Leslie Tuttle
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195381603
- eISBN:
- 9780199870295
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195381603.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History, Political History
Between 1666 and 1789, France's Old Regime government used the king's legislative authority to promote marriage and prolific reproduction. This book studies the royal pronatalist law masterminded by ...
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Between 1666 and 1789, France's Old Regime government used the king's legislative authority to promote marriage and prolific reproduction. This book studies the royal pronatalist law masterminded by Jean‐Baptiste Colbert and follows its implementation in France and New France to show that royal intervention in the realm of family and sexuality was an integral part of the process of state formation in Europe. Even before the establishment of modern demography, political writers recognized that cultivating the kingdom's human resources was essential to building the state's military and economic power. And, they argued, the hierarchical and gendered order of the traditional, monogamous conjugal household was the bedrock of a stable social and political order. For these reasons, the French royal government altered it laws to favor early marriage and to reward men who fathered large families of ten or more legitimate children. The royal government's action signaled that human fertility was no longer a matter of divine control, but a recognized and even legitimate matter for human – and thus political—intervention.Less
Between 1666 and 1789, France's Old Regime government used the king's legislative authority to promote marriage and prolific reproduction. This book studies the royal pronatalist law masterminded by Jean‐Baptiste Colbert and follows its implementation in France and New France to show that royal intervention in the realm of family and sexuality was an integral part of the process of state formation in Europe. Even before the establishment of modern demography, political writers recognized that cultivating the kingdom's human resources was essential to building the state's military and economic power. And, they argued, the hierarchical and gendered order of the traditional, monogamous conjugal household was the bedrock of a stable social and political order. For these reasons, the French royal government altered it laws to favor early marriage and to reward men who fathered large families of ten or more legitimate children. The royal government's action signaled that human fertility was no longer a matter of divine control, but a recognized and even legitimate matter for human – and thus political—intervention.
Leslie Tuttle
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195381603
- eISBN:
- 9780199870295
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195381603.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History, Political History
The introduction sets out the contexts for understanding the early modern French state's decision to intervene proactively in its subjects' reproductive lives. It defines pronatalism, a terms that ...
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The introduction sets out the contexts for understanding the early modern French state's decision to intervene proactively in its subjects' reproductive lives. It defines pronatalism, a terms that refers to policies intended that promote both population growth and the extension of the gendered identities associated with procreation and childrearing. The adoption of pronatalist policies in early modern France coincides with some of the earliest statistical evidence for the practice of contraception; both contraception and pronatalism demonstrate the spread of attitudes accepting human intervention to shape fertility. Pronatalist policy also extended the early modern French state's growing interest in regulating the domain of marriage and family.Less
The introduction sets out the contexts for understanding the early modern French state's decision to intervene proactively in its subjects' reproductive lives. It defines pronatalism, a terms that refers to policies intended that promote both population growth and the extension of the gendered identities associated with procreation and childrearing. The adoption of pronatalist policies in early modern France coincides with some of the earliest statistical evidence for the practice of contraception; both contraception and pronatalism demonstrate the spread of attitudes accepting human intervention to shape fertility. Pronatalist policy also extended the early modern French state's growing interest in regulating the domain of marriage and family.
Leslie Tuttle
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195381603
- eISBN:
- 9780199870295
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195381603.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History, Political History
The government of Louis XIV extended pronatalist policy to New France, hoping to use marriage and prolific procreation to implant settled, French‐style civilization in North America. This chapter ...
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The government of Louis XIV extended pronatalist policy to New France, hoping to use marriage and prolific procreation to implant settled, French‐style civilization in North America. This chapter reviews attempts to promote marriage and population growth in New France. The first part examines the role of marriage in French Jesuits' quest to convert the indigenous population from about 1630 to 1660. Strict Catholic Reformation standards for monogamous, indissoluble marriage proved difficult to maintain in the colonial environment. The chapter then surveys the royal government's investments to promote population growth in the period from 1663 to 1690, including its export of French females to Canada for marriage, financial support for the formation of settler households and use of censuses to monitor population movement. Settler households were marked by high fertility, but the active promotion of settled domesticity failed to “civilize” New France in the ways that royal officials had anticipated.Less
The government of Louis XIV extended pronatalist policy to New France, hoping to use marriage and prolific procreation to implant settled, French‐style civilization in North America. This chapter reviews attempts to promote marriage and population growth in New France. The first part examines the role of marriage in French Jesuits' quest to convert the indigenous population from about 1630 to 1660. Strict Catholic Reformation standards for monogamous, indissoluble marriage proved difficult to maintain in the colonial environment. The chapter then surveys the royal government's investments to promote population growth in the period from 1663 to 1690, including its export of French females to Canada for marriage, financial support for the formation of settler households and use of censuses to monitor population movement. Settler households were marked by high fertility, but the active promotion of settled domesticity failed to “civilize” New France in the ways that royal officials had anticipated.
Leslie Tuttle
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- September 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780195381603
- eISBN:
- 9780199870295
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195381603.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, European Early Modern History, Political History
Louis XIV's 1666 pronatalist policy offered tax privileges to fathers of ten or more children in order to encourage marriage and abundant procreation. This chapter offers a picture of the day‐to‐day ...
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Louis XIV's 1666 pronatalist policy offered tax privileges to fathers of ten or more children in order to encourage marriage and abundant procreation. This chapter offers a picture of the day‐to‐day functioning of the Old Regime system for collecting the main direct tax, the taille, and traces the conflicts that ensued between heads‐of‐household seeking to claim the awards and the local tax collectors, élection officers, judges of the Cour des aides, intendants and controller‐general who managed tax repartition and collection. Communities had a strong financial incentive to resist new privileges, but they also had an interest in supporting the integrity of households with many children if threatened by poverty. The government's inability to control the boundaries of pronatalist privilege led to a partial revocation of the 1666 edict in 1683, a failure that illustrates the fundamental limits of royal power in the seventeenth century.Less
Louis XIV's 1666 pronatalist policy offered tax privileges to fathers of ten or more children in order to encourage marriage and abundant procreation. This chapter offers a picture of the day‐to‐day functioning of the Old Regime system for collecting the main direct tax, the taille, and traces the conflicts that ensued between heads‐of‐household seeking to claim the awards and the local tax collectors, élection officers, judges of the Cour des aides, intendants and controller‐general who managed tax repartition and collection. Communities had a strong financial incentive to resist new privileges, but they also had an interest in supporting the integrity of households with many children if threatened by poverty. The government's inability to control the boundaries of pronatalist privilege led to a partial revocation of the 1666 edict in 1683, a failure that illustrates the fundamental limits of royal power in the seventeenth century.
Laura L. Lovett
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807831076
- eISBN:
- 9781469604725
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807868102_lovett
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
Through nostalgic idealizations of motherhood, family, and the home, influential leaders in early twentieth-century America constructed and legitimated a range of reforms that promoted human ...
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Through nostalgic idealizations of motherhood, family, and the home, influential leaders in early twentieth-century America constructed and legitimated a range of reforms that promoted human reproduction. Their pronatalism emerged from a modernist conviction that reproduction and population could be regulated. European countries sought to regulate or encourage reproduction through legislation; America, by contrast, fostered ideological and cultural ideas of pronatalism through what this book refers to as “nostalgic modernism,”which romanticized agrarianism and promoted scientific racism and eugenics. The book looks closely at the ideologies of five influential American figures: Mary Elizabeth Lease's maternalist agenda, Florence Sherbon's eugenic “fitter families”campaign, George H. Maxwell's “homecroft” movement of land reclamation and home building, Theodore Roosevelt's campaign for conservation and country life, and Edward Alsworth Ross's sociological theory of race suicide and social control. Demonstrating the historical circumstances that linked agrarianism, racism, and pronatalism, it shows how reproductive conformity was manufactured, how it was promoted, and why it was coercive. In addition to contributing to scholarship in American history, gender studies, rural studies, and environmental history, this study sheds light on the rhetoric of “family values” that has regained currency in recent years.Less
Through nostalgic idealizations of motherhood, family, and the home, influential leaders in early twentieth-century America constructed and legitimated a range of reforms that promoted human reproduction. Their pronatalism emerged from a modernist conviction that reproduction and population could be regulated. European countries sought to regulate or encourage reproduction through legislation; America, by contrast, fostered ideological and cultural ideas of pronatalism through what this book refers to as “nostalgic modernism,”which romanticized agrarianism and promoted scientific racism and eugenics. The book looks closely at the ideologies of five influential American figures: Mary Elizabeth Lease's maternalist agenda, Florence Sherbon's eugenic “fitter families”campaign, George H. Maxwell's “homecroft” movement of land reclamation and home building, Theodore Roosevelt's campaign for conservation and country life, and Edward Alsworth Ross's sociological theory of race suicide and social control. Demonstrating the historical circumstances that linked agrarianism, racism, and pronatalism, it shows how reproductive conformity was manufactured, how it was promoted, and why it was coercive. In addition to contributing to scholarship in American history, gender studies, rural studies, and environmental history, this study sheds light on the rhetoric of “family values” that has regained currency in recent years.
Geoffrey G. Field
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199604111
- eISBN:
- 9780191731686
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199604111.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History, Political History
Wartime publicity frequently described Britain as a family and later images of the Blitz also stress the courage and endurance of families as a key institution that enabled the nation to surmount the ...
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Wartime publicity frequently described Britain as a family and later images of the Blitz also stress the courage and endurance of families as a key institution that enabled the nation to surmount the crisis. While acknowledging positive representations of family, this chapter examines the equally widespread alarm among government officials, journalists and social work groups about wartime dislocation of family life—as measured by rising statistics for divorce, delinquency and illegitimacy, press stories about ‘good time girls’, and claims that sexual immorality was a pervasive problem. The chapter argues that to a striking degree these anxieties centred upon women from poor and working-class families. Family became a point of intersection for a range of public debates about child welfare, crime, sexual morality, and eugenic concerns about the nation's low birth rate—all of which shaped debates both about post-war reconstruction and social welfare reform.Less
Wartime publicity frequently described Britain as a family and later images of the Blitz also stress the courage and endurance of families as a key institution that enabled the nation to surmount the crisis. While acknowledging positive representations of family, this chapter examines the equally widespread alarm among government officials, journalists and social work groups about wartime dislocation of family life—as measured by rising statistics for divorce, delinquency and illegitimacy, press stories about ‘good time girls’, and claims that sexual immorality was a pervasive problem. The chapter argues that to a striking degree these anxieties centred upon women from poor and working-class families. Family became a point of intersection for a range of public debates about child welfare, crime, sexual morality, and eugenic concerns about the nation's low birth rate—all of which shaped debates both about post-war reconstruction and social welfare reform.
Mie Nakachi
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780190635138
- eISBN:
- 9780190635169
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190635138.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Family History, World Modern History
In 1955 the Soviet Union re-legalized abortion on the basis of women’s rights. However, this fact is not widely known. In the absence of a feminist movement, how did the idea of women’s right to ...
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In 1955 the Soviet Union re-legalized abortion on the basis of women’s rights. However, this fact is not widely known. In the absence of a feminist movement, how did the idea of women’s right to abortion emerge in an authoritarian society, more than a decade before it appeared in the West? The answer is found in the history of the Soviet politics of reproduction after World War II, a devastation in which 27 million Soviet soldiers and civilians perished. This enormous loss of predominantly adult males posed a threat to economic recovery. In order to replace the dead, the Soviet Union introduced the 1944 Family Law based on the proposal submitted by Nikita S. Khrushchev. This extreme pronatalist policy encouraged men to father out-of-wedlock children and celebrated “Mother Heroines.” However, Replacing the Dead argues that in the absence of serious commitment to supporting Soviet women who worked full-time, the policy actually did extensive collateral damage to gender relations and the welfare of women and children. Replacing the Dead finds the origin of the movement to improve women’s reproductive environment in postwar social critique arising from women and Soviet professionals. Neither Stalin nor Khrushchev allowed any major reform, but the movement did not die out. With re-legalization and lack of contraception, an abortion culture grew among Soviet women. The model of socialist reproduction continues to set socialist and postsocialist countries apart. This history is a cautionary tale for today’s Russia, as well as other countries that attempt to promote a higher birth rate.Less
In 1955 the Soviet Union re-legalized abortion on the basis of women’s rights. However, this fact is not widely known. In the absence of a feminist movement, how did the idea of women’s right to abortion emerge in an authoritarian society, more than a decade before it appeared in the West? The answer is found in the history of the Soviet politics of reproduction after World War II, a devastation in which 27 million Soviet soldiers and civilians perished. This enormous loss of predominantly adult males posed a threat to economic recovery. In order to replace the dead, the Soviet Union introduced the 1944 Family Law based on the proposal submitted by Nikita S. Khrushchev. This extreme pronatalist policy encouraged men to father out-of-wedlock children and celebrated “Mother Heroines.” However, Replacing the Dead argues that in the absence of serious commitment to supporting Soviet women who worked full-time, the policy actually did extensive collateral damage to gender relations and the welfare of women and children. Replacing the Dead finds the origin of the movement to improve women’s reproductive environment in postwar social critique arising from women and Soviet professionals. Neither Stalin nor Khrushchev allowed any major reform, but the movement did not die out. With re-legalization and lack of contraception, an abortion culture grew among Soviet women. The model of socialist reproduction continues to set socialist and postsocialist countries apart. This history is a cautionary tale for today’s Russia, as well as other countries that attempt to promote a higher birth rate.
Miriam G. Reumann
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520238350
- eISBN:
- 9780520930049
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520238350.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, American History: 19th Century
Postwar Americans concurrently supported marriage as the cornerstone of personal fulfillment and believed it to be in crisis. They endorsed the institution in unprecedented numbers, as the vast ...
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Postwar Americans concurrently supported marriage as the cornerstone of personal fulfillment and believed it to be in crisis. They endorsed the institution in unprecedented numbers, as the vast majority of the population chose wedlock over single life, and marriage became increasingly central to national ideology. Kinsey's studies reported that less than half of Americans' sexual activity took place between spouses, and observers imparted the prevalence and devastating effects of premarital sex, infidelity, divorce, and other ills. The marital relationship meant many things to postwar observers. At a moment of intense pronatalism, it was the necessary setting for the birth and rearing of legitimate children. Generally understood as an intensely private realm based on an emotional bond between unique individuals, marriage promised personal happiness and fulfillment. In addition, it was the central, and to some the only, proper setting for sexual expression.Less
Postwar Americans concurrently supported marriage as the cornerstone of personal fulfillment and believed it to be in crisis. They endorsed the institution in unprecedented numbers, as the vast majority of the population chose wedlock over single life, and marriage became increasingly central to national ideology. Kinsey's studies reported that less than half of Americans' sexual activity took place between spouses, and observers imparted the prevalence and devastating effects of premarital sex, infidelity, divorce, and other ills. The marital relationship meant many things to postwar observers. At a moment of intense pronatalism, it was the necessary setting for the birth and rearing of legitimate children. Generally understood as an intensely private realm based on an emotional bond between unique individuals, marriage promised personal happiness and fulfillment. In addition, it was the central, and to some the only, proper setting for sexual expression.
Jane R. Zavisca
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801450372
- eISBN:
- 9780801464300
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801450372.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
This chapter examines the Russian government's attempts to graft a pronatalist agenda onto housing policy and how the pronatalist turn acquired specific meanings in the context of market transition, ...
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This chapter examines the Russian government's attempts to graft a pronatalist agenda onto housing policy and how the pronatalist turn acquired specific meanings in the context of market transition, a cultural logic it terms “maternity capitalism.” Maternity capital provided starting capital for women and their families; investment capital for the housing market; and human capital for the nation. The state, by determining who deserved this capital and how it could be invested, claimed for itself the right to manage the macroeconomy of reproduction. If citizens endorsed the policy, the state could accrue symbolic capital, that is, legitimacy. This chapter places Russian pronatalism in comparative perspective before discussing maternity capital within the context of civic nationalism. It then considers the cultural logic of Russian pronatalism as well as the state's objectives in disbursing maternity capital. It also explores official discourses on the link between housing and fertility and concludes by highlighting how maternity capital fosters inequality in housing markets.Less
This chapter examines the Russian government's attempts to graft a pronatalist agenda onto housing policy and how the pronatalist turn acquired specific meanings in the context of market transition, a cultural logic it terms “maternity capitalism.” Maternity capital provided starting capital for women and their families; investment capital for the housing market; and human capital for the nation. The state, by determining who deserved this capital and how it could be invested, claimed for itself the right to manage the macroeconomy of reproduction. If citizens endorsed the policy, the state could accrue symbolic capital, that is, legitimacy. This chapter places Russian pronatalism in comparative perspective before discussing maternity capital within the context of civic nationalism. It then considers the cultural logic of Russian pronatalism as well as the state's objectives in disbursing maternity capital. It also explores official discourses on the link between housing and fertility and concludes by highlighting how maternity capital fosters inequality in housing markets.
Jane R. Zavisca
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- August 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780801450372
- eISBN:
- 9780801464300
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Cornell University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7591/cornell/9780801450372.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, Russian and Former Soviet Union History
This chapter examines how Russia's young people have reacted to government policies that seek to stimulate birth by investing in the housing sector. Housing-based baby bonuses could potentially ...
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This chapter examines how Russia's young people have reacted to government policies that seek to stimulate birth by investing in the housing sector. Housing-based baby bonuses could potentially influence birthrates through two mechanisms. First, if maternity capital improves housing conditions, and housing conditions determine reproductive behavior, then maternity capital should lead to higher fertility. Second, if maternity capital helps to legitimize the transition to a housing market, this could improve women's confidence in the future, which would incline them to have more children. Maternity capital is likely to fail on both counts, whether as housing policy or a legitimation strategy. This chapter draws on the results of a Kaluga study conducted in 2002 to discuss the attitudes of Russians toward reproduction, maternity capital, and pronatalism as part of housing policy. It shows that maternity capital has undermined the government's legitimacy and backfired as a civic-nationalist project.Less
This chapter examines how Russia's young people have reacted to government policies that seek to stimulate birth by investing in the housing sector. Housing-based baby bonuses could potentially influence birthrates through two mechanisms. First, if maternity capital improves housing conditions, and housing conditions determine reproductive behavior, then maternity capital should lead to higher fertility. Second, if maternity capital helps to legitimize the transition to a housing market, this could improve women's confidence in the future, which would incline them to have more children. Maternity capital is likely to fail on both counts, whether as housing policy or a legitimation strategy. This chapter draws on the results of a Kaluga study conducted in 2002 to discuss the attitudes of Russians toward reproduction, maternity capital, and pronatalism as part of housing policy. It shows that maternity capital has undermined the government's legitimacy and backfired as a civic-nationalist project.
Natalie Fixmer-Oraiz
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780252042355
- eISBN:
- 9780252051197
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252042355.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
This chapter examines two recent surges in pronatalism that aligned elite white women’s fertility with national security. It first discusses the “opt-out revolution” of the early twenty-first ...
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This chapter examines two recent surges in pronatalism that aligned elite white women’s fertility with national security. It first discusses the “opt-out revolution” of the early twenty-first century, which profiled an exodus of professional women from prestigious careers in favor of full-time domesticity. It turns then to the proliferation of fertility campaigns that targeted young professional women in the latter part of the decade, offering lifestyle directives and encouraging the use of assisted reproductive technologies to secure the possibility of pregnancy later in life. The chapter highlights how these pronatalist campaigns are usefully understood in concert; they highlight the valorization of elite motherhood as a critical dimension of homeland security culture.Less
This chapter examines two recent surges in pronatalism that aligned elite white women’s fertility with national security. It first discusses the “opt-out revolution” of the early twenty-first century, which profiled an exodus of professional women from prestigious careers in favor of full-time domesticity. It turns then to the proliferation of fertility campaigns that targeted young professional women in the latter part of the decade, offering lifestyle directives and encouraging the use of assisted reproductive technologies to secure the possibility of pregnancy later in life. The chapter highlights how these pronatalist campaigns are usefully understood in concert; they highlight the valorization of elite motherhood as a critical dimension of homeland security culture.
Laura L. Lovett
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807831076
- eISBN:
- 9781469604725
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807868102_lovett.4
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
This book explores the ideological and cultural ideals that shaped pronatalist policies and reform efforts in the United States from 1890 to the 1930s. Using nostalgic modernism as an interpretative ...
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This book explores the ideological and cultural ideals that shaped pronatalist policies and reform efforts in the United States from 1890 to the 1930s. Using nostalgic modernism as an interpretative framework, it discusses how political agendas and social policies concerning reproduction were constructed and legitimized using nostalgic idealizations of motherhood, the family, and home. The book also shows how pronatalism linked motherhood and childbearing to issues of nationalism, individualism, and feminism, as well as pronatalism's own relationship with American ideas of agrarianism and scientific racism. It examines the ideologies and practices of American pronatalism by focusing on five major historical figures and their respective social agendas or policies: Mary Elizabeth Lease and her maternalist agenda; Florence Sherbon and her eugenics campaign for fitter families; George H. Maxwell and his promotion of land reclamation and irrigation as a means to reconstruct society through home building; Theodore Roosevelt and his campaign for conservation and country life; and Edward Alsworth Ross and his sociological theory of race suicide and social control.Less
This book explores the ideological and cultural ideals that shaped pronatalist policies and reform efforts in the United States from 1890 to the 1930s. Using nostalgic modernism as an interpretative framework, it discusses how political agendas and social policies concerning reproduction were constructed and legitimized using nostalgic idealizations of motherhood, the family, and home. The book also shows how pronatalism linked motherhood and childbearing to issues of nationalism, individualism, and feminism, as well as pronatalism's own relationship with American ideas of agrarianism and scientific racism. It examines the ideologies and practices of American pronatalism by focusing on five major historical figures and their respective social agendas or policies: Mary Elizabeth Lease and her maternalist agenda; Florence Sherbon and her eugenics campaign for fitter families; George H. Maxwell and his promotion of land reclamation and irrigation as a means to reconstruct society through home building; Theodore Roosevelt and his campaign for conservation and country life; and Edward Alsworth Ross and his sociological theory of race suicide and social control.
Laura L. Lovett
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- July 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780807831076
- eISBN:
- 9781469604725
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/9780807868102_lovett.10
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Gender Studies
From Mary Elizabeth Lease's maternalist agenda and George H. Maxwell's homecroft movement, to Edward Alsworth Ross's sociological theory of race suicide and social control, Florence Sherbon's ...
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From Mary Elizabeth Lease's maternalist agenda and George H. Maxwell's homecroft movement, to Edward Alsworth Ross's sociological theory of race suicide and social control, Florence Sherbon's eugenics campaign for “fitter families” and Theodore Roosevelt's advocacy of country life and the conservation of race, American pronatalism appealed to the nostalgic ideal of the farmer and the redemptive value of the rural family. This chapter explores the ideological and cultural ideals that shaped pronatalism in the United States between the 1890s and the 1930s. It also discusses the articulation of the mother and the home in the campaign for agrarianism, and in invoking the modernist promise of reform, racism, and reproduction.Less
From Mary Elizabeth Lease's maternalist agenda and George H. Maxwell's homecroft movement, to Edward Alsworth Ross's sociological theory of race suicide and social control, Florence Sherbon's eugenics campaign for “fitter families” and Theodore Roosevelt's advocacy of country life and the conservation of race, American pronatalism appealed to the nostalgic ideal of the farmer and the redemptive value of the rural family. This chapter explores the ideological and cultural ideals that shaped pronatalism in the United States between the 1890s and the 1930s. It also discusses the articulation of the mother and the home in the campaign for agrarianism, and in invoking the modernist promise of reform, racism, and reproduction.
Peter Wynn Kirby
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824834289
- eISBN:
- 9780824870515
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824834289.003.0007
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Asian Cultural Anthropology
This chapter examines how toxic waste issues have triggered anxieties over fertility and family health in Tokyo. It first considers the disconnect between community ideals such as close-knit family ...
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This chapter examines how toxic waste issues have triggered anxieties over fertility and family health in Tokyo. It first considers the disconnect between community ideals such as close-knit family ties, warmth, fertility, and a cooperative ethic, and the urban lives of many Tokyo residents. It then explores Japanese pronatalism from pre–World War II colonialist designs, which intensified during wartime, through to the high-speed growth period and its own impact on state priorities and state control. In addition to specific anxieties surrounding infertility, sex, reproduction, the decline in birth rates, family, virility, and manhood, the chapter also discusses the “geography of blame” that arose from birth defects and miscarriages suffered by those living in proximity to waste facilities. Finally, it analyzes government efforts to stimulate economic growth alongside population growth and how such objectives were complicated by the issue of toxic waste.Less
This chapter examines how toxic waste issues have triggered anxieties over fertility and family health in Tokyo. It first considers the disconnect between community ideals such as close-knit family ties, warmth, fertility, and a cooperative ethic, and the urban lives of many Tokyo residents. It then explores Japanese pronatalism from pre–World War II colonialist designs, which intensified during wartime, through to the high-speed growth period and its own impact on state priorities and state control. In addition to specific anxieties surrounding infertility, sex, reproduction, the decline in birth rates, family, virility, and manhood, the chapter also discusses the “geography of blame” that arose from birth defects and miscarriages suffered by those living in proximity to waste facilities. Finally, it analyzes government efforts to stimulate economic growth alongside population growth and how such objectives were complicated by the issue of toxic waste.
Christina Elizabeth Firpo
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780824847579
- eISBN:
- 9780824869007
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Hawai'i Press
- DOI:
- 10.21313/hawaii/9780824847579.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, Asian History
This chapter will show how métis protection societies appropriated World War I-era metropolitan rhetoric on depopulation to make the case that fatherless métis children of French (or other European) ...
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This chapter will show how métis protection societies appropriated World War I-era metropolitan rhetoric on depopulation to make the case that fatherless métis children of French (or other European) fathers should be considered French.Less
This chapter will show how métis protection societies appropriated World War I-era metropolitan rhetoric on depopulation to make the case that fatherless métis children of French (or other European) fathers should be considered French.
Mie Nakachi
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- February 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780190635138
- eISBN:
- 9780190635169
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190635138.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Family History, World Modern History
As the victory over the Nazis came into sight and the demographic disaster became apparent, the Soviet leadership keenly felt the need to strengthen pronatalist policy. Several proposals submitted in ...
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As the victory over the Nazis came into sight and the demographic disaster became apparent, the Soviet leadership keenly felt the need to strengthen pronatalist policy. Several proposals submitted in 1943–1944 expanded existing pronatalist measures without a fundamental change in the vision of population growth. However, Khrushchev, proconsul of devastated Ukraine, submitted the most comprehensive overhaul based on a new vision for population and pronatalism. The government policy reveals a two-faced practice of Bolshevik language, claiming to “protect motherhood” when addressing the masses, and non-Bolshevik discourse, population engineering language, among the top leadership. In the final law, policymakers prioritized giving men the incentive to father extramarital children over assuring the overall well-being of unmarried mothers and their children. This chapter traces the creation of the 1944 Family Law, legislation that definitively shaped the postwar generation in a deeply gendered manner.Less
As the victory over the Nazis came into sight and the demographic disaster became apparent, the Soviet leadership keenly felt the need to strengthen pronatalist policy. Several proposals submitted in 1943–1944 expanded existing pronatalist measures without a fundamental change in the vision of population growth. However, Khrushchev, proconsul of devastated Ukraine, submitted the most comprehensive overhaul based on a new vision for population and pronatalism. The government policy reveals a two-faced practice of Bolshevik language, claiming to “protect motherhood” when addressing the masses, and non-Bolshevik discourse, population engineering language, among the top leadership. In the final law, policymakers prioritized giving men the incentive to father extramarital children over assuring the overall well-being of unmarried mothers and their children. This chapter traces the creation of the 1944 Family Law, legislation that definitively shaped the postwar generation in a deeply gendered manner.
Valerie Sperling
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199324347
- eISBN:
- 9780199381890
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199324347.003.0004
- Subject:
- Sociology, Politics, Social Movements and Social Change, Gender and Sexuality
This second case study chapter examines the use of gender norms and sexualization as political tools in Russia. It analyzes the use of gender norms in political activism on patriotism and two policy ...
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This second case study chapter examines the use of gender norms and sexualization as political tools in Russia. It analyzes the use of gender norms in political activism on patriotism and two policy issues typically linked to patriotism: military conscription and pro-natalism. The chapter provides an in-depth look at the gendering of the debate over conscription, including the perspective of both pro- and anti-regime youth movements. Activism by these liberal Russian opposition groups and pro-Putin groups is analyzed, including activities at the annual pro-Kremlin youth camp, Seliger. Seliger in particular provides a unique perspective on the gendering of the debate over the state’s demographic policy.Less
This second case study chapter examines the use of gender norms and sexualization as political tools in Russia. It analyzes the use of gender norms in political activism on patriotism and two policy issues typically linked to patriotism: military conscription and pro-natalism. The chapter provides an in-depth look at the gendering of the debate over conscription, including the perspective of both pro- and anti-regime youth movements. Activism by these liberal Russian opposition groups and pro-Putin groups is analyzed, including activities at the annual pro-Kremlin youth camp, Seliger. Seliger in particular provides a unique perspective on the gendering of the debate over the state’s demographic policy.
Brianna Theobald
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781469653167
- eISBN:
- 9781469653181
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469653167.003.0003
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Native American Studies
This chapter explores the Save the Babies campaign, a pronatal campaign spearheaded by the Office of Indian Affairs during the Progressive Era to combat Indian infant mortality. The chapter addresses ...
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This chapter explores the Save the Babies campaign, a pronatal campaign spearheaded by the Office of Indian Affairs during the Progressive Era to combat Indian infant mortality. The chapter addresses each of the campaign’s three basic components—home visits conducted by field matrons; annual baby shows, where medical staff evaluated infants; and the promotion of hospital childbirth—while dedicating particular attention to the latter. The chapter further considers the choices Native women made regarding where and with whom they delivered and finds that a minority of women accepted hospital childbirth almost immediately. As maternity patients, Native women disrupted the OIA’s vision of how a hospital should look, sound, and function.Less
This chapter explores the Save the Babies campaign, a pronatal campaign spearheaded by the Office of Indian Affairs during the Progressive Era to combat Indian infant mortality. The chapter addresses each of the campaign’s three basic components—home visits conducted by field matrons; annual baby shows, where medical staff evaluated infants; and the promotion of hospital childbirth—while dedicating particular attention to the latter. The chapter further considers the choices Native women made regarding where and with whom they delivered and finds that a minority of women accepted hospital childbirth almost immediately. As maternity patients, Native women disrupted the OIA’s vision of how a hospital should look, sound, and function.
Rickie Solinger and Mie Nakachi (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- December 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199311071
- eISBN:
- 9780190245627
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199311071.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Comparative Politics, International Relations and Politics
This is a collection of case studies that explore when and how half of the twenty most populous countries in the world invented and implemented population policies. It presents analyses of ...
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This is a collection of case studies that explore when and how half of the twenty most populous countries in the world invented and implemented population policies. It presents analyses of reproductive politics in Brazil, China, Egypt, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, Nigeria, the USSR/Russia, and the United States. The chapters focus on the official, organized efforts that states pursued to facilitate state decisions about how many people, and which people, would be born within their borders. It examines mostly the mid-twentieth century and the decades following, until the present. The frightening post–World War II concept the “population bomb” expressed the potential for global cataclysm while also suggesting the potential for coordinated global nongovernmental activism in several areas, including family planning, women’s rights, and environmental issues. Modernization in the postcolonial context often stimulated family-planning programs. The Cold War paradigm also influenced this emerging population politics as the two competing systems offered two different visions and solutions for the growing population of the poor. Through comparative readings along numerous axes, this volume suggests that all states, although characterized by profound cultural, historical, and political differences, made a commitment to what Michel Foucault called “biopower,” the capacity of a government to operationalize its interest in regulating life, health, and the body as it sees fit. This produced population policies with strikingly common elements, whether the goal was pronatalist or antinatalist. The ultimate policy goal was never an elevation of women’s status.Less
This is a collection of case studies that explore when and how half of the twenty most populous countries in the world invented and implemented population policies. It presents analyses of reproductive politics in Brazil, China, Egypt, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, Nigeria, the USSR/Russia, and the United States. The chapters focus on the official, organized efforts that states pursued to facilitate state decisions about how many people, and which people, would be born within their borders. It examines mostly the mid-twentieth century and the decades following, until the present. The frightening post–World War II concept the “population bomb” expressed the potential for global cataclysm while also suggesting the potential for coordinated global nongovernmental activism in several areas, including family planning, women’s rights, and environmental issues. Modernization in the postcolonial context often stimulated family-planning programs. The Cold War paradigm also influenced this emerging population politics as the two competing systems offered two different visions and solutions for the growing population of the poor. Through comparative readings along numerous axes, this volume suggests that all states, although characterized by profound cultural, historical, and political differences, made a commitment to what Michel Foucault called “biopower,” the capacity of a government to operationalize its interest in regulating life, health, and the body as it sees fit. This produced population policies with strikingly common elements, whether the goal was pronatalist or antinatalist. The ultimate policy goal was never an elevation of women’s status.
Carisa R. Showden
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780816655953
- eISBN:
- 9781452946092
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816655953.003.0003
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gender and Sexuality
This chapter discusses how Assisted Reproduction Technologies (ARTs) affected women’s agency. Mothering and experiencing motherhood are the ultimate forms of woman’s agency. Yet with the emergence of ...
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This chapter discusses how Assisted Reproduction Technologies (ARTs) affected women’s agency. Mothering and experiencing motherhood are the ultimate forms of woman’s agency. Yet with the emergence of ARTs, patriarchal norms are reinforced and woman’s desire to undergo biological motherhood is undermined. Some argue, however, that ARTs improve the freedom of a woman to whether or not to engage in another pregnancy; to simply put it, freedom to practice the sense of economic practicality. This chapter explores how ARTs somehow promote women’s agency within the context of pronatalism, a movement that encourages childbearing, through citing the works of sociology experts in the field of womanhood, reproduction, and motherhood.Less
This chapter discusses how Assisted Reproduction Technologies (ARTs) affected women’s agency. Mothering and experiencing motherhood are the ultimate forms of woman’s agency. Yet with the emergence of ARTs, patriarchal norms are reinforced and woman’s desire to undergo biological motherhood is undermined. Some argue, however, that ARTs improve the freedom of a woman to whether or not to engage in another pregnancy; to simply put it, freedom to practice the sense of economic practicality. This chapter explores how ARTs somehow promote women’s agency within the context of pronatalism, a movement that encourages childbearing, through citing the works of sociology experts in the field of womanhood, reproduction, and motherhood.