Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

“I Felt So Untrustworthy Of My Ability To Get Pregnant”: Women’S Embodied Uncertainties And Decisions To Become Pregnant, Theodora K. Hurley

Honors Projects

This paper identifies “embodied uncertainties”—possibilities of aging and infertility lodged within the body—as informing women’s conceptualizations of their reproductive bodies and their decisions about and approaches to getting pregnant. Using data from semi-structured interviews with a small sample of highly educated, professional, white women who had given birth within 18 months prior, this paper argues that (bio)medicalized risk discourses and neoliberal logics of responsible choice-making lodge uncertainty and the possibility of failure within women’s reproductive bodies. As they attempt to reconcile childbearing with professional and financial constraints, women may identify their bodies as laden with embodied uncertainties and may subsequently …