Mass Hysteria

Examining the medical and cultural practices surrounding pregnancy, new motherhood, and infant feeding, this book states that late eighteenth century practices reshaped mothers' bodies. As a result, it is difficult for them to establish and maintain healthy and safe boundaries and appropriate divisions between public and private space. In Mass Hysteria, Rebecca Kukla examines the present-day medical and cultural practices surrounding pregnancy, new motherhood, and infant feeding. In the late-eighteenth century, the configuration of the maternal body underwent a radical transformation and the two maternal bodies that emerged out of this transformation still govern our imagination and rituals surrounding pregnancy and lactation. Exploring the history and the current life of these two maternal bodies within medical institutions, popular culture, and politics, Kukla offers a critical assessment of the lived repercussions of these ideological figures and practices for contemporary women's and infants' health and well-being.

Pages: 264, Paperback, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers