Women, Politics, and Reproduction: The Liberal Legacy

Cynthia R. Comacchio is an associate professor of history at Wilfrid
Laurier University and the author of Nations Are Built of Babies: Saving
Ontario’s Mothers and Children.

Historically the centre of women’s identity, motherhood has been
reconfigured according to the needs and aspirations of particular
societies in particular moments. In this important study, Ingrid Makus
explores traditional liberal ideologies of maternalism as they are
developed in the works of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and John Stuart
Mill. She concludes that, contrary to the views of feminist theorists
who posit that women’s inferiority stems from their exclusion from
male political models, the real issue is not gender itself, but the
parenting relationship. Because women are traditionally responsible for
the nurturing and socialization of children, there is inherent conflict
between their rights and their duties. For the classical liberals, as
for many other political theorists, that clash was unresolved,
perpetuating women’s subordination.

In the first three chapters, Makus provides a careful analysis of the
individual philosophers, focusing on the intertwined issues of gender,
marriage, motherhood, education, and economic and political
participation. Her deconstruction of the texts is both thorough and
sensitive to their authors’ historical context. The last two chapters
focus on contemporary issues concerning reproduction, politics, and
feminism, especially as they pertain to the parent-child relationship
and that of women and the state. The final chapter, in which the author
poses the question of feminist alternatives, is both a reasoned critique
of the ways in which feminism has fallen short of creating an inclusive
political community, and a hopeful consideration of its potential for
attaining that goal.

Well-written and clearly argued, this book will be a significant
addition to the literature on historical motherhood, the gendered nature
of classical liberalism, the continuing influence of these ideas, and
feminist theory about the role of reproduction in framing women’s
lives and identities.