This book describes in fascinating detail the history of the use of anesthesia in childbirth and in so doing offers a unique perspective on the interaction between medical science and social values. Dr. Donald Caton traces the responses of physicians and their patients to the pain of childbirth from the popularization of anesthesia to the natural childbirth movement and beyond. He finds that physicians discovered what could be done to manage pain, and patients decided what would be done. Dr. Caton discusses how nineteenth-century physicians began to think and act like scientists; how people learned to reject the belief that pain and suffering are inevitable components of life; and how a later generation came to think that pain may have important functions for the individual and society. Finally he shows the extent to which cultural and social values have influenced "scientific" medical decisions.

Within an interdisciplinary context of public health, reproductive health, and women's rights, this book chronicles the interaction of public policies and private reproductive behavior in the 28 formerly socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the USSR successor states from 1917 to the present. Focusing on the interaction of public policies and private behaviors, special emphasis is placed on the status of women--from producers of labor to reproducers of families. Consideration is given to societal values and traditions, Marxist theory, socialist and patriarchal perceptions of gender roles, status of women, changes in legislation facilitating or constraining access to modern contraceptives and abortion, pronatalist influences on demographic trends, attitudes of public health service providers, views on sex education, adolescent sexual behavior, and emerging roles of public services and nongovernmental organizations.

Included are notes on key developments in the USSR successor states in Europe and in Asia, a discussion of the societal effects of post-socialist transitions from central planning to market economies, and commentaries on the changing emphasis from demographic aspects to reproductive and sexual health, postabortion psychological responses, and the activities of antiabortion-oriented religious organizations. To the extent available, statistical data tabulated include live birth, legally induced abortions, birth rates, legal abortion rates, legal abortion ratios, and total fertility rates. Over 1250 references are listed.

Everyday conversations including gossip, boasting, flirting, teasing, and informative discussions are highly creative, improvised interactions. Children's play is also an important, often improvisational activity. One of the most improvisational games among 3- to 5-year-old children is social pretend play--also called fantasy play, sociodramatic play, or role play. Children's imaginations have free reign during pretend play. Conversations in these play episodes are far more improvisational than the average adult conversation. Because pretend play occurs in a dramatized, fantasy world, it is less constrained by social and physical reality. This book adds to our understanding of preschoolers' pretend play by examining it in the context of a theory of improvisational performance genres. This theory, derived from in-depth analyses of the implicit and explicit rules of theatrical improvisation, proves to generalize to pretend play as well. The two genres share several characteristics: * There is no script; they are created in the moment. * There are loose outlines of structure which guide the performance. * They are collective; no one person decides what will happen. Because group improvisational genres are collective and unscripted, improvisational creativity is a collective social process. The pretend play literature states that this improvisational behavior is most prevalent during the same years that many other social and cognitive skills are developing. Children between the ages of 3 and 5 begin to develop representations of their own and others' mental states as well as learn to represent and construct narratives. Freudian psychologists and other personality theorists have identified these years as critical in the development of the personality. The author believes that if we can demonstrate that children's improvisational abilities develop during these years--and that their fantasy improvisations become more complex and creative--it might suggest that these social skills are linked to the child's developing ability to improvise with other creative performers.

Babies are not simply born-they are made through cultural and social practices. Based on rich empirical work, this book examines the everyday experiences that mark pregnancy in the US today, such as reading pregnancy advice books, showing ultrasound "baby pictures" to friends and co-workers, and decorating the nursery in anticipation of the new arrival. These ordinary practices of pregnancy, the author argues, are significant and revealing creative activities that produce babies. They are the activities through which babies are made important and meaningful in the lives of the women and men awaiting the child's birth. This book brings into focus a topic that has been overlooked in the scholarship on reproduction and will be of interest to professionals and expectant parents alike.

Dreams of pregnancy include the expectation that nine months of waiting will end with a joyous event. But, each year, a "shattered dream" occurs for thousands of couples who receive the news that their child will have a disabling condition severe enough that they may question if they are the best parents for their child. Societal expectation is that parents will raise their child or, if the condition of the child is detected prenatally, abortion is offered as an alternative. Parents who explore other options face scrutiny and, sometimes, condemnation--"lonely choices." Joanne Finnegan shares her personal experience and that of several families she interviewed who, like herself, explored options other than raising their child with a disability. Parents express with candor the overwhelming pain they felt when receiving "the news," the frustration when searching for options, the "no-win" feeling of decision making, the resolve with a final decision, and finally, life after the decision. Parent quotes also address issues such as spiritual dilemmas and interactions with friends, family, their other children, and medical professionals. Words of advice for new parents include how to build support systems and gather information, how to search for an adoptive family, and arranging the details of communication between adoptive and birth parents. Interviews with adoptive parents, poetry, and extensive resource lists complete the book. Written as a gift for other parents to help them cope with the pain and loneliness of decision making, this book will also be a valuable resource for medical professionals, adoption and social workers, counselors and spiritual advisors, and friends and family of theparents. It is a helpful as well as a deeply therapeutic book, providing a strong lesson in how to manage during this stressful time, from receiving "the news" about the baby's condition and prognosis, to weighing the factors involved in the various decisions. Should one take the baby home from the hospital? If not home, then where? Foster care, respite care, guardianship, and other forms of substitute care are mentioned. The author also examines decisions about finances and support services, family issues, finalizing an adoption plan, living with the decision, regrets, and future pregnancies.

"I am grateful to William Marsiglio for having done this book. . . The bibliography alone, wonderfully interdisciplinary, including some classics but brought right up to date, makes the book indispensible. Want to know what is known about men and birth control, men and childbirth, men and abortion? This is the place to begin your research."
--"American Journal of Sociology"

In what ways do men think about and express themselves as procreative beings? Under what circumstances do they develop paternal identities? What is their involvement with partners during the pregnancy and delivery process, and how do they feel about it?

In Procreative Man, William Marsiglio addresses these and other timely questions with an eye toward the past, present, and future. Drawing upon writings ranging from sociology to biomedicine, Marsiglio develops a novel framework for exploring men's multifaceted and gendered experiences as procreative beings. Addressing such issues as how men feel about their limited role in the abortion decision and process, how important genetic ties are for men who want to be fathers, and men's reactions to infertility, Marsiglio shows how men's roles in creating and fathering human life is embedded within a rapidly changing cultural and sociopolitical environment.

The most comprehensive analysis of men and procreation, this theoretically informed work challenges us to expand our vision of fatherhood.

Pioneering evidence is presented in this book to support the effectiveness of peer counseling for substance abuse treatment of pregnant women and their families. The introduction by Barry R. Sherman describes his personal experience as a behavioral scientist doing work in a culture other than his own. A comprehensive overview of the crack epidemic and its impact on women is followed by an up-to-date account of acupuncture in addiction treatment. The authors use the theory and principles of social learning to justify the peer counselor model known as SISTERS. Chapters include discussions of conducting culturally competent research, development and validation of the Abstinence Self-Efficacy Scale (ASES) and the Traumatic Life Events (TLE) Inventory, as well as the social support systems of drug-dependent women. Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used to evaluate program impact. A urine toxicology index of sobriety as well as empirical measures of psychosocial functioning and client satisfaction demonstrate sufficient success and cost-effectiveness of the program to warrant serious support by health care providers and insurance companies.

"[S]heds light not only on the obstacles to making motherhood safer, but to improving the health of poor populations in general."-Social Anthropology Since 1987, when the global community first recognized the high frequency of women in developing countries dying from pregnancy-related causes, little progress has been made to combat this problem. This study follows the global policies that have been implemented in Solola, Guatemala in order to decrease high rates of maternal mortality among indigenous Mayan women. The author examines the diverse meanings and understandings of motherhood, pregnancy, birth and birth-related death among the biomedical personnel, village women, their families, and midwives. These incongruous perspectives, in conjunction with the implementation of such policies, threaten to disenfranchise clients from their own cultural understandings of self. The author investigates how these policies need to meld with the everyday lives of these women, and how the failure to do so will lead to a failure to decrease maternal deaths globally. From the Introduction: An unspoken effect of reducing maternal mortality to a medical problem is that life and death become the only outcomes by which pregnancy and birth are understood. The specter of death looms large and limits our full exploration of either our attempts to curb maternal mortality, or the phenomenon itself. Certainly women's survival during childbirth is the ultimate measure of success of our efforts. Yet using pregnancy outcomes and biomedical attendance at birth as the primary feedback on global efforts to make pregnancy safer is misguided.

Babies are not simply born-they are made through cultural and social practices. Based on rich empirical work, this book examines the everyday experiences that mark pregnancy in the US today, such as reading pregnancy advice books, showing ultrasound "baby pictures" to friends and co-workers, and decorating the nursery in anticipation of the new arrival. These ordinary practices of pregnancy, the author argues, are significant and revealing creative activities that produce babies. They are the activities through which babies are made important and meaningful in the lives of the women and men awaiting the child's birth. This book brings into focus a topic that has been overlooked in the scholarship on reproduction and will be of interest to professionals and expectant parents alike.

Too often, in the debate over reproductive rights and technologies, we lose sight of the fundamental emotional and psychological issues that define the experience of pregnancy. Robin Gregg here draws on the words and stories of over thirty women to provide a first- hand perspective on pregnancy in the modern age.

In an age where a new advance in reproductive technology occurs seemingly every month, pregnancy has come to be defined by such medical procedures as prenatal screening, amniocentesis, fetal monitoring, induced labor, and cesarean sections. Public policymakers, ethicists, religious figures, and the medical establishment control the debate, drowning out the voices of women who grapple in the most immediate sense with the issues. Even feminist theorists often overlook the nuances and paradoxes of the reproductive revolution as experienced by individual, particular women.

The reader follows these thirty women as they speak about whether to become pregnant, and by what means; how to choose a health provider; what meaning they attribute to their pregnancies; and how they navigate their way through the contradictory pressures they face during pregnancy. The intimate nature of Gregg's research, consisting as it does largely of women's pregnancy narratives, lends her book a vibrancy often lacking in academic writing about reproduction.

In the contemporary world, the unborn - human embryos and foetuses - are highly public and contested figures. Their visual images appear across a wide range of forums, from YouTube videos to pregnancy handbooks. They have become commercial commodities as part of the IVF industry, reproductive tourism and stem cell research and regenerative medicine. The unborn are the focus of intense debates concerning concepts of personhood and humanness, especially in relation to abortion politics and the use and disposal of embryos created outside the human body. The Social Worlds of the Unborn is the first book-length work to discuss all of these issues and more, drawing on social and cultural theory and research and empirical research to do so. It will be of interest to academics and students in a multitude of disciplines, including sociology, anthropology, philosophy, bioethics, gender studies, media and cultural studies and science and technology studies.

The sociological, medical, and historical aspects of birth control in the twentieth century have been compiled in this unique, easy-to-use, and comprehensive resource. Objectively written and international in scope, this encyclopedia covers a variety of topics: biology and anatomy, birth control methods and devices, influential people and organizations, issues and debates, religious perspectives, legal issues, perspectives from other countries. The Encyclopedia is an excellent source for students and other researchers, educators, health care professionals, and perennially high-interest topic. For students, expecially, the book will be invaluable for reports and term papers, speeches, and debates. The Encyclopedia contains more than 200 entries, a bibliography, and more than 50 photographs and charts. Entries end with a list of sources for further reading. Entries include BLAbortion BLAbstience BLBiological Methods of Contraception BLAnthony Comstock BLDalkon Shield BLMary Ware Dennett BLDepo-Provera BLFamily Planning BLGynecology BLInfanticide BLInternational Planned Parenthood Federation BLAletta Jacobs BLJudaism BLMale Contraceptives BLMenopause BLNorplant BLOral Contraceptives BLGregory Pincus BLPopulation Growth BLPoverty BLReproductive Rights BLJohn Rock BLRoe v. Wade BLRoman Catholic Church BLMargaret Higgins Sanger BLSex Education BLSexually Transmitted Diseases BLTubel Sterilization BLUnited Nations fund for Population Activities BLWorld Health Organization

What does it mean to have a child born through donor conception? Does it mean different things for heterosexual parents and lesbian parents? What is it like for the 'non-genetic' parent? How do grandparents feel about having a grandchild who is conceived with the help of an egg, sperm or embryo donor? Since 1991 more than 35,000 children have been born in the UK as a result of donor conception. This means that more and more families are facing the issue of incorporating 'relative strangers' into their families.
In this path breaking book, the authors explore the lived reality of donor conception in families by using in-depth interviews with parents and grandparents of donor conceived children. With reproductive medical technologies becoming more accessible, assisted donor conception is raising new and important questions about family life. This book will provide compelling reading for all those interested in the family, kinship, gender and sexuality, new reproductive technologies, and genetics.

A woman's childbirth care choices have a profound effect on her pregnancy and childbirth experience. Today, some pregnant women have three different options to choose from: obstetrical care and a hospital birth, a midwife-assisted birth in a hospital, and a midwife-assisted birth at an out-of-hospital birthing center. By using a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, this volume examines how and why 200 women made their choices, how satisfied they were with the care they received, and the impact of their choices on the availability of options in the future. Although most women in the U.S. still choose an obstetrician and a hospital setting, the number of women who choose to be assisted by a Certified Nurse Midwife is growing, with the result that this profession is acquiring new strength and jurisdiction over childbirth care.

Pregnant Fictions explores the complex role of pregnancy in early modern tale-telling and considers how stories of childbirth were used to rethink gendered "truths" at a key moment in the history of ideas. How male medical authorities and female literary authors struggled to describe the inner workings of the unseen--and competed to shape public understanding of it--is the focus of this engaging work by Holly Tucker. In illuminating the gender politics underlying dramatic changes in reproductive theory and practice, Tucker shows just how tenuous the boundaries of scientific "fact" and marvelous fictions were in early modern France. On the literary front, Tucker argues, women used the fairy tale to rethink the biology of childbirth and the sociopolitical uses to which it had been put. She shows that in references to midwives, infertility, sex selection, and embryological theories, fairy-tale writers experimented with alternative ways of understanding pregnancy. In so doing they suggested new ways in which to envision women, knowledge, and power in both the public and the private spheres.

Stories of women who mother are central to this book. The women come to mothering through birth and adoption, as birth mothers, placing mothers, adopting mothers and teen mothers. Woven between the women's narratives, the author offers reflective commentary intended to show the mothering experience in its complexity--bodily, culturally, and as the rootbed of relationship. Using phenomenological research, Bergum brings the mothering experience to light--as it is lived--exploring themes of love and pain, responsibility, belonging, choice, transformation, and quickening of the moral impulse to attend to the child. BerguM's intent is to encourage thoughtful reflection about what is learned through mothering--by women and by society--in order to create and sustain a society that is good for children and the women who mother them.

This is a wide range of material relating to childbirth gathered in one volume. From witches, wet nurses and lullabies to postpartum depression and bonding, leading authorities in various disciplines explore the topic of childbirth and related phenomena. Basic subjects covered are birth and demographics, history, political science, anthropology, ethics and psychology. Also discussed are the different organizations and support groups that have emerged out of the childbirth and reproductive rights movements in the US since the late 1950s.

" This book] brings together high-quality papers from many different fields: endocrinology, evolutionary biology, demography, economics, psychology, sociology, anthropology... It can be seen as a practical tool for researchers in the field, and it provides a large amount of data across a wide range of populations and helps to find a common ground between theories emerging from different fields. It is the kind of book that will never end up in the last dusty row of your shelves because you will continually refer to it, picking up here and there empirical and theoretical data for the next decades." BioOne. Research Evolved

From a comparative perspective, human life histories are unique and raising offspring is unusually costly: humans have relatively short birth intervals compared to other apes, childhood is long, mothers care simultaneously for many dependent children (other apes raise one offspring at a time), infant mortality is high in natural fertility/mortality populations, and human females have a long post-reproductive lifespan. These features conspire to make child raising very burdensome. Mothers frequently defray these costs with paternal help (not usual in other ape species), although this contribution is not always enough. Grandmothers, elder siblings, paid allocarers, or society as a whole, help to defray the costs of childcare, both in our evolutionary past and now. Studying offspring care in a various human societies, and other mammalian species, a wide range of specialists such as anthropologists, psychologists, animal behaviorists, evolutionary ecologists, economists and sociologists, have contributed to this volume, offering new insights into and a better understanding of one of the key areas of human society.

Gillian Bentley is a biological anthropologist and reproductive ecologist and a Royal Society Research Fellow at University College London. Her prior work focused on explaining why different human populations occupying a range of environments have varying levels of reproductive hormones. She now directs projects that interface with reproduction and reproductive health, working with the migrant Bangladeshi community in London. Recent publications include "Infertility in the Modern World: Present and Future Prospects, " edited with C.G.N. Mascie-Taylor (Cambridge University Press, 2000).

Ruth Mace is Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology at University College London. She works on the evolutionary ecology of social and subsistence systems. Particular interests include parental investment, mainly in African populations but also in the UK, and also macro-evolutionary studies on the evolution of cultural diversity. Recent publications include "The Evolution of Cultural Diversity: A Phylogenetic Approach, " edited with C. Holden and S. Shennan (UCL Press, 2005).

While much of the world worries about increasing population, this book looks the other way. It highlights the dramatic fall in fertility rates in all regions of the world. Demographers suggest that by 2050 this will lead to population decline. While environmentally this may be welcomed, there may also be negative impacts on our economies: less workers, an increasing number of elderly, and more unwanted childlessness. In this book, key experts untangle the reasons for not having children; international case studies demonstrate that there are similar but also different reasons operating in different areas and psychologists and sociologists explore the possible impact on children, parents and the elderly. Given that fertility trends are not easy to reverse, the book concludes that more needs to be done to maximize the potential of all children; particularly those who have been at the margins of society.

Prenatal testing for genetic abnormalities has transformed pregnancy and motherhood. Using sociological research, this book analyzes the social-psychological and ethical implications of invasive prenatal testing, particularly CVS and amniocentesis. Among the issues covered are changes in the genetic counseling profession and in client demographics; the challenge of nondirective genetic counseling; decisions on testing and on which test to have; the timing and risks of the procedures; abortion and grief; the ethics of sex selection; potential uses and abuses of genetic knowledge; and policy and ethical implications.

In the first three decades of this century Germany was concerned to protect its Volkskorper, the body politic, from the ravages of a social "disease" which affected all western Europe. This "disease" was a decline in the birth rate. The "solution" to this "disease" involved interfering with the Frauenkorper, the female body. German women's sexuality was to be controlled so that the number of healthy children required for a powerful state would be produced. However the politics of reproduction carried a potential conflict between Volkskorper and Frauenkorper, between collective and individual interests. This conflict is central to this study which analyses the tactics which the German state and its agencies used to regulate the size and balance of population to accord with their social, economic and political beliefs rather than with the views and wishes of individuals. During the Weimar Republic individual women and families were the target of intervention in four different areas of policy those of maternity, sexuality, contraception and abortion. In this study birth control is understood to encompass all the popular practices of avoiding unwanted children as well as the two differ

Birth rates are falling and fertility rates are well below replacement levels. At the same time, the economic crisis has forced governments to scale back public spending, reduce child support, and raise the retirement age, causing immense social conflict. Taking a step outside the disciplinary comfort zone, Whither the Child? asks how demography affects individuals and society. What does it feel like to live in a low fertility world? What are the consequences? Is there even a problem - economically, culturally and morally? No other book confronts so many dimensions of the low fertility issue and none engage with the thorny issues of child psychology, parenting, family, and social policy that are tackled head-on here.

The editor of this volume takes on the challenging task of presenting an encompassing view of childbirth in America from an anthropological perspective. The book is indeed comprehensive. . . . Collectively the chapters in Childbirth in America lay out a representative sketch of research problems of interest to sociocultural anthropologists and other social scientists working in the area of reproductive health. A distinct accomplishment is the acknowledgement in some of the chapters that not all American women want the same kind of childbirth care or have the same values and attitudes about pregnancy, birth, and parenting, and that this variation needs addressing in both childbirth policy and practice. American Journal of Physical Anthropology A comprehensive and critical examination of the experience of childbirth in America today, from pregnancy to early postpartum. This book covers many controversial issues in the context of diverse cultural, social, and economic backgrounds, which have arisen as a result of the new technologies and ideologies surrounding pregnancy and birth. Most useful as a text for courses in childbirth education, anthropology of women's health, and anthropology of medicine.

Hanson explores the different ways in which pregnancy has been constructed and interpreted in Britain over the last 250 years. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including obstetric texts, pregnancy advice books, literary texts, popular fiction and visual images, she analyzes changing attitudes to key issues such as the relative rights of mother and fetus and the degree to which medical intervention is acceptable in pregnancy. Hanson also considers the effects of medical and social changes on the subjective experience of pregnancy.

Today, cohabiting relationships account for most births outside marriage. But what was the situation in earlier centuries? Bringing together leading historians, demographers and lawyers, this interdisciplinary collection draws on a wide range of sources to examine the changing context of non-marital child-bearing in England and Wales since 1600.