Consumptive Womanhood, Reproductive Bodies: Food and Drugs as Sites of Gender Regulation during Pregnancy

The aim of this project is to better understand the ways in which the consumption of food and drugs are regulated for pregnant women and how this shapes broader notions of motherhood and womanhood. First, I analyze attitudes... [ view full abstract ]

The aim of this project is to better understand the ways in which the consumption of food and drugs are regulated for pregnant women and how this shapes broader notions of motherhood and womanhood. First, I analyze attitudes toward the consumption of food by pregnant women through the WIC food assistance program and blogs about mothers’ experiences with WIC. Second, I analyze attitudes toward the consumption of drugs through the CHARM collaborative, an approach to opioid use by pregnant women. Finally, I analyze these types of consumption through interviews with medical professionals. My analysis brings together scholarship focused on reproductive justice, food justice, and drug use in order to answer the following questions: How do responses to women using WIC and CHARM illuminate broader cultural ideas about consumption of food and drugs during pregnancy? How is the act of consumption of food and drugs by pregnant women both regulated by broader ideas about womanhood and resisting these same ideas? What can such an analysis of food and drugs during pregnancy do for scholars and activists of reproductive and food justice? What can reproductive and food justice scholarship and activism do for this analysis?