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).