Designing Motherhood: Things that Make and Break Our Births
Michelle Millar Fisher and Amber Winick
MIT Press
English
Texts by Erica Chidi and Alexandra Lange.
Hardcover
344 pages
260 x 180 mm
2021
ISBN 9780262044899
While birth often brings great joy, making babies is a knotty enterprise. The designed objects that surround us when it comes to menstruation, birth control, conception, pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood vary as oddly, messily, and dramatically as the stereotypes suggest. This smart, image-rich, fashion-forward, and design-driven book explores more than eighty designs—iconic, conceptual, archaic, titillating, emotionally charged, or just plain strange—that have defined the relationships between people and babies during the past century.
Each object tells a story. In striking images and engaging text, Designing Motherhood unfolds the compelling design histories and real-world uses of the objects that shape our reproductive experiences. The authors investigate the baby carrier, from the Snugli to BabyBjörn, and the (re)discovery of the varied traditions of baby wearing; the tie-waist skirt, famously worn by a pregnant Lucille Ball on I Love Lucy, and essential for camouflaging and slowly normalising a public pregnancy; the home pregnancy kit, and its threat to the authority of male gynaecologists; and more. Memorable images—including historical ads, found photos, and drawings—illustrate the crucial role design and material culture plays throughout the arc of human reproduction.
(source: https://www.thelibraryproject.ie/collections/design-theory/products/designing-motherhood-things-that-make-and-break-our-births?_pos=1&_sid=fadc4ac42&_ss=r)
About the Editors
Michelle Millar Fisher is currently the Ronald C. and Anita L. Wornick Curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts within the Contemporary Art Department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Her work focuses on the intersections of people, power, and the material world. At the MFA, she is working on her next book and exhibition, tentatively titled Craft Schools: Where We Make What We Inherit which is taking her across 48 contigous US states via train over the course of a year.
michellemillarfisher.com
(source: https://michellemillarfisher.com/About)
Amber Winick is a writer, design historian, and recipient of two Fulbright Awards. She has lived, researched, and written about family and child-related designs, policies, and practices around the world.
amberwinick.com
(source: https://mitpress.mit.edu/contributors/amber-winick)
About the Publisher
Established in 1962, the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Press is one of the largest and most distinguished university presses in the world and a leading publisher of books and journals at the intersection of science, technology, art, social science, and design. It is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
mitpress.mit.edu
(source: https://mitpress.mit.edu/)
