Pronatalist Discourse Research Articles

‘Hit me like a brick wall’: women’s accounts of balancing cancer survivorship with fertility concerns while dealing with gynaecological cancer

Objective This study explored the impact of gynaecological cancer on women’s expectations for motherhood, their concerns regarding their fertility, and how they negotiated these concerns in the survivorship context. Methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 42 Australian women with gynaecological cancer, aged between 27 to 53 years, who were on average five years post-diagnosis (range 1–10 years). Thematic discourse analysis, from a material-discursive-intrapsychic approach, was used to explore how women narrated their fertility-related concerns in the broader social and healthcare contexts. Results While narrating their experiences of having gynaecological cancer, the women in our study negotiated their accounts within two competing discourses – the pronatalist discourse and the survivorship discourse. Women’s talk appeared conflicted by the social expectation to become a ‘good’ mother and focus on ensuring their fertility, while also managing the ‘survivorship’ imperative to focus exclusively on ‘fighting’ and beating cancer. Many women struggled to negotiate their fertility concerns and treatment decisions because of these two competing discourses. Conclusion Dominant discourses around survival and prioritising motherhood create enormous conflict for women with gynaecological cancer coping with fertility concerns. Helping women to develop meaningful narratives is needed, particularly for women with ovarian cancer.

Mothers and Children of the Republic of Srpska: Locating Nationalism in Pronatalist Discourse in Post-War Bosnia and Herzegovina

Abstract Two phenomena have been present in multiethnic/multinational Bosnia and Herzegovina since its independence from SFR Yugoslavia: massive depopulation and strong nationalism(s). Although nationalism influences which nation/ethnic group should produce and how, the links connecting these nationalistic ideologies and pronatalist population policies in the country/entity have been, almost paradoxically, left on the margins of the previous studies. This paper asks to what extent nationalist ideologies are present in the pronatalist population policy discourse in the Serb-dominated entity Republic of Srpska and what nationalism it is. After developing Spectrum of Nationalism(s), a framework underlined by Siniša Malešević’s views on nationalism and ethnicity as ideologies, the paper provides an overview of Bosnia’s demographic processes and brief insights into Republic of Srpska pronatalist policies through a semi-structured literature review. Keeping in mind that media profoundly influences public opinion, discursively moulding policy debates, two most recent cases of pronatalist campaigns and programs in the Republic of Srpska: Let Our Children Be Born and National Programme of Demographic Revival, are analysed via critical discourse analysis (CDA). Selected media articles predominantly cover the period from 2018 onwards, concentrating on the commentaries of the ruling SNSD political nomenklatura. The analysis displays the powerful influence of nationalism on the discourse on population policies. However, on the spectrum of nationalism(s), civic nationalism seems only to be pro forma defined, while in RS’s reality, the abovementioned path has continued toward an ethnonationalism direction.

“We all have Regrets; it doesn’t Mean we are Failures”: Rejecting or Regretting Motherhood

A woman’s choice to remain childfree is often met with disapproving comments. This article focuses on pronatalism and the social discourse that promotes and maintains motherhood as the preferred choice for women in a country that has achieved high levels of gender equality. Critical discourse analysis is applied to 30 qualitative interviews with women, trans, and non-binary people in Iceland, who are either childfree by choice or who regret motherhood. The results indicate that despite neoliberalism advocating a woman’s right to freedom of choice, pronatalist ideologies continue to undermine reproductive self-determination, promoting motherhood as the right choice. Unsolicited comments act as powerful mechanisms that serve to shame those who can bear children into becoming mothers or facing regret yet simultaneously condemn women who regret motherhood. Women who choose to remain childfree privately challenge unwanted comments by overturning pronatalist discourses, whereas those who regret their choice to become mothers struggle to express their feelings for fear of being judged and branded as failures.

‘I try to be true to myself but other people have to fit you into a box’: Exploring how voluntarily childfree women discursively negotiate their sense of self in a pronatalist society

Women who have consciously remained free of having children, also known as voluntarily childfree (Blackstone, 2019), occupy liminal spaces created for them by dominant social discourses that valorise reproduction and vilify childfreedom (Gotlib, 2016). Reproductive desire is socially constructed as biologically innate (Franke, 2010) and pronatalist discourses construct voluntarily childfree (VC) women as making an ‘unnatural’ choice (Gillespie, 2003). This research aims to explore how socially constructed positions about voluntarily childfree women have impacted their sense of self. Feminist Relational Discourse Analysis (Thompson et al., 2018) was used to listen for contrapuntal voices within VC women’s negotiation of identities. Through semi-structured interviews with six women, three prominent discourses were heard: Negotiating Identity in a Pronatalist Society; Still Being a Woman Whilst Not Being a Mother; and Political Implications of Being Voluntarily Childfree. Contrapuntal voices heard within these discourses highlighted that VC women skilfully negotiate complex and conflicting subject positions to create space for their identities as women. The complex nature of VC women’s subjective experience of selfhood serves as a challenge to the homogenised view of women’s identity perpetuated by the patriarchal discourses prevalent in political structures of social policies, healthcare and workplace settings.

Procreation and Cooperation. On Futurist Reproduction Postulates

The article constitutes an attempt at analysing futurist pronatalist discourse, on the basis of the manifestos and artistic praxis of the Futurists. The reproduction postulates, prevalent in the works of the Polish Futurists and usually placed in the context of vitalism, characteristic of the 1920s, are shown from a biopolitical perspective, emphasizing the intersection of the biological with the political and social horizons. The author attempts to trace especially the political entanglements of the “population project” of the Polish Futurists, which turns out be marked by numerous paradoxes, situating itself between the pronatalist rhetoric typical of nationalistdiscourse (on the one hand, the discourse promoted by F.T. Marinetti, and on the other, the one formulated in Poland directly after regaining independence) and thinking in terms of a community which starts from the material functions of the body. In this second context, the reproduction postulates are not only an attack on bourgeois morality, but are closely connected with the futurist critique of all social institutions and the state apparatus with its biopolitical dispositions.

How Do Pronatalist Policies Impact Women's Access to Safe Abortion Services in Turkey?

A pronatalist discourse and anti-abortion rhetoric used by prominent politicians in Turkey, prior to and following the proposed ban of abortion in 2012, have resulted in reports of women facing difficulty accessing safe abortion services (SAS), risking the resurgence of unsafe abortions. We conducted a qualitative study to identify the impact of the ongoing pronatalist discourse on women’s access to SAS, using semi-structured interviews with 19 experts (16 female, 3 male) in reproductive health, including academics, doctors, midwives, and health authorities. Participants from 4 cities (Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir, and Manisa) were identified through a combined snowball and purposive sampling technique. The findings show that the pronatalist discourse has directly and indirectly inhibited access to SAS. Women’s and health professionals’ perception of abortion services has been tainted by rhetoric; provision of SAS in the public sector is slowly ceasing; and health reform-related organizational changes have diminished access to family planning services and contraceptive methods. Provision of SAS in the private sector continues but is only accessible for women with sufficient financial means. Preventing women’s access to SAS risks a rise in unwanted pregnancies and—consequently—in the number of women who may seek dangerous alternatives, including unsafe, life-threatening abortions.

“Soothing My Child's Soul and My Own”: Dealing with Pregnancy Loss in Postcommunist Romania

AbstractIn Romania—where induced abortions were legally prohibited during communism and are now morally condemned by many—those who lose a pregnancy against their will have long been regarded with suspicion, confronted with a sense of culpability, and surrounded by silence. This ambiguity is reflected in the local terminology and the perceived etiology of loss. In this article, which is based on 15 months of fieldwork between 2012 and 2015, I illustrate the various meanings and manifestations of a silenced sense of culpability around involuntary pregnancy loss in the lives of women from Bucharest and a small town in Central Romania. I also show how many of these women attempt to break the silence around their lost fetuses and carve out a personal space of commemoration and consolation. Their informal use of forbidden religious rituals paradoxically allows them to confirm the existence of their lost little ones and to position themselves as caring, rather than culpable, mothers. [pregnancy loss, commemoration, culpability, postcommunist Romania]

Transforming the Gendered Regime Through Reproductive Politics: Neoliberal Health Restructuring, The Debt Economy and Reproductive Rights in Turkey

The “Health Transformation Program,” started by the AKP (Justice and Development Party) in 2003 in Turkey, is part of the global neoliberal “Health Sector Reforms-HSRs” which have been undertaken since the late 1980s and early 1990s with the support of World Bank advisers and reports, in various ‘developing’ countries such as Brazil, Mexico, South Korea, Taiwan, always with the rationale of a “health crisis” (increasing costs of health care), a need to prevent public corruption and bring “efficiency.” Similar to these other contexts, the Turkish health reform or health restructuring as we call it, comprised changes to finance mechanisms and provision of care and introduced a premium-based compulsory health coverage system. Alongside the neoliberal policies, there has also been a rise in the New Right under the AKP regime, which had at its center anti-women discourses, policies and implementations, including a pronatalist discourse and implementations and statements equating abortion with murder. To contribute to the existing feminist literature that analyzes the intricate links between capitalism, neoliberalism and gender, especially on connecting the latest stage of neoliberalism–the debt economy- to reproductive rights, we designed a multisite feminist research to investigate the effects of neoliberal health-structuring on reproductive rights in Turkey, France and the U.S. Our theoretical groundings are in transnational feminist theory and writings on the state of neoliberalism and the debt economy, especially those of Lazaratto and Berardi. In this paper, we discuss our findings in Turkey, especially the focus-group interviews with healthcare providers working in family health centers, in order to reveal how the gender regime in Turkey is being transformed via reproductive and body politics. Analyzing our existent data on Turkey in light of the writings on the debt economy, we observed the neoliberal mechanisms of the dismantling of the public/privatization and the creation of individual debt and quantification of care (as related to mathematization of life and language). We witnessed how these neoliberal mechanisms interact with the conservative discourse leading to the erosion of women’s rights to access contraceptive and abortion care in Turkey and a transformation of the gender regime through the alteration of its reproductive politics.

On the Margins of Motherhood: Choosing to Be Child-Free in Lucie Joubert’s L’Envers du landau (2010)

Voluntarily choosing not to have children is increasingly becoming a preferred life option in contemporary society. Yet there remains an inherent suspicion and pitying of women who do not follow what is still perceived, despite several waves of feminism, as their biological destiny. Such choices are considered ‘unspeakable’ by the dominant pro-natalist discourse that currently presides in western advanced-capitalist society. This article attempts to challenge and reverse prescribed beliefs about motherhood and create a textual space for those who have been denigrated for choosing not to become mothers.

Daughters and their mothers: The reproduction of pronatalist discourses across generations

The expectation that all women will become mothers, and that they will mother in particular ways, has been a focus of feminist attention for many decades. What has been less considered is how pronatalist discourses are reproduced across generations within the same family. This article draws on interviews with five pairs of white middle class daughters currently planning to have children and their mothers living in South Australia, in order to examine the ways in which mother-daughter relationships are a key site for the reproduction of pronatalist discourses. Three recurring themes are examined: 1) expectations mothers have of their daughters to have children, 2) (grand)mothers as advice-givers, and 3) generational differences relating to paid work combined with the continued privileging of mothering. The article concludes with a discussion of the ways in which pronatalist discourses are mobilised in mother-daughter relationships, and how these position women in relation to motherhood.

(Post)Feminist Maternal Chronicles and Their Discontents

Abstract This essay reads the conflict, ambivalence and guilt that pervade what I call "maternal chronicles"—a heterogenous set of autobiographical texts centering on the experience of mothering—as symptomatic of the postfeminist turn in Spanish society. While in literature, maternal narratives continue to be scarce (Freixas 2012), the last ten years have witnessed the emergence of new narrative forms, ranging from blogs to diaries to comics, that express their authors’ ambivalent feelings towards this "sacred" institution (Lucía Extebarria, Care Santos, Isabel García Zarza, Yolanda Saenz de Tejada, Inmaculada Gilaberte, Gabriela Wiener, Gemma Sesar etc.). As Spain continues to experience one of the lowest birth rates in the world, popular culture presents glamorous maternal images that reflect the resurfacing of pro-natalist discourses aiming "to put motherhood squarely back at the heart of women’s lives" (Badinter 1). While the popular media contribute to the creation of a new "motherhood mystique" (to borrow Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels’s definition), maternal chronicles often express frustration with unattainable maternal myths, while stopping short of invalidating them completely. Reading maternal memoirs vis-à-vis popular culture, this essay argues that the articulation of maternal subjectivities in contemporary Spanish culture is symptomatic of a paradoxical situation, in which motherhood is celebrated as a source of women’s fulfillment in a society characterized by deeply antimaternal structures with high unemployment rate, low gender equality in the workplace, uneven distribution of domestic chores, and lack of state support for working mothers.

‘Emotional rights’, moral reasoning, and Jewish–Arab alliances in the regulation of in-vitro-fertilization in Israel: Theorizing the unexpected consequences of assisted reproductive technologies

Consumption rates of assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) in Israel is internationally unprecedented, a phenomenon that has been the subject of growing anthropological and sociological attention. Explanations for the singular extent of ARTs use in Israel tend to pre-assume and conceptually prioritize the symbolic and political power of pro-natalist discourses, Jewish religious values, and the demographic interests of the Jewish state. This article attempts to understand the exceptional usage of IVF in Israel in terms of its emergent meanings and unexpected effects in a particular local setup. The question that this article tries to answer is: How is the ‘Israeli character’ of IVF emerges within and through the interactive practice of moral justifications, and how might this medical technology affect the networks within which it is enmeshed? The article is based on a case-study analysis of a public dispute that took place in 2003–2004 over the extent of public funding for fertility treatments. Ethnographic analysis of parliament discussions, media coverage, and an online forum of IVF consumers recorded three frames of justification for the uniquely generous public funding scheme of IVF in Israel: ‘rational-economic’, ‘nationalist’, and ‘liberal’. The latter assumes shared ‘emotional vulnerability’ of all ‘childless’ Israelis, Jews and Arabs alike and advocates a universal language of ‘emotional rights’ and ‘human rights’. This liberal framing of IVF, which is the most persuasive justification in the dispute, blurs dichotomous rivalries between Jews and Arabs and generates a potential for alliances between traditionally rival sectors. These are some of the unexpected and non-intuitive consequences of ARTs in Israel.

A phenomenological exploration of the childfree choice in a sample of Australian women

Choosing not to have children is considered a deviation from cultural norms, particularly the dominant pronatalist discourse; this is especially so for women. However, little research has documented the experience of Australian women who have consciously chosen to remain childless. Ten voluntarily childfree women participated in unstructured interviews about their choice and its ramifications. The data analysis revealed three broad themes - the experiences and processes of making the choice; the ongoing effects of their choice, ranging from support and acceptance to pressure and discrimination; and no regret as the women described engaging in meaningful, generative activities that contributed to society.

Pronatalism, Gender Politics, and the Renewal of Family Support in Russia: Toward a Feminist Anthropology of “Maternity Capital”

This article examines the gendered consequences of linking family support to state pronatalist goals in contemporary Russia. By analyzing the policies, proposals, and critiques circulating on the maternity capital program, Michele Rivkin-Fish demonstrates how state power and citizenship are being constructed through struggles over the meanings of gender and family. She further argues that studies of Russian demographic politics must bring attention to both institutional transformations and the symbolic levels of discourse. This holistic approach, rooted in feminist anthropology, illuminates the particular, cultural logics informing demographic debates as well as the apparent contradictions between ideologies, policies, and practices. Pronatalist discourses engage Russian politicians, experts, and laypersons in efforts to undo the troubling legacy of Soviet gender relations and the 1990s fertility crisis; in the process, these policies define and deploy state power in ways that sustain and normalize gender inequalities.

Conceiving the Future: Pronatalism, Reproduction, and the Family in the United States, 1890-1938. By Laura L. Lovett. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. xii, 236 pp. Cloth, $59.95, ISBN 978-0-8078-3107-6. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 978-0-8078-5803-5.)

Laura L. Lovett's Conceiving the Future is a useful complement to recent studies on the history of the family and eugenics in the twentieth century. Lovett focuses on the ideological and cultural ideals that shaped policies central to the formation of family life in the United States and argues that a deeply embedded pronatalism was promulgated in a way that has not been fully examined, in contrast with the study of similar, more overt, policies in France and Germany in the same period. Lovett uncovers a strong current of pronatalism that operated as a form of social control promoted by a variety of interlocking reform movements. She admits in the introduction that there is a problem with identifying the far more tenuous and indirect policy of pronatalism in the United States, yet her examination of pronatalist discourse through five case studies enables her to focus this study. Lovett ultimately shows that idealizations about motherhood and family life were forged from socially and racially exclusionary models deeply indebted to the eugenics movement.

All About Mothers: Pronatalist Discourses in Contemporary Spanish Cinema

Spain—the most fertile society in Europe in the early 1970s—now has the lowest birth rate in the world and this fact is the origin of new debates around women's role in production and reproduction, a debate that transcends the strictly personal to acquire new social and political dimension. In such a charged pronatalist social context, contemporary Spanish cinema seems to support this call to maternity—often in no innocent terms. Through the analysis of five movies, this essay studies the ramifications—in contemporary Spanish cinema—of the discourse of maternity and its social implications. First, by examining the self-sacrificing "angel" mother paradigm and its underside, namely the evil, self-satisfying mother, the essay explores how both Benito Zambrano's Solas and Azucena Rodríguez's Puede ser divertido envision motherhood as the way for women's fulfillment and as the solution to women's problems; second, through the analysis of Javier Fesser's El milagro de P.Tinto and Pilar Távora's Yerma, it addresses the confusion between sexual and maternal desires, a confusion that shapes the maternal paradigm of asexuality; and thirdly, by focusing on Almodóvar's Todo sobre mi madre, it reflects upon the dynamics of absorption of the concept of womanhood into the category of maternity.

Celebrating the Père de Famille: Pronatalism and Fatherhood in Eighteenth-Century France

Between 1760 and 1790, the French royal government awarded thousands of tax reductions and payments to fathers with ten or more children. The official purpose of the awards was to encourage population, but the correspondence between applicants and administrators dwells on the definition of a “good father” more than on population. Applicants and administrators agreed in general on a sentimentalized model of good fatherhood with roots in the Catholic Reformation; a good father provided sustenance, education, and a good moral example to his children in performance of his quasi-sacred paternal duty. The ideal of fatherhood emerging from pronatalist discourse confirms that the patriarchal-authoritarian model, which had in the past bolstered arguments for royal power, was displaced in the mid-eighteenth century by a newer focus on paternal obligation, even in the administrative discourse of the royal government.

The Rush to Motherhood: Pronatalist Discourse and Women's Autonomy

L'auteur s'interesse a la question du choix des femmes a devenir meres ou non, ainsi qu'a la frequence de leurs grossesses. Si des lois respectant ces decisions tant en matiere d'avortement que de contraception existent aux Etats-Unis, les femmes ressentent une forte pression sociale. A travers des temoignages l'auteur souligne l'importance de ces choix sur la vie intime et sociale. L'autonomie des femmes est fortement remise en question par les discours pronatalistes. L'auteur propose deux pistes de reflexion aux feministes afin de promouvoir le developpement reel et durable de l'autonomie feminine

When no means no

Cultural discourses of femininity and women's social role have historically and traditionally been constructed around motherhood. However, recent studies into women's childbearing intentions have revealed an increasing number of women in Western Europe and the United States choosing to remain childless. Thus, a distinction has emerged between cultural discourses on femininity and the experiences of an increasing number of women. This article considers the questions that emerge from this. In particular, to what extent and in what ways might cultural discourses of motherhood and femininity have declined and transformed as women's lives have changed. What might be the implications of this for constructions of femininity and identity in women. Drawing on an empirical study into voluntary childlessness amongst women, this article argues that pronatalist discourses and those that denigrate voluntary childlessness persist despite the considerable changes and increased autonomy experienced by women during the second half of the 20th century. However, through rejecting and resisting discourses that conflate femininity with motherhood, childless women create new discourses that can subvert and transform constructions of femininity. The article concludes that the advent of these new and alternative discourses signify the emergence of a radical feminine identity, distinct and unshackled from motherhood.

Childless in the Land of Imperative Motherhood: Stigma and Coping Among Infertile Israeli Women

Drawing on Goffman's stigma framework, this in-depth study explored the experiences of 26 infertile Jewish women in Israel, the country with a strong pronatalist ideology, both institutional and popular. The findings are in line with the key postulates of the stigma concept: women's coping strategies included selective disclosure, avoidance of exposure of their “hidden disability,” and other information management techniques. Infertility became a “master status” for these women, undermining any other merits and achievements they might have. Most women fully internalized and endorsed the pronatalist discourse by way of pursuing long-term and burdensome infertility treatments, at any personal cost. The paper argues that resistance to stigma of infertility is only possible where women dare question the motherhood imperative, which is clearly not the case with most Israelis. Material and mental resources needed for resisting the stigma of infertility are found among few educated professional women. The paper suggests three theoretical inferences: (a) stigma as a psychological response is graded by the extent of individual's conformity with the dominant norms; (b) the stigma of childlessness is most devastating for the less educated women without career or other nonfamilial aspirations; and (c) in pronatalist societies, the coping and management approach to the study of infertility is more relevant than the resistance approach suggested by some authors.