-
3. Planning Motherhood under Christian Democracy
- University of Pittsburgh Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
|| || P L A N N I N G M O T H E R H O O D U N D E R C H R I S T I A N D E M O C R A C Y Throughout the world ...there are all sorts of men.They look different in different places and have different ways of life. But, basically , all men are the same. So to make things easier, let’s put them together into one and let this one stand for all. He’s a common man, just like you and me. Disney narrator,introducing the “Common Man”in the film Family Planning/Planificación Familiar I , C doctors received an educational film, Family Planning/ Planificación Familiar, from the U.S. Population Council.₁ It was first shown in screenings organized by the Association for the Protection of the Family (APROFA) and quickly gained popularity.Within a year, more than thirty-six thousand Chileans had seen the film.² The Disney animation,produced in both English and Spanish,introduced viewers to a cartoon husband,claiming to represent the “common man,” and to Donald Duck, who leads the audience from one theme to the next.After describing the dangers of overpopulation and underdevelopment , Donald tells the viewers that family planning, which will bring about smaller families and population decline,is the only way to ward off poverty (figure .).“Common Man’s” cartoon wife has doubts, but she is too shy and embarrassed to speak.“CommonWife” only manages to whisper into her husband’s ear while he articulates her concerns.The cartoon concludes with a message meant to comfort the worried wife: family planning is not only so-|| || cially acceptable but also indispensable to the healthy future of a woman’s family, her community, and humankind as a whole. In the film, Donald Duck appropriates the right to guide “Common Man” and professes to fulfill a civilizing mission by introducing modern values and behaviors to far-off lands. Despite claims that he speaks for “everyman,” Donald’s voice is in fact the voice of physicians and policymakers who promoted population control remedies as a path to modernization. Fertility regulation, the film suggests, would pave the road to modernity by altering reproductive behavior to create smaller families,which would in turn promote the modern values necessary to stimulate economic development and end poverty.Beneath the humanitarian rhetoric of the film lay the economic and ideological goal of limiting population and replacing traditional images of the family with more modern ones. Public health leaders and politicians warned that the prevalence of large families posed a threat to a people’s well-being:too many children meant that not all of them could be properly fed, dressed, or educated.They insisted Planning Motherhood under Christian Democracy|| || Figure ..Donald Duck in his role as guide to the content of Disney’s film on family planning. Here he is introducing a typical small family. From the Population Council’s Studies in Family Planning ,no. (January ). [3.236.81.4] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 13:09 GMT) that only small families would craft a healthy, wealthy, and modern nation; this burdened women with new responsibilities. Under Christian Democracy (–), different historical actors— population planners, doctors, politicians, and representatives of the Catholic Church—reshaped the dynamics of family planning as they negotiated competing positions on Chile’s advancement on its path to modernity.Women’s options and obligations changed as a result of these negotiations; their tasks now included responsible motherhood through family planning. Family-planning arguments were predicated,first,on the protection of women’s lives,and,second , on the promotion of national development and modernization through fertility regulation. On this basis, male physicians and policymakers relied on women’s cooperation in their project of modernization and also expanded state-supported family planning with the backing of the Christian Democratic government and the Catholic Church. As residents in the vibrant capital city, women found novel grounds to make decisions about their lives, but their options carried with them the burden of new responsibilities.As more women gained access to family-planning programs, policymakers remained determined to align women’s reproductive choices with the modernizing projects of national and international elites. Gender relations in Santiago were not shaped by the same preoccupation with women’s roles that accompanied agrarian reform politics in the countryside, skillfully presented in the historian HeidiTinsman’s study of rural change.³ In the city, Christian Democratic reformist projects fashioned a...