Reenvisioning Reproductive Labor

As I read Laura Briggs's How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics and Deirdre Cooper Owens's Medical Bondage in summer 2019, news stories of internment camps at the U.S.-Mexico border dominated the airwaves. It was disquieting, if unsurprising, to read histories of reproductive oppression and coercion while contemporary examples played out publicly, in ugly detail. These texts both provide historical contexts and analytical insights into the intersecting structures of racism, sexism, and classism that shape reproductive oppression historically and today.

Both Briggs's and Owens's books powerfully reframe common discourse—not superficially but substantively—and have the potential to shift readers' vision completely. They refocus our gaze on the multiple, intersecting vectors of hegemonic discourse and the lives and experiences they elide. Briggs's How All Politics Became Reproductive Politics traces the influence of neoliberal privatization on child-bearing and childrearing, family and household maintenance, and care of the ill, the elderly, and other dependents—all aspects of "reproductive labor." As she explicates the political machinations behind various conservative "reforms" of reproductive policy (detailed below), Briggs challenges her readers to work toward a system of "comprehensive family rights for all kinds of people" in all types of relationships (2017, 151).

In service of this challenge, Briggs elucidates a history of movements resistant to neoliberalism's impact on reproductive labor. Her critique of "welfare reform" ties it to the exploitation of mothers of color and those living in poverty. Having laid this foundation of critique, she presents specific examples of contemporary reproductive labor that demonstrate the ongoing systemic oppression created by neoliberal individualization and privatization. These include the gendered, racial, and socioeconomic factors undergirding the exploitation of reproductive labor to control human movement and to punish those who do not comply through so-called immigration reform; the gendered, racial, and socioeconomic connections between access to in vitro fertilization (IVF) and assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) and infant mortality, particularly in the black community; and the deployment of gay parenting as a normalizing discourse in the legalization of gay marriage, in contrast to the very real legal, financial, and social obstacles faced by lesbian and gay people providing care for partners and friends disabled by HIV/AIDS and other health challenges. These situations collectively demonstrate that dominant culture's (sporadic and selective) support for reproductive labor is always politically conservative. Briggs concludes with an examination of subprime mortgages as examples of conservative political exploitation of reproductive labor. Although this is not her primary focus, Briggs's careful vernacular explanation of predatory subprime lending is one of the clearest that I have read.

Briggs's writing balances breadth of information with clarity of application. The book is carefully researched for an academic audience and clearly written for a general audience, inviting and accessible. Each chapter anchors to a specific narrative that readers will either recognize or be able to relate to other current political situations. Most impressively, Briggs deftly weaves together several threads of analysis: feminist, anti-racist, economic, and political. As happens so often, these strengths also engender challenges. Weaving multiple theoretical threads, for example, can make for a complex analysis. Typically, Briggs maneuvers through these challenges with skill. Occasionally, however, her vernacular writing style dips into sarcasm or ridicule aimed at conservative ideologies. While I agreed politically with every caustic comment she made, as someone who teaches in the middle of the United States, I would think carefully before assigning those passages in class; even students who agree with Briggs might find the sarcasm off-putting, since it likely refers to ideas shared by people they know and love. In a text so obviously written for a range of audiences, these moments were unexpected. Still, reading Briggs's book while hearing news reports of border camps foregrounded the ways topicality can date a text—here, to positive effect. At times, I had the uncanny feeling that the...