Product Description: One of the most significant occurrences of this century has been the drastic decline in many countries of tragically high death and birth rates. In this collection, leading demographers, anthropologists, sociologists, and historians examine the causes of this transition and the reasons why many other countries have not followed suit...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Argues that the social and economic forces that discourage better-off women to delay childbirth are the same forces that push disadvantaged women to early pregnancy

The author traces the evolution of a national preoccupation with reproduction from colonial times to the present, focusing on such phenomena as the baby boom of the fifties and current attitudes toward infertility. By the author of Homeward Bound. National ad/promo. Tour.

Product Description: Blood Stories focuses on menarche as a central aspect of body politics in contemporary US society, emphasizing that women are integrated into the social and sexual order through the body. Using oral and written narratives of 104 diverse women, the authors address the central question of how menarche as a bodily event signifying womanhood takes on cultural significance in a society that devalues women...read more

The historical decline of fertility in Europe has occupied a central place in social history and demography over the past quarter-century. Most scholars credit Europeans with modulating sexual behavior, through either abstinence or the practice of coitus interruptus, as a rational choice made in the interest of personal economic comfort; yet peasant and working classes have typically lagged behind in birth control and have given rise to the adage that "sexual embrace is the festival of the poor." Scholarly analyses of "lag" often reinforce this stigmatizing view. Now this subject is given a fresh look through a case study in Sicily, one of the last outposts of Western Europe's demographic transition. By examining population changes in a single community between 1860 and 1980, the authors offer an extended review and critique of existing models of fertility decline in Europe, proposing a new interpretation that emphasizes historical context and class relations. They show how the spread of capitalism in Sicily induced an unprecedented rate of population growth, with boom-and-bust cycles creating the class experiences in which "reputational networks" came to redefine family life; how Sicilians began to control their fertility in response to class-mediated ideas about gender relations and respectable family size; and how the town's gentry, artisan, and peasant classes adopted family planning methods at different times in response to different pressures. Jane and Peter Schneider's anthropologically oriented political-economy perspective challenges the position of Western Europe as a model for fertility decline on which every other case should converge, looking instead at the diversity of cultural ideals and practices--such as those found in Sicily--that influence the spread and form of birth control. Combining anthropological, oral historical, and archival methods in new and insightful ways, the authors' synthesis of a particular case study with a broad historical and theoretical discussion will play a major role in the ongoing debates over the history of European fertility decline and point the way toward integrating the analysis of demographic upheaval with the study of class formation and ideology. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Infertility and Patriarchy explores the lives of infertile women whose personal stories depict their daily struggles to resist disempowerment and stigmatization. Marcia C. Inhorn has produced a unique study of gender, politics, and family life in contemporary Egypt.

Product Description: An examination of the implications for the law as it becomes entangled in the commercialization of new reproductive technologies. The rule of contract is proposed as a basis for the reorganization of human reproductive behaviour.

Product Description: Reproductive biologists, evolutionary biologists, demographers and social scientists all have a common interest in the business of human reproduction. Their perspectives, however, are very different and have traditionally prevented them from having much to do with each other...read more

Product Description: This collection addresses the world-wide pattern of falling birth rates. Fertility has commonly been treated from a specialized demographic perspective, but there is today widespread dissatisfaction with conventional demographic approaches, which are criticized for neglecting the cultural, social, and political forces that affect reproductive behavior...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This is one of the most comprehensive and statistically sophisticated economic studies of the fertility determining process. The volume examines the relationship between women's wage rates and men's income and fertility with duration analysis, using panel data from Sweden and the United States...read more

Product Description: Birth is a life-crisis rite of passage, intense with danger and emotion. This provocative collection combines anthropological and medical insights about the process of human reproduction, giving readers substantive information about better fertility and birth care for all women...read more

Product Description: Sacrificed for Honor reveals a shocking and little-known system for the surveillance and control of unmarried mothers and their children that operated in Catholic Europe for nearly three centuries, ending just a century ago.

Product Description: The Social Control of Reproduction

Product Description: Here is a comprehensive overview and analysis of issues concerning the maternal-fetal relationship, from abortion to surrogate motherhood. Unlike many books which cover reproductive issues in general, this book focuses in-depth on one aspect of reproduction--the maternal-fetal relationship--to give readers a detailed study of the many issues involved...read more

Looks at surrogate mother programs and their guidelines, discusses the motivations of surrogate mothers, and considers current issues (view table of contents)