Event: Pregnancy and pregnancy planning in the new parenting culture

A two day seminar in June, organised by Parenting Culture Studies and the Kent Centre for Law Gender and Sexuality, and supported by BPAS and the Economic and Social Research Council. 

This event, held at the University of Kent in the UK, will explore the idea that ‘parenting’ is extending backwards as the imperatives of parenting culture come to shape pregnancy and even the time pre-conception.

The intellectual backdrop is a body of scholarship concerned with the content and effects of contemporary parenting culture. This work shows how childrearing is mediated through a cultural narrative that provides mothers and, increasingly, fathers with rules – sometimes ambiguous – about how to realise their roles as parents.

It shows how childrearing has intensified, expanding to encompass a range of activities that were not previously seen as an obligatory dimension of this task. It has also indicated how the expansion of the childrearing role has encouraged the belief that ‘parenting’ is a problematic sphere of social life, requiring much attention from policy makers.

The agenda for this seminar is grounded in the observation that the imperatives of this parenting culture have begun to extend backwards: ideas about motherhood (and fatherhood) and the responsibilities entailed have begun to influence concerns about, and practices surrounding, the time before a child is born. Pregnancy and even pre-pregnancy have become sites for ‘parent training’.

Over two days, international scholars from a range of disciplines will discuss and evaluate with an academic, professional and lay audience the ways in which such extension of ‘parenting’ backwards is becoming apparent, for example:

-- In the official and unofficial advice given to mothers and, increasingly, fathers about the health risks they should consider when planning a pregnancy and after conception;

-- In the ways regulations about reproductive medicine reflect not only medical innovation but also new ideas about parenting and parenthood;

-- In innovations in reproductive health policy and in the decisions made by women about childbearing and abortion.

Speakers and papers include:

-- Professor Kristin Luker, Elizabeth Josselyn Boalt Professor of Law and Professor of Sociology, University of California: ‘Abortion and the politics of motherhood revisited’

-- Rachel Jones, Senior Research Associate, Guttmacher Institute, New York: ‘Abortion decision making in a culture of “intensive motherhood"’

-- Danielle Bessett, Ph.D., Charlotte Ellertson Social Science Postdoctoral Fellow, Ibis Reproductive Health, Cambridge, MA: ‘Pregnancy after Abortion: women’s experiences of a stigmatized reproductive career’

-- Evelyn Mahon, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the School of Social Work and Social Policy, Trinity College Dublin: ‘Is there ever a good time to have a child?’

-- Elizabeth Mitchell Armstrong, Associate Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, Princeton University: ‘Do happier pregnancies make healthier babies? Stress and the medicalization of maternal emotion’

-- Cynthia Daniels, Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University: ‘Policing pregnancy: The politics of fetal risks’

-- What’s wrong with advocating alcohol abstinence to pregnant women? Perspectives from the US and Britain. Janet Golden, Professor of History, Rutgers University; Pam Lowe, Lecturer in Sociology, Aston University.

-- Martin Richards, Emeritus Professor of Family Research, Cambridge University: ‘Present practice and future developments in the culture of choice’

-- Julie McCandless, lecturer in law, Oxford Brookes University: ‘What is “supportive parenting”? The new ‘Welfare of the Child’

Download the full programme here.

Date: Tuesday 22 and Wednesday 23 June 2010

Venue: University of Kent, Canterbury, UK

Booking: Early booking is advised as places are limited. Tickets £120 two days / £80 one day (employed); £25 (students and unwaged). Email at the University of Kent.

Further information: Contact the event organiser, Jan Macvarish, at the University of Kent. Email: .

Also read:

Commentary: Extending parenting backwards, by Jennie Bristow. Abortion Review, 29 April 2010