Making Modern Mothers

by Paxson, Heather

• ISBN13: 9780520223714
• ISBN10: 0520223713
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-02-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

In Greece, women speak of mothering as "within the nature" of a woman. But this durable association of motherhood with femininity exists in tension with the highest incidence of abortion and one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe. In this setting, how do women think of themselves as proper individuals, mothers, and Greek citizens? In this anthropological study of reproductive politics and ethics in Athens, Greece, Heather Paxson tracks the effects of increasing consumerism and imported biomedical family planning methods, showing how women's "nature" is being transformed to meet crosscutting claims of the contemporary world. Locating profound ambivalence in people's ethical evaluations of gender and fertility control, Paxson offers a far-reaching analysis of conflicting assumptions about what it takes to be a good mother and a good woman in modern Greece, where assertions of cultural tradition unfold against a backdrop of European Union integration, economic struggle, and national demographic anxiety over a falling birth rate.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	vii
Acknowledgments	ix
A Note on Transliteration	xiii
Prologue: Varnava Square	xv
Realizing Nature	1	(37)
Remaking Mothers: From an Ethic of Service to an Ethic of Choice	38	(64)
Rationalizing Sex: Family Planning and an Ethic of Well-Being	102	(58)
Maternal Citizens: Demographics, Pronatalism, and Population Policy	160	(52)
Technologies of Greek Motherhood	212	(43)
Appendix 1: Total Fertility Rates, European Union Countries, 1960--2000	255	(1)
Appendix 2: Legislation of the Greek State Pertaining to Gender Equality, Marriage, Family, and Reproduction	256	(5)
Appendix 3: Birthrates, Greece, 1934--1999	261	(2)
Notes	263	(30)
References	293	(28)
Index	321