Risky Environments, Risky Desires: Maternal Responsibility in the U.S. Environmental Health Movement

• In Event: 292 - Regular Session. Sociology of Reproduction 2: Constructing and Contesting Reproductive Knowledge and Science

Abstract

Early exposure to environmental chemicals is associated with multiple health problems, including neurological and reproductive disorders. In response to this problem, the environmental health movement has emerged as a leading authority on strategies of self-protection, or what we call “precautionary consumption.” In this paper, we use discourse analysis to examine two decades of environmental health reports and advice from a key organization in the United States: the Environmental Working Group (EWG). The discourse of environmental health used by this organization presents babies as contaminated before birth, and mothers as vectors of chemical risk. This discourse locates risk within two key sources: maternal environments of the body and home, and maternal desires for food and beauty. We argue the EWG strategically mobilizes existing medical and scientific discourses surrounding maternal bodies to build greater support for chemical regulation. Key to this discursive construction of chemical contamination as a maternal problem in EWG materials is a differential attribution of blame and responsibility. Blame for pollution is assigned to regulatory failure, but responsibility for mediating children’s exposure is assigned to individual mothers. This social construction of pollution as a mother’s problem is not only gendered, but also classed and racialized, and warrants greater attention in feminist research. Our analysis also contributes to scholarship on the maternal-fetal conflict by tracing the ambiguous place of maternal self-care within constructions of child well-being, and advances research on the regulation of women’s bodies and actions throughout their reproductive lives.

Authors

• Norah MacKendrick, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

• Kate Cairns, Rutgers University