Tonkiss, Katie (2023). Two little hearts on my wrist: dialogues on tattooing, infertility, and potentially good mothers. Women's Studies International Forum, 98 ,
Abstract
In this article I explore the role of tattooing practices in how women with experience of infertility navigate the pronatalist ‘motherhood mandate’ which dictates their value in relation to successful childbearing. I present an analytic autoethnography which places my own experiences of tattooing after infertility and pregnancy loss in dialogue with those of seven other women with whom I conducted interviews. I show that tattooing practices after infertility, for women positioned as ‘potentially good mothers’, represent a desire to claim feelings of control and catharsis after a period of uncertainty and trauma. Yet at the same time, the desire for control often stems from feelings of failure, and moments of catharsis are enacted within a framework of ‘good femininity’ linked to caring and, in particular, mothering. Drawing on these findings, I argue that tattooing after infertility is ‘double-deviance’, simultaneously subverting and reinforcing pronatalist norms of femininity.
Publication DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2023.102752 |
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Divisions: | College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities > Sociology and Policy College of Business and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences & Humanities |
Additional Information: | Crown Copyright © 2023 Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article made available under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licesnses/by.4.0/) |
Uncontrolled Keywords: | Infertility,Motherhood mandate,Pregnancy loss,Pronatalism,Tattooing,Education,Development,Sociology and Political Science |
Publication ISSN: | 1879-243X |
Last Modified: | 01 Oct 2024 07:34 |
Date Deposited: | 22 May 2023 10:11 |
Full Text Link: | |
Related URLs: |
https://www.sci ... 277539523000791
(Publisher URL) http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL) |
PURE Output Type: | Article |
Published Date: | 2023-05-11 |
Published Online Date: | 2023-05-11 |
Accepted Date: | 2023-05-03 |
Authors: |
Tonkiss, Katie
(
0000-0002-0671-3357)
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