I’m a Feminist but it’s Still Her Body: Testing the Limits of Partner Participation in Pregnancy

• In Event: 2366 - Considering Men and Partners

Abstract

Biological reproduction can be distributed more than ever before, and typically it does so in stratified ways. In this context of potentially unlimited labor-sharing, it is a challenge to consider reproductive partners, because, while some are capable of being pregnant themselves and taking a share of the corporeal labor, the vast majority of them are not. Despite all of the shifts in reproductive labor, some people can gestate new humans and some people cannot. Almost all of the people who can gestate identify as women, and most of the people who cannot identify as men. This stratification of reproductive labor is not by class, race, or nation, it is by a particular combination of reproductive organs, hormones, and gametes -- commonly called “biological sex.” Women still bear the responsibilities of carrying a pregnancy with all of its risks, and all other people including partners are in some sense a “second sex.” Today, while non-gestating partners are often involved in reproductive decision-making, most people believe that it is women who have ultimate decision-making, including both choice and responsibility, over their own bodies. Given this context, this research asks, what is the role of non-gestating partners in relation to pregnancy today, and how is that role negotiated in relation to gestating women’s bodies? This paper finds that the social obligations that people feel toward one another, often for feminist aims of shared parenting, tow a line that often runs up against the sanctity of women’s bodily autonomy. The relationship and tension between these two competing feminist goals -- equality in parenting and equality in bodily rights -- comes into full view in this context. This research reveals how families encountering this feminist dilemma delicately negotiate gender roles, equality, reproductive and emotional labor, and what it means to care for one another.

Author

• Joan H. Robinson, Columbia University