Motherhood and Choice: Uncommon Mothers, Childfree Women
About this ebook
These questions underlie Amrita Nandy's remarkable research on motherhood as an institution, one that conflates 'woman' with 'mother' and 'personal' with 'political'.
As the bedrock of human survival and an unchallenged norm of 'normal' female lives, motherhood expects and even compels women to be mothers—symbolic and corporeal. Even though the ideology of pronatalism and motherhood reinforce reproductive technology and vice versa, the care work of mothering suffers political neglect and economic devaluation. However, motherhood (and non-motherhood) is not just physiological. As the pivot to a web of heteronormative institutions (such as marriage and the family), motherhood bears an overwhelming and decisive influence on women's lives. Against the weight of traditional and contemporary histories, socio-political discourse and policies, this study explores how women, as embodiments of multiple identities, could live stigma-free, 'authentic' lives without having to abandon reproductive 'self'-determination.
Published by Zubaan.
About the author
Amrita Nandy is a scholar whose work focuses on issues of gender, rights and culture. Her academic work has been published both in India and abroad, including in journals such a as the Economic and Political Weekly and Women's Studies International Forum. Amrita contributes to a range of dailies and news portals such as The Indian Express and The Wire. Her piece titled 'Ticking Outside the Box' (The Indian Express, 17 September 2014) won the 2015 Laadli National Media and Advertising Award for Gender Sensitivity for Best Op-Ed.
She has a Ph.D from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and a Master's degree from the University of Oxford, UK. Amrita was awarded the Fox International Fellowship (2013–2014) by Yale University, USA.
Amrita is also a part-time baker and dabbles in book spine poetry.
