Malich, Lisa (Author)
Today, many pregnancy guides mention a nesting instinct. According to this, pregnant women would be seized by an urge to create the right environment for their child, for example to buy baby equipment or clean the apartment. The concept of the nesting instinct forms a specific configuration of knowledge: While it is widespread in the popular field, it occupies a marginal position in the scientific field. In this paper, I will investigate the historical epistemology of this form of knowledge. In so doing, the following questions are addressed: How did the knowledge about a nesting instinct during pregnancy form? How was the nest as a specific natural-anthropogenic environment constructed? And to what extent do notions of gender and environment interact here? To answer these questions, the study takes the perspective of a history of knowledge in transit, in the longue durée from the nineteenth century to the present. The investigation reveals a gradual feminization of the concept of environment in the knowledge of the nesting instinct. Whereas in the nineteenth century it was often considered a male behavioral pattern and the nest was an analogy to the house, in the first decades of the twentieth century, the instinct transformed into a primarily female characteristic, with the nest representing the interior of the home. A decisive condition for this circulation of knowledge was that the nest became a 'metaphorical thing'. As such, the nest did not simply lead to naturalization, but denoted a natural-social in-between space that increasingly became the goal of female care work.
...MoreArticle Susanne Schmidt; Lisa Malich (March 2021) Cocooning: Umwelt und Geschlecht. Einleitung (Cocooning: Environment and Gender. Introduction). NTM: Zeitschrift für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Technik und Medizin (pp. 1-10).
Article
Susanne Schmidt;
(March 2021)
Umwelt-Sein. Mutterschaft, Entwicklung und Psychologie, 1930–1990 (Environmental Being. Motherhood, Development and Psychology, 1930-1990)
(/isis/citation/CBB726898562/)
Book
Francesca Arena;
(2020)
Trouble dans la maternité: Pour une histoire des folies puerpérales, XVIIIe-XXe siècles
(/isis/citation/CBB849669724/)
Article
Matteo Manfredini;
Marco Breschi;
Alessio Fornasin;
Stanislao Mazzoni;
Sergio De lasio;
Alfredo Coppa;
(2020)
Maternal Mortality in 19th- and Early 20th-century Italy
(/isis/citation/CBB205638611/)
Book
Melanie Reynolds;
(2016)
Infant Mortality and Working-Class Child Care, 1850-1899
(/isis/citation/CBB958307648/)
Article
Biernat, Carolina;
Ramacciotti, Karina;
(2008)
La tutela estatal de la madre y el niño en la Argentina: estructuras administrativas, legislación y cuadros técnicos (1936--1955)
(/isis/citation/CBB000932875/)
Article
Shvarts, Shifra;
(2000)
The development of mother and infant welfare centers in Israel, 1854-1954
(/isis/citation/CBB000111189/)
Article
Thomas, Marion;
(2014)
Are Women Naturally Devoted Mothers? Fabre, Perrier, and Giard on Maternal Instinct in France under the Third Republic
(/isis/citation/CBB001420019/)
Article
Oxana Kosenko;
Igor J. Polianski;
(2021)
Ich will (k)ein Kind! Theatrale Inszenierung der Abtreibung und Mutterschaft in der Sowjetunion der 1920er–30er Jahre (I want (no) child! Theatrical Staging of Abortion and Motherhood in the Soviet Union of the 1920s-30s)
(/isis/citation/CBB699255587/)
Article
Santesmases, María Jesús;
(2014)
The Human Autonomous Karyotype and the Origins of Prenatal Testing: Children, Pregnant Women and Early Down's Syndrome Cytogenetics, Madrid 1962--1975
(/isis/citation/CBB001421073/)
Article
Löwy, Ilana;
(2014)
How Genetics Came to the Unborn: 1960--2000
(/isis/citation/CBB001421074/)
Book
Kennedy, V. Lynn;
(2010)
Born Southern: Childbirth, Motherhood, and Social Networks in the Old South
(/isis/citation/CBB001200632/)
Article
Patrick Ellis;
(2017)
A Cinema for the Unborn: Moving Pictures, Mental pictures and Electra Sparks's New Thought Film Theory
(/isis/citation/CBB746930703/)
Book
Susan Merrill Squier;
Jenell Johnson;
(2018)
Graphic Reproduction: A Comics Anthology
(/isis/citation/CBB827890000/)
Chapter
Sorin, Claire;
(2011)
Anatomy of the Female Angel or Science at the Service of Woman in Woman and Her Era by Eliza Farnham
(/isis/citation/CBB001221548/)
Article
Vailly, Joëlle;
(2014)
Genetic Testing, Birth, and the Quest for Health
(/isis/citation/CBB001421197/)
Book
Sarah S. Richardson;
(2021)
The Maternal Imprint: The Contested Science of Maternal-Fetal Effects
(/isis/citation/CBB755948278/)
Article
Davis, Angela;
(2014)
Wartime Women Giving Birth: Narratives of Pregnancy and Childbirth, Britain c. 1939--1960
(/isis/citation/CBB001421091/)
Article
Vargas, Eliane Portes;
(2012)
“Barrigão à mostra”: vicissitudes e valorização do corpo reprodutivo na construção das imagens da gravidez
(/isis/citation/CBB001420580/)
Article
David A. Kirby;
(2017)
Regulating Cinematic Stories about Reproduction: Pregnancy, Childbirth, Abortion and Movie Censorship in the US, 1930–1958
(/isis/citation/CBB136923756/)
Book
Georges, Eugenia;
(2008)
Bodies of Knowledge: The Medicalization of Reproduction in Greece
(/isis/citation/CBB001031564/)
Be the first to comment!