Abstract
Where the pregnant body is concerned, the Sport for All model is superseded by the imperative that women be ‘fit for two.’ That is to say, medical guidelines and policies put into place are not concerned with ensuring access to and enjoyment of physical activity or sport for pregnant women, but rather are intent on prescribing the correct amount of movement to ensure the optimal health of the unborn child. This is not a new trend. As I demonstrate in this chapter, exercise in pregnancy has long served a (bio)political function, albeit the aims have shifted from ensuring a strong nation state in the late eighteenth century to reducing the economic burden of unhealthy bodies in the contemporary neoliberal moment. Looking to the work of Michel Foucault, as well as scholars who have further developed his theoretical insights on bodily discipline and societal regulation (see Rose and Miller, The British Journal of Sociology, 43(2), 173–205, 1992; Rose, The politics of life itself: Biomedicine, power, and subjectivity in the twenty-first century. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), I use an analytical framework of governmentality to explore the changing ideas about exercise in pregnancy at three ‘moments’ in history: the rise of medicine and public health (at the turn of the twentieth century); the emergence of second-wave feminism and ensuing debates about pregnant sporting bodies; and the current so-called obesity epidemic. My aim is to bring to light the politically charged nature of exercise advice provided to pregnant women that, while posed as objective and neutral, ultimately functions to limit the (in)activities in which women feel they are permitted to engage, placing undue pressure upon them to be ‘fit for two.’
‘Who says athletes can’t be pregnant?’ (Ms magazine, 1978).
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Notes
- 1.
The discussion that follows is based upon extensive searches of scientific databases (as well as key journals) in which I focused upon articles pertaining to physical activity during pregnancy, and attended to what was constructed as a problem as well as proposed solutions. For a more detailed description of the methods used to identify the literature discussed in the first two sections, see Jette (2009). Data for the final section is based on a more recent PubMed search (conducted November 2014) in which the keywords were: ‘obesity,’ ‘pregnancy,’ and either ‘exercise’ or ‘physical activity’.
- 2.
To illustrate this point, a PubMed search of the term ‘exercise and pregnancy’ yielded 8 studies from 1950–1969, 20 studies from between 1970–79, and 141 studies from 1980–90. See Jette (2009, p. 199).
- 3.
A PubMed search using the keywords ‘obesity,’ ‘pregnancy,’ and either ‘physical activity’ or ‘exercise’ yielded 8 studies in the ten year period from 1996–2005, 26 in total over the next 4 years (2006–9), followed by 21 (2010), 22 (2011), 25 (2012), 30 (2013), and 43 (2014) with many of these referring to the potential of exercise to prevent the fetal programming of obesity in the paper rationale.
- 4.
In 2014, for instance, 20 of 43 studies identified were intervention studies.
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Jette, S. (2018). Sport for All, or Fit for Two? Governing the (In)active Pregnancy. In: Dionigi, R., Gard, M. (eds) Sport and Physical Activity across the Lifespan. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-48562-5_11
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