Structural Infertilities: Childbearing and Reproductive Justice in Chile

Abstract

Issues regarding whether and when to have children have been at the forefront of feminist struggles for reproductive justice. Drawing on qualitative data produced through forty in-depth interviews, this article addresses constraints to reproductive justice by empirically analyzing how women negotiate childbearing amid structural infertilities in neoliberal Chile. The study shows that the erosion of social protection, privatization of basic services, increasing costs of childrearing, gender inequalities in labor, and feminization of care push women into forgoing, limiting, and delaying childbearing as reproductive tactics to enact responsible selves and become good mothers. Structural infertilities intersect with economic injustices and disproportionally affect lower-class women who struggle with the lack of basic conditions for childrearing, precarious livelihoods, and the stigma of bad mothers. These findings reveal that structural infertilities constitute a major obstacle for reproductive justice and illustrate the inextricable intersections between reproductive and economic justice.HIGHLIGHTS Structural infertilities constrain women’s autonomy whether and when to have children.Women forgo, limit, and delay childbearing as tactics to become good mothers.Women contest the feminization of reproduction as gender inequalities remain pervasive.Lower-class women struggle with the stigma of bad mothers as motherhood becomes a class privilege.Neoliberalism and patriarchy constitute sites of reproductive injustice.