nira Yuval-Davis, ‘Feminist Theory, Situated Knowledge and the Situated Imagination,’ Feminist Theory 3 (2002): 315–333, https://doi.org/10.1177/146470002762492024.
77.
Alison Stone, Female Subjectivity; Bueskens, ‘Maternal Subjectivity’; Lisa Baraitser, Maternal Encounter: The Ethics of Interruption (London: Routledge, 2009); Bracha Ettinger, The Matrixial Borderspace (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006).
78.
Ettinger, Matrixial Borderspace. See also Noreen Giffney et al., ‘Seduction into Reading: Bracha L. Ettinger’s the Matrixial Borderspace,’ Studies in the Maternal 1, no. 2 (2009): 1–15.
79.
See, for example, Iris M. Young, ‘Pregnant Embodiment,’ in Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays, ed. Iris M. Young (Indiana University Press, 1990); Iris M. Young, ‘Structure as the Subject of Justice,’ in Responsibility for Justice, ed. Iris M Young (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); Amy Allen, The Politics of Ourselves (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013).
80.
See, for example, the collection edited by Roksana Badrouddoja and Maki Motapanyane, New Maternalisms: Tales of Motherwork (Dislodging the Unthinkable) (Bradford, ON: Demeter Press, 2016).

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University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia
Monica Campo
La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
Kerreen Reiger

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Monica Campo
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Correspondence to Monica Campo .

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University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia
Carla Pascoe Leahy
University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia
Petra Bueskens

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Campo, M., Reiger, K. (2019). Maternalism to Consumerism and Beyond? Mothers and the Politics of Care in Childbirth. In: Pascoe Leahy, C., Bueskens, P. (eds) Australian Mothering. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20267-5_12

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20267-5_12
Published: 29 January 2020
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