The Politics of Motherhood is a fascinating discussion of maternal health care and birth control in Chile. Although the book’s title and introductory chapter lead the reader to expect a broad history of competing visions of motherhood, at its heart and at its best this book is a fine study of medical and public policy debates over maternal reproduction. It bravely spans the whole of the twentieth century, from early debates in the 1920s over “unfit mothers” through the post – World War II fixation on population control and development, to feminist challenges to the Pinochet regime’s pro-natalist agenda in the 1980s.
Jadwiga Pieper Mooney focuses on the transnational dynamics that mediated discussions of maternity with attention to US institutions and the unexpected role of the Catholic Church in endorsing family planning. She provides a pioneering look at the Rockefeller Foundation, which, beginning in the late 1930s, funded public health...
