Policing the Maternal Mind: Current Trends in Swiss Pregnancy Politics: Gender Campus

Ballif Edmée. 2020. “Policing the Maternal Mind: Current Trends in Swiss Pregnancy Politics”

The psychological experience of pregnancy is an issue of increasing concern to policymakers in Europe and North America. However, there are very few accounts of how the emphasis on the “psychological government of pregnancy” informs gender politics. My research approaches the politics of pregnancy as the convergence of several fields: the regulation of the pregnant body, the medicalization of pregnancy, the publicization of the fetus, and the definitions of “good mothering.” Based on fieldwork in a perinatal unit in Switzerland, this article aims to uncover how these psychologically informed discourses contribute to the reproduction of gender stereotypes and naturalize sex differences.