Reproductive Lives

AT first glance, it would be possible to accuse Reproducing Women of adopting the ‘breasts and babies’ approach to women’s health, one that ‘equate[s] [women] with their reproductive capacities’ (Armstrong 2010: 337). By studying women through the dual lens of family and reproductivity, Porter and Gustafson dance dangerously close to reasserting the very linkages that feminists have long been preoccupied with disentangling. However, Porter, with her background in history and anthropology, and Gustafson, with a background in women’s studies and community health, are very aware of this possible reading and pre-empt it within the first few pages. Were one not then convinced, they proceed to justify their framework throughout the entirety of this engaging and provocative read. The study follows the personal narratives of 56 women belonging to 24 families—groupings of women across three generations—from the north-eastern Canadian region of Newfoundland and Labrador. The participants cover a span of 74 years, the oldest having been born in 1914, the youngest in 1987. Change and continuity, and how they vacillate, are two key themes of the book. By rooting the text within a specific locale as well as the cross-generational histories of related women, the authors conduct a close reading of how families and communities transmit cultural knowledge, specifically of that information related to womanhood, which they frame using Mary O’Brien’s concept of ‘relational moments’: menarche and sex; conception, pregnancy and birth; mothering; menopause; and grandmothering—each of which composes a chapter of the text. Throughout the book we see, in intimate detail, how this information travels down from older generations as well as up from younger women to their elders. The family is used as a microcosm to interrogate the lived realities of broader social shifts, sometimes in surprising ways, like discovering that talk around sexuality does not necessarily become increasingly ‘progressive’ and ‘daughters are not necessarily more liberal or radical than their mothers’ (56). In other cases, change does reflect expected trends, such as information communication styles moving from oral to textual, from mythical to biological. Marilyn Porter and Diana L. Gustafson, Reproducing Women: Family and Health Work across Three Generations, Fernwood Publishing, 2012, $23.95 paperback 978 1 5526 6519 0. R E V I E W ...............................................................................................................