Browsing by Author "Macleod CI"

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    'Failed' mothers,‘failed’ womxn: Demarcating normative mothering
    (Routledge, 2019-12-09) Macleod CI; Feltham-King T; Mavuso JM-JJ; Morison T; Zuffrey, C; Buchanan, F
    In this chapter, we show how the boundaries of acceptable mothering are demarcated and regulated through reference to the ‘Other’ (Woollett & Phoenix, 1997). Using examples of ‘womxn’ who refuse motherhood, terminate pregnancies and reproduce when considered to be too young, we outline how womxn who ‘fail’ at normative mothering or who deviate from expected reproductive decisions form the pathologised presence that pre-defines the absent trace of normative mothering and the successful accomplishment of womxnhood (Macleod, 2001). We use the term ‘womxn’ and ‘womxnhood’ to disrupt normative assumptions about gender and sex, here taken to be socially constructed, which write gender and sex onto individuals. In this chapter, the term ‘womxn’ denotes and recognises womxn-identifying persons with the biological capacity to become pregnant, including intersex and transgender individuals. We also use this term to foreground the experiences of womxn of colour, womxn from/living in the global South, trans, queer and intersex womxn, as well as all womxn-identifying persons who have been excluded from dominant constructions of ‘womanhood’ and feminist praxis on the subject (Ashlee, Zamora & Karikari, 2017; Merbruja, 2015).
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    Focus on ‘the family’? How South African family policy fails queer families
    (Unisa Press & Routledge, 2019-01-01) Macleod CI; Morison T; Lynch I; Morison, T; Lynch, I; Reddy, V
    The most policy document is the White Paper on Families, which aims to facilitate the mainstreaming of a family perspective into all government policy-making from the national to the municipal level and across multiple departments. The irony is that less than a third of South African families actually conform to the two cisgender heterosexual biological parent model that is favoured in family policy. South African research has shown that children of lesbian parents learn open-mindedness and to be comfortable with the family in which they live, and that men in same-sex relationships challenge gendered divisions of household tasks. Promoting the two-biological-parent family as the preferred family structure creates an impossible ideal for the majority of South Africans to live up to. Because such a family structure is strongly connected to class, it is out of reach for the majority of citizens, let alone those who live in queer relationships.
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    The unravelling of person-centred care: The value and necessity of analysing power relations in contraceptive services
    (SAGE Publications, 2025-04-30) Morison T; Macleod CI; Ndabul Y
    Global research indicates ongoing challenges in delivering person-centred contraceptive care. Much of the contraceptive research investigates this issue using systems-focussed approaches to map institutional constraints (e.g. institutional or health system barriers to accessing contraception). The assumption underlying this research approach is that simply removing structural barriers can address issues and enhance contraceptive autonomy, but this is not the case. Our research shows how discursively constructed power relations undermine bodily integrity and contraceptive agency even as contraceptive providers endorse the principles of patient-centred care. Using a synthetic narrative/discourse approach to analyse provider interviews in South Africa and New Zealand, we draw on Foucauldian analytics of biopower to show how an idealised person-centred care narrative collapses under the weight of discourses of medicalised risk, protectionism, and biomedical expertise, signalling practices of power through confession, responsibilisation and surveillance. Our findings highlight an essential perspective frequently missing in systems-focussed research on contraceptive care: the crucial dimension of power and reproductive politics. Thus, we argue for the necessity of investigating this dimension, in addition to systemic challenges. Our work demonstrates the value of frameworks that illuminate power dynamics, such as the Foucauldian analytics of biopower we undertook. Expanding the range of research perspectives in contraceptive research can deepen understandings of how systems constraints and power relations together undermine relational person-centred contraceptive care.