Editorial: The politics of reproduction and parenting cultures: procreation, pregnancy, childbirth, and childrearing

‘Controlling life was and is to be achieved in part by rationalizing and industrializing reproductive processes. Multiple heterogeneous and contradictory groups have had an interest in achieving such control – from elites seeking to control others to individuals, especially women, trying to get a grip on their own lives through controlling their reproduction; from eugenicists ultimately trying to control evolution to neo-Malthusians trying to control national and population size; from philanthropists and foundation executives trying to shape the future of science and human life in varied directions to reproductive scientists trying to do their research … The biomedicalization of life itself (human, plant, and animal) is the key overarching and usually taken for granted social process here’ (Clarke 1998: 273–5)