Maternal Body

Overview

There are no well-defined conceptual barriers that can be placed around the maternal body. When speaking of maternal bodies, what is often meant are forms of maternal embodiments. Given this rather broad meta-category, a number of bodies can count as maternal: pregnant female bodies, female bodies that have given birth, female bodies that can potentially become pregnant (or are assumed to have this ability), adoptive mothers, women who donate and adopt gametes, birth mothers who give their children up for adoption, women who care for children in a number of ways, infertile women, and so on. The following sections will offer several approaches to the concept of the maternal body from broadly cultural, medical, philosophical, and feminist perspectives. However, the focus will be less on what a maternal body is, and more on how it has been defined, and redefined, by the larger culture, and especially by the political and medical establishments.

The Maternal Body: The Ideal of Control

Historically viewed as unpredictable, chaotic, and intractable, maternal bodies were not easily defined, and, in various cultural guises, have been set against [Page 703]their perceived opposite—the stable, controlled, and well-ordered masculine corpus. However, it was still the maternal body that had the ability to produce all the subsequent generations, and thus its perceived weaknesses became social, political, and medical loci of not just social interest, but direct involvement. Most importantly, it was difficult to understand, and thus to control. It is not altogether too surprising, therefore, that a significant portion of the historical, political, philosophical, social and medical discourses about the maternal body focus on the question of how to construct and define, and in so doing, control it.

Thus, the maternal body came to be seen as not merely one that comports with the rules (of proper pregnancy preparation, pregnancy itself, or child-care, for example), but also one that is, according to Rebecca Kukla, properly governed and ordered by religious institutions, and later, by the state and medical sciences. An assumption that was common to all three sources of control was that the maternal body needed to comport with the laws of God, of man, and later, of science and child welfare. From as far back as the 17th century, public rules were beginning to appear in texts, sermons, and physician's recommendations regarding a pregnant woman's exercise, diet, amount of sexual activity, clothing, and self-care. To be properly maternal, these prescriptions insisted, a female body needed to comply, to submit, and to follow instructions from official sources.

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