Parenthood between Generations: Transforming Reproductive Cultures

Description

Recent literature has identified modern “parenting” as an expert-led practice—one which begins with pre-pregnancy decisions, entails distinct types of intimate relationships, places intense burdens on mothers and increasingly on fathers too. Exploring within diverse historical and global contexts how men and women make—and break—relations between generations when becoming parents, this volume brings together innovative qualitative research by anthropologists, historians, and sociologists. The chapters focus tightly on inter-generational transmission and demonstrate its importance for understanding how people become parents and rear children. Siân Pooley is a Tutorial Fellow in Modern British History at Magdalen College and an Associate Professor in the Faculty of History, University of Oxford. Her research explores the social and cultural history of Britain since 1850, especially through the experiences, relationships, and inequalities that mattered to children, men, and women. She is currently working on parenthood, children’s writing, and experiences of maltreatment in childhood. Kaveri Qureshi is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford. She works on Pakistani and Indian diasporas as well as in Punjab. She has research interests in migration, gendered life courses, family life, and how people deal with transitions—from an episode of incapacitating illness, to the breakdown of a marriage, to becoming a mother for the first time. Introduction Siân Pooley and Kaveri Qureshi Chapter 1. Between Future Families and Families of Origin: Talking about Gay Parenthood across Generations. Robert Pralat Chapter 2. The Politics of Fertility and Generation in Buganda, East Africa, 1860-1980. Shane Doyle Chapter 3. Changing Mothering Practices and Intergenerational Relations in Contemporary Urban China. Michala Hvidt Breengaard Chapter 4. Intergenerational Negotiations of Non-marital Pregnancies in Contemporary Japan. Ekaterina Hertog Chapter 5. Grandfathers, Grandmothers and the Inheritance of Parenthood in England, c. 1850–1914. Siân Pooley Chapter 6. First-time Parenthood among Migrant Pakistanis: Gender and Generation in the Postpartum Period. Kaveri Qureshi Chapter 7. Intergenerational Mythscapes and Infant Care in North-western Amazonia. Elizabeth Rahman Chapter 8. Generational Change and Continuity amongst British Mothers: the Sharing of Beliefs, Knowledge and Practices c. 1940–1990. Angela Davis Chapter 9. ‘I Feel my Dad every Moment!’: Memory, Emotion and Embodiment in British South Asian Fathering Practices. Punita Chowbey and Sarah Salway Chapter 10. Becoming Papa: Kinship, Senescence and the Ambivalent Inward Journeys of Ageing Men in the Antilles. Adom Philogene Heron Conclusion Siân Pooley and Kaveri Qureshi