JUDY GELLES

DESIGNING MOTHERHOOD

THE MIT PRESS

By Michelle Millar Fisher and Amber Winick

Forward by Alexandra Lange

2021

Judy Gelles’s “Family Portrait” series is featured along with more than eighty designs—iconic, archaic, quotidian, and taboo—that have defined the arc of human reproduction.

While birth often brings great joy, making babies is a knotty enterprise. The designed objects that surround us when it comes to menstruation, birth control, conception, pregnancy, childbirth, and early motherhood vary as oddly, messily, and dramatically as the stereotypes suggest. This smart, image-rich, fashion-forward, and design-driven book explores more than eighty designs—iconic, conceptual, archaic, titillating, emotionally charged, or just plain strange—that have defined the relationships between people and babies during the past century.