First Revision WorkshopTransformations, Week 21

Workshop Aimsintroduce the examprovoke thought about your revision strategiesidentify key concepts on the module draw connections across the moduleconvince you that you already know more than

you thinkstart thinking what you would need to know

about in order to write on some term 1 topics

The ExamWhen? Monday 9 June, 2pm Where? Rootes Restaurant AreaDuration? 2 or 3 hoursRubric Answer at least 1 question from

each section

Section 1 Why do people have children?; Who owns women’s bodies?;

Femininity and motherhood; Masculinity and fatherhood; Beyond the nuclear family; Pregnancy,

Childbirth; Infant feeding

Section 2: Adoption; Timing Parenthood; Contraception; Abortion; Infertility; IVF and Gamete Donation; Reprogenetics; Surrogacy

Why do you do exams?To demonstrate what you knowUniversity regulationsTo demonstrate capacity to work under pressureTo demonstrate time management skillsTo demonstrate skills of privileging and focusTo demonstrate independent thinkingTo demonstrate creativity, synthesis, originalityTo bring everything together as the module endsIn order to be classified

To demonstrate what you knowIn order to be classified according to what

you knowTo demonstrate skills to apply concepts/ideas

to specific questionsTo demonstrate ability to think on your feetTo demonstrate creativity, synthesis,

originalityTo bring everything together

Revision StrategiesWrite down what you got right in your

revision strategy last year and how you achieved it.

active revision (writing; speaking; mind-mapping); practising timed answers using past papers; thinking conceptually and being able to make links; having spare topics ready in case don’t like question

Write down what you want to improve on in your revision strategy this year and how you’re going to do it.

starting earlier; not getting so stressed out; not procrastinating; dividing the time better in the exam

Key Module Concepts Reproduction (obviously). Biological reproduction and social

relations of reproduction. Gender divisions of labour in reproduction, gender essentialism,

binaries Fertility rates – just risen again in UK – and infertility (medical

and social) Civic/cultural vs. ethnic nationalism and link to state policies Reproductive Rights ‘Foetal rights’ Fertility rates, primary and secondary infertility, voluntary and

involuntary childlessness New Reproductive Technologies, inc. IVF, surrogacy,

reprogenetics, gamete donation Ethics: of gamete donation, of genetic screening Saviour Siblings Parenting - biological or genetic

- gestational (mother only)- social- public and private

Module Concepts continued Nuclear family, heteronormativity, normal/abnormal, moral panics Femininity and Motherhood; Masculinity and Fatherhood,

gendered identities, reified identities, intersectionality (‘to father’ = to reproduce genetically; ‘to mother’ = to reproduce

socially) Public and private parenting Social birth (precedes actual birth) Timing Reproduction – biological time / social time ‘Fitness’ to parent, gendered discourses of ‘good’ parenting (and

‘bad’) Eugenics, disability rights and reproduction Possessive Individualism re claims over reproductive potential Psychoanalysis and the ‘reproduction of mothering’ Recombinant families Race, ‘racialization’ and the politics of reproduction Surrogacy – partial and full, commercial & altruistic Adoption – inc. transracial, transnational, lesbian and gay Others concepts…?

Key Module ObjectivesWhat follows are 12 module objectives

Working in pairs, read through them, identifying any additional key concepts, and identify which module topics they are most associated with (many of them cover several weeks of work, not just one).

Key Module Objectives1. To subject to sociological and feminist scrutiny

the often taken for granted practices of having (or not having) and raising children and the ways they have been and are being transformed in contemporary society. Primarily UK focus but with some international perspectives.

2. To investigate the challenges to the norm of the heterosexual, nuclear and biologically based family posed by new social relations of reproduction in the UK.

3. To explore the extent to which the necessary link between heterosex and generational reproduction has been weakened or broken and the gendered implications.

4. To contextualise feminist demands for women’s reproductive rights, and the forms of opposition faced from the various stakeholders in women’s reproductive bodies.

 5. To examine the links between parenting and gender identity, ie. motherhood and femininity; fatherhood and masculinity.

6. To explore the unequal gender division of labour both in biological reproduction and social reproduction, the extent to which they are linked and how women’s greater share of the daily maintenance of human life is produced and reproduced. To ask what scope there is for men to take a more equal share of child-care.

7. To recognise women’s embodied reproductive work, and the implications this has for their identity projects.

 

8. To explore discourses about who’s fit to parent and the practices that these discourses shore up, thus illuminating the extent to which social hierarchies are produced and reproduced through the medical and welfare institutions that govern biological reproduction.

9. To consider intersectionality in reproduction: it is not just gender that makes a difference but also ‘race’, class, (dis)ability, age etc.

10.To consider and critique legal interventions in reproduction, eg. surrogacy contracts; adoption procedures, regulation of reprogenetics.

 To address the complexities of NRTs,

including gender, ethics, regulation etc, considering the most recent (eg. reprogenetics, gamete donation) as well as the now commonplace (eg hormonal contraception, IVF).

 

11. To consider the interface between medical practitioners and women of reproductive age in an era of technology, paying particular attention to women’s agency.

 

12. To examine debates about the timing and risks of motherhood, particularly concerns about teenage mothers and older mothers, in the light of experiences of old and young motherhood.

 

13. To address the complexities of NRTs, including gender, ethics, regulation etc, considering the most recent (eg. reprogenetics, gamete donation) as well as the now commonplace (eg. hormonal contraception, IVF).

Topic by Topic RevisionWork in small groups of 3/4From what you can recall about each topic,

try to come up with bullet points that reflect the major learning points for those weeks. What are the key points (e.g. the conclusions from the lecture) that you would need to think about when revising this topic?

You won’t remember everything – don’t worry, it’s not a test. It’s a starting point for your revision (and you know more already than you might feel like you do).

I’ve completed the first page to give you the idea

Why Children (and why not)?A question mostly asked of women (why?)For biological determinists children are an

outcome of nature/sex/biology, not a choiceIn Sociology having (or not having) children is an

outcome of complex social, political, cultural and economic factors, many of them gendered

Hormonal contraception & (limited) availability of abortion have broken link between heterosex & children

For Chodorow it’s psychological – urge to mother is reproduced in women as part of their childhood

Experiences of women who choose not to be mothers show dominance of myth that all ‘real’ women want children, as well as its contestation as women try to unshackle femininity from motherhood (Gillespie).

Who Owns Women’s Bodies? Who Needs Children?

Family, community, state all stakeholders in reproduction

Women more crucial to biological reproduction than men, partly why others have sought to control their reproduction

Women’s reproductive rights - key demand of 2nd wave feminism

Relies on new concept of self from 17th c – possessive individualism (MacPherson) – initially applied only to propertied men but then claimed by women (and others)

Husbands, families, communities, religious organisations, governments have all put pressure on women to reproduce more or less, or not at all (dependent on ‘fitness’ claims; desired family/population size, whether state espouses ethnic or cultural nationalism)

 

Femininity and MotherhoodDominant discourse: motherhood = ultimate expression

of femininity (so women without children not ‘real’ women)

Reality: some women definitely want children, others definitely don’t, others are ambivalent

2nd-wave feminism exposed motherhood: as root of women’s oppression via domestic confinement (Firestone); as an institution perpetuating unequal gender division of reproductive work (Rich)  

Dominant discourses about good mother (eg. kind, self-sacrificing) map onto dominant discourses of femininity, so when not coping some mothers reluctant to get help (Choi)

Ideas about good and bad mothering not fixed but changing product of history (Smart)

Today’s MC ideals/practices of intensive motherhood at odds with women’s career progression; fathers not limited in same ways

Masculinity and FatherhoodClear change in representations and practices of

fathering in the West, but also many elements of continuity

No dominant discourse that fatherhood = men’s destiny But hegemonic masculinity expects Provision; Protection;

Authority/Discipline and public fatherhood from the ‘good’ father

Social problems often blamed (e.g. by New Right) on absent fathers: fear of fatherlessness (seen to produce lack of discipline)

Fatherhood increasingly being represented as nurturing, but there are many micro- and macro-level constraints to fathers’ greater involvement in childcare (e.g. structure of labour market, ideas about masculinity, etc.)

Fatherhood is a site of performance of gender – it is a means through which men demonstrate and produce their masculinity

Ideas and practices of fatherhood are also shaped by class, ethnicity, sexuality importance of intersectionality

Beyond the Nuclear FamilyNew types of parenting – cohabiting, single

parents, gay and lesbian parents, recombinant families – challenging ‘norm’ of heterosexual, nuclear and biological family.

Family values lobby argue lone mothers choosing to parent without men and reproducing underclass – is it a choice? If so isn’t choice good in new right discourse?

Identity projects of new group of middle class professional lone mothers reproduces negative discourse for working class

 NRTs providing new routes to gay and lesbian parenthood

Discourse that gay and lesbian parents ‘unfit’, and critique

Campion: fitness to parent cannot be reduced to sexuality

Dunne: far from being inherently dysfunctional, lesbian parents are rethinking gendered parenthood in creative ways

 

Embodied PregnancyIn past century, experiences of pregnancy have become much

more medicalised and technology use become routinised Draper: woman’s embodied knowledge of her pregnancy

(haptic hexis) displaced by authority of the medical expert and machinery’s visual knowledge of pregnancy (optic hexis)

Do new technologies expand women’s choice and autonomy or promote anxiety, risk and a new eugenics?

Screening tests only give probabilities and some diagnostic tests carry risks – how much do women understand?

How easy is it not to have the tests? Consent required from pregnant woman but pressure to ‘ensure’ a healthy baby strong; is consent to screening de facto consent to abortion?

Ultrasound scans blur social and medical events: father ‘bonds’ with baby, images and DVDs circulate, social birth precedes biological birth

Visualisation and screening technologies changed how we conceptualise the status of foetus and what we consider to be a ‘good’ pregnancy, and thus they play a central role in debates on abortion and disability rights

Giving BirthChildbirth = medicalised – this reframed childbirth as

an always potentially ‘risky’ medical event thus from 17th c it has been increasingly subject to gaze and interventions of medical professionals (originally all men) rather than ‘wise women’

Hospital births now hegemonic, C-sections more common

symbolically and materially, childbirth structured in line with doctor’s gaze, rather than pregnant woman’s experience

Emily Martin: pregnant body represented as machine, reproduction as production. Preoccupations with efficiency routine, legitimated as about ‘safety’ but serving hospital

Women’s own accounts stress importance of control, which means different types of birth for different women 

In midwifery the ‘with-woman’ discourse competes with a ‘with-institution’ discourse

Week after next…Continue topic by topicMaking links between topicsTips on survival in the exam room

In seminars this week…Further discuss key concepts, module

objectives, key points within topicsFurther discuss revision strategiesChoose topic to revise ready for mock paper

in week 4 seminar