Reproductive Knowledge and the Politics of Parenting in Uncertain Times

• In Event: Reproductive Subversion Reconsidered: Contemporary Politics of Reproductive Knowledge

Abstract

This paper examines how contemporary reproductive knowledge is circulated, adopted, and reconfigured against the backdrop of growing uncertainties, insecurities, and inequities in the United States. To do so, we consider emergent forms of parenting advice as central features of reproductive knowledge. Our analysis draws on sociological theories of science, knowledge, and technology, expertise, and feminist scholarship on reproduction and care work, to examine contemporary narratives of parenting in the U.S. and the forms of expertise aligned with them. We ask: what forms of reproductive labor are recognized, elevated, and celebrated in contemporary parenting advice? What hopes for the future do they embody? And what social, reproductive, and political realities do they leave unquestioned? To address these concerns, our paper first attends to the forms of racism and xenophobia that underscore the far-right’s rhetoric of pronatalism, related interventions under the Trump administration, and their relationships to the state of reproductive rights and care in the U.S. We then turn to the rise of liberal feminist parenting experts within this context. Drawing on a critical textual and content analysis of parenting advice from a purposive sample of popular books, apps, and social media accounts, we argue that dominant narratives of parenting are simultaneously a product of neoliberal capitalism and work to individualize reproductive politics in troubling ways. Just as with far-right thinkers, in these instances of “liberal” parenting advice, children are positioned as offering security and an antidote to the horrors of the world – if only we can parent them “correctly.” In conclusion, we consider how and why such parenting advice has gained traction at this moment, its racial and gendered dimensions, and its consequences for lived experiences of reproduction.

Authors

• Martine Lappé, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo

• Jennifer Denbow, California Polytechnic State University