A Chicken a Day Keeps the Doctor Away? Risk and Postpartum Practices Among Chinese Immigrant Women

• In Event: 390 - Section on Race, Gender and Class Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Race, Gender, Class and Health Part II

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of Chinese immigrant women’s construction and management of health-related risks during the one-month period immediately after childbirth. The postpartum period is a significant time in Chinese culture, in which dietary and everyday practices are subjects of expert advice informed by Chinese medical philosophy. The postpartum body is often depicted as vulnerable, and a connection is suggested between careful cultivation of the postpartum body and future health. While traditionally done with the help of kin members, consumerism and commodified care relations increasingly come to shape how the postpartum period is experienced. Drawing on interviews with class-privileged, first-generation Chinese immigrant women in the US, this paper explores how these women perceive their experience engaging in postpartum dietary practices and mothering in the midst of discourses concerning the status of their body and the risks associated with it. It also examines the ways in which these women manage or resist such risk discourses in the context of consumerism.

Author

• Kuan-Yi Chen, City University of New York-Graduate Center