Regulated/Not Regulated Bodies

Criticisms of Motherhood Ideology Incorporated into Medical Care

Abstract

This paper argues that nowadays, bodies are powerfully regulated and at the same time they are the topos of resistance. In order that public power (the state, medical assistance) can intervene into the private sphere of feeling, the presence of a “standard of health” stemming from an anonymous knowledge is necessary. But this intervention of power paradoxically includes the stimuli of resistance. It is important and effective that the discussion about bodies be carried in a concrete manner, showing what in reality is “the problem”. This is why the present paper focuses on the Maternal and Child Health Law (bosi-hoken ho) issued in 1965. This law defined all women's bodies as “motherhood” (bosei), placing them under the control of the state and making them the object of a lifelong intervention of medical supervision. The Maternal and Child Health Law makes skillful use of the criticisms of motherhood ideology, effectively turning them into means of strengthening the very motherhood ideology that lies at its core. The criticisms thus used are those “seeking the essence of motherhood” and those “sustaining the minimal motherhood”. Consequently, “motherhood as a developed attitude” criticism as well as “the replacing of motherhood (by other concepts)” criticism are also used to induce the intervention of state and medical control into women's lives. A powerful means of legitimating this intervention is the propaganda of “risk of The Fewer Children (decrease in the number of children, Shoshika)”. Medical intervention is fully legitimized by the need to support “the decreasing ability of child-rearing due to the Fewer Children”.