Anne Woollett

Fit to Reproduce? The Regulative Role of Pregnancy Texts

This article presents an analysis of popular UK-based guides to pregnancy. A discursive approach is adopted to explicate the interpretative repertoires used to construct pregnancy. ‘Planning for pregnancy’ incites women to engage in self-disciplining practices relating to the (pre)pregnant body, the self and ‘transforming the environment’. The easy combination and repeated use of these practices in conjunction with a repertoire of ‘pregnancy as risk’ serves to mask diversity and to decontextualize and individualize pregnancy to render it separate from women’s other relationships, identities and knowledges, with little regard for the specific circumstances in which women become/are pregnant. Medicalized discourses position women with limited agency, while, by means of repertoires of ‘choice’ informed by ‘woman-centred’ discourses, women are construed as consumers, taking responsibility for themselves and their babies. A tension is manifest in that the responsibility and blame for ‘abnormality’ or ‘unsuccessful’ outcomes is located with individual women/parents. We argue that through both medicalized and ‘womancentred’ discourses, reproduction remains a key site for the regulation of women.

Psychological tasks for women and men in the postpartum

Abstract Drawing on data from a longitudinal study of the transition to parenthood, four psychological tasks for women and men in the post-partum were identified: recovery from and making sense of childbirth, feelings about/relations with child, feelings about self, and changing relationships. These were examined using a mix of questionnaires and interviews. Womens responses and ways of coping with these four tasks indicated a greater variety and complexity of feelings and experiences (both positive and negative) than might be expected given the predominant clinical and research interest in depression inthe post-partum. In many respects womens feelings and experiences were similar to those of their male partners, but there were also differences, pointing to the ways in which experiences of the post-partum are gendered. These differences are related to social constructions of motherhood and fatherhood, and, in spite of notions of equity and sharing of child care in the post-partum, to the different impac...

Reproduction, Women’s Lives and Subjectivities

The issue of reproduction as a key site for the social construction and regulation of women has been examined by feminist psychologists and activists campaigning around women’s reproductive bodies in areas such as contraception, abortion, infertility treatment, pregnancy and childbirth, and the menopause. The articles in this Special Issue consider some of the ways in which reproduction shapes women’s lives and subjectivities, and some of the issues thus raised for feminist and psychological theorizing of women. The articles focus particularly on motherhood constituted as an essential identity for women and the ways in which women negotiate becoming or not becoming mothers, drawing on the research and commentary of women who are voluntarily childless (Morell, Wager), and who want children but can’t have them (Ulrich and Weatherall); women’s embodied subjectivities and the ways in which conception, pregnancy and childbirth are theorized and managed (Marshall and Woollett, Rudolfsdottir, and reviews of books by Meyer, Ragone, and Petchesky and Judd); and tensions between motherhood constituted as normal and natural for all women and as problematic for women deemed not to be the ‘right’ women or in the ‘right’ circumstances (Burns, Lee, Marshall and Woollett).

Asian Women's Ethnic Identity: The Impact of Gender and Context in the Accounts of Women Bringing Up Children in East London

This study examines the ways in which a group of women of Asian origin or descent define and discuss aspects of ethnicity and ethnic identity. Thirty-two Asian women of different religious and cultural backgrounds who were bringing up young children in East London were interviewed by an Asian psychologist. As part of a more extensive interview about childbirth, child care and child rearing, women were asked about their ethnic identity. Their accounts indicate that their constructions of ethnicity and ethnic identity are fluid and changing, taking account of gender, developmental changes associated with motherhood and the context of their lives as mothers of young children. Analysis of their accounts is used to argue that ethnicity and ethnic identity are not homogeneous categories, that they operate across gender and, therefore, greater consideration needs to be given in developmental psychology to the complexity and variations in womens representations of ethnicity.

Reproductive decision making: Asian women's ideas about family size, and the gender and spacing of children

Abstract Women of Asian origins and descent constitute a large ethnic minority in the UK. However, although there is some evidence that Asian family size is larger than average for the UK, little is known about Asian womens attitudes to reproductive decisions. This paper reports some quantitative and qualitative data from a sample of Asian women living in East London. One hundred Asian women with at least one child were interviewed about a number of aspects of their reproductive decision making, including preferred family size, gender composition of families, use of contraception, and methods of contraception. Their replies were compared with a group of 46 non-Asian women living in the same area. Like their non-Asian counterparts, most Asian women wanted two or three children, with Muslim women wanting somewhat larger families than Hindu, Sikh or non-Asian women. All women wanted a mix of boys and girls, although Asian women had stronger preferences than non-Asian women for more boys than girls. A majori...

Asian women's experience of childbirth in East London: The support of fathers and female relatives

Abstract Thirty-two Asian women were interviewed about their experiences of childbirth and about the roles of fathers and female relatives at birth and in the post-natal period. In general women accepted the medical management of childbirth. Even though almost all the marriages were arranged, the majority of fathers were present for at least some of the labour and delivery and women valued their help and support. Viewing birth as an event to be shared by the couple rather than the family contrasts with traditional woman-centred practices. Fathers played a less active role post-natally. Women who were supported by their female relatives could rest and were not required to engage in taboo activities. Many women were not living with their in-laws and looked to their own families or to friends for support, although almost a fifth were isolated. The influence of womens living situations and fluency in English on their experiences of childbirth are discussed.

Young Women's Accounts of the Meanings of the Body in Relation to Independence, Responsibility and Maturity

This article examines the ways in which young women living in East London position the body in terms of their lives and relations with others and the implications of their representations for mainstream psychological approaches to adolescent development. Mainstream psychological approaches, as articulated in stage and ’Sturm und Drang’ theories, characterize adolescence as a time when young people move from a state of dependence on parents to individuation and independence from others (Erikson, 1968; Noller and Callan, 1991; Coleman and Hendry,1990; Apter, 1991). Concomitant with this emphasis on independence is the notion that young people gradually take on responsibility for themselves and their actions and make their own decisions (Griffin, 1993; Smetana and Asquith,