Sarah Earle

Bio: Sarah Earle is an academic researcher from Open University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Human sexuality & Health promotion. The author has an hindex of 20, co-authored 114 publications receiving 1664 citations. Previous affiliations of Sarah Earle include Bath Spa University & Northampton Community College.

Factors affecting the initiation of breastfeeding: implications for breastfeeding promotion

Abstract: Breastfeeding rates in the United Kingdom (UK) are one of the lowest in the developed world and certainly the lowest in Europe. There have been numerous studies of breastfeeding in the UK, most of which have adopted a quantitative approach, and they have largely focused on obstetric or socio-demographic factors in the decision to breastfeed. Whilst these studies have an important role to play, this paper draws on a study that adopts a qualitative methodology to explore women's personal experiences and perceptions of breastfeeding. A qualitative study of 19 primagravidae was undertaken and completed in 1998. Participants were recruited to the study via 12 antenatal clinics in the West Midlands, England, UK. Their ages ranged from 16 to 30 years and the majority described themselves as 'white'. The majority of participants were in paid employment in a variety of occupations. The study was prospective in design. Participants were interviewed three times either during pregnancy or after childbirth: the first stage was between 6 and 14 weeks of pregnancy; the second stage was between 34 and 39 weeks; and the third stage was between 6 and 14 weeks after childbirth. The data indicate that there are several factors affecting breastfeeding initiation. First, infant feeding decisions seem to be made prior to, or irrespective of, contact with health professionals. Secondly, the data suggest that health promotion campaigns in the UK have been influential in their ability to educate women about the benefits of breastfeeding. However, this did not dissuade participants from formula feeding once their decision was made. The desire for paternal involvement also seemed to be another influential factor; fathers were either seen as able to alleviate the daily grind of early motherhood, or there was a desire for 'shared parenting'. Finally, some of the formula feeding women expressed a strong desire to re-establish their identities as separate individuals and as 'non-mothers'.

‘The silence is roaring’: sterilization, reproductive rights and women with intellectual disabilities

Abstract: This paper reviews the history of sterilization of women with intellectual disabilities, and considers its relevance to current practice regarding reproductive choice and futures. The paper provides an overview of published research on historical practices, focusing on the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and the Nordic countries. Most of this research draws upon written records, centring on eugenics debates. However, emerging oral history testimonies gathered by the authors suggest that sterilization procedures were also conducted in the community, the result of private negotiations between parents and medical practitioners. The article presents these accounts and calls for an end to a ‘roaring silence’ on this issue. More empirical studies are needed to recover the experiences of women who have been sterilized and to explore how decisions about reproductive choice and capacity were made in the past and continue to be made today.

“bumps and boobs”: fatness and women's experiences of pregnancy

Abstract: The primacy of women's physical appearance in the modern Western world is well documented within the literature, but it is assumed that this is no longer significant during pregnancy. In this paper, I will argue that this supposition is based on scant empirical evidence and suggest that the reverse may be true. This paper is based on a qualitative research study, which draws on 40 in-depth interviews with 19 pregnant women in the West Midlands, UK. It explores their perceptions of fatness, weight, and body shape during pregnancy, and explores the extent to which their concerns reflect either a resistance to the asexualisation of the pregnant body or the continued oppression of women's embodiment. The paper concludes by arguing that pregnant women adopt a pragmatic approach of both selective resistance to asexualisation and selective compliance with the pressure to be slim.

Disability, facilitated sex and the role of the nurse

Abstract: Aim. The aim of this paper is to explore the role that nurses can play in acknowledging and facilitating the sexual needs of disabled patients within an holistic framework of nursing care. Background. Contemporary nursing claims to offer patient care within an holistic framework; this framework should encompass the biopsychosocial needs of patients, as defined by patients themselves. In spite of the importance of sexuality and sexual expression to the psychosocial welfare of patients, sexuality is often excluded from nursing practice. Method. Literature is reviewed from nursing, disability studies, and a variety of social science disciplines. Findings. The paper begins with a discussion of the concept of 'holistic care' and the ways in which this has been interpreted in the nursing literature. The biopsychosocial approach and the notion of 'whole person' holism seem particularly significant, although the lack of attention to patient sexuality is identified. Literature from the social sciences is used to explore the significance of sexuality to individual self-identity and psychosocial welfare. This literature also highlights the way in which the denial of sexual identity is a significant feature of power relations. The disability studies literature catalogues the way in which disabled people are generally infantilised by society and perceived as asexual. This literature also highlights the professional neglect of disabled sexual identities. Using a variety of literature, the concept of facilitated sex is explored as a continuum of activities and the role of nursing, within a holistic framework, is examined.

Postmodern Subjects, Postmodern BodiesThinking Fragments: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Postmodernism in the Contemporary WestYearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural PoliticsGender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity

Abstract: Preface (1999) Preface (1990) 1. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire I. 'Women' as the Subject of Feminism II. The Compulsory Order of Sex/Gender/Desire III. Gender: The Circular Ruins of Contemporary Debate IV. Theorizing the Binary, the Unitary and Beyond V. Identity, Sex and the Metaphysics of Substance VI. Language, Power and the Strategies of Displacement 2. Prohibition, Psychoanalysis, and the Production of the Heterosexual Matrix I. Structuralism's Critical Exchange II. Lacan, Riviere, and the Strategies of Masquerade III. Freud and the Melancholia of Gender IV. Gender Complexity and the Limits of Identification V. Reformulating Prohibition as Power 3. Subversive Bodily Acts I. The Body Politics of Julia Kristeva II. Foucault, Herculine, and the Politics of Sexual Discontinuity III. Monique Wittig - Bodily Disintegration and Fictive Sex IV. Bodily Inscriptions, Performative Subversions Conclusion - From Parody to Politics

The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction

Abstract: The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction by Emily Martin Beacon Press, 1987 Paperback, 276 pp $1195 Winner of the 1988 Eileen Basker Memorial Prize As anthropology at its best can do, this book exposes hidden cultural assumptions about the nature of reality Martin has produced a powerful study of the dialectic between medical metaphors for women's reproductive processes and women's own views of those processes She and her associates interviewed 165 white and black women, seeking a balance between the three life stages of puberty, childbearing, and menopause 43% of her interviewees were working-class; 57% middleclass Early on Martin came up against one of the greatest dangers of studying one's own society Hearing women discuss uterine contractions as separate from the self and labor as something one "went through," and reading the same in medical texts, she at first thought that her interviews had turned up views of the body that simply reflected actual scientific fact It took her some time to realize that such scientific views are not "fact" but culturally grounded statements of an underlying ideology To get at this ideology Martin studied medical texts for the "grammar" that scientific medicine uses to describe female bodies In this medical grammar, she finds industrial society writ small The female reproductive tract is a machine designed to produce a baby; accordingly, menstruation represents failed production, connoting both a productive system that has failed to produce and one that produces only useless waste Such metaphors, disturbing to a society whose existence depends upon continued production, lead to menstruation's description in medical texts in highly negative terms: The fall in blood progesterone and estrogen, which results from regression of the corpus luteum, deprives the highly developed endometrial lining of its hormonal support Disintegration starts The endometrial arteries dilate, resulting in hemorrhage through the weakened capillary walls; the menstrual flow consists of this blood mixed with endometrial debris (quoted on p 48) (Martin contrasts this with a description of male reproductive physiology which speaks of the "remarkable" cellular transformation from spermatid to mature sperm, its "amazing" nature and "sheer magnitude") Confronting the argument that the above is not value-laden but simply a factual description of menstruation, Martin examines medical descriptions of the analogous regular shedding and replacement of the lining of the stomach, finding in a number of texts no references to degeneration, but instead a stress on the periodic "renewal" of the stomach lining Concluding that writers can choose to depict what happens to the lining of stomachs and uteruses either negatively as breakdown and decay or positively as continual production and replenishment, Martin suggests an alternative medical description of menstruation: A drop in the formerly high levels of progesterone and estrogen creates the appropriate environment for reducing the excess layers of endometrial tissue Constriction of capillary blood vessels causes a lower level of oxygen and nutrients and paves the way for a vigorous production of menstrual fluids Such a description would far more accurately reflect women's own more positive assessments of the menstrual fluid as the desired product Viewing pregnancy as the sole purpose of female reproductive organs and despising menstruation as a "waste" ignores the reality that most women do not intend to get pregnant most of the time (and so are often joyful when menstruation begins), and conceals "the true unity women have [Menstruation is] the one thing we all share" (p 112) In spite of ambivalence about the "disgusting mess," most interviewees felt that menstruation defines them as women and insisted that they wouldn't want to give it up Teens spoke of the joy of getting their periods so they could be part of the in-group that shared the women's "special secret," of mothers and sisters greeting their first menstruation with "You're a woman now! …

Digital Ethnography : An Examination of the Use of New Technologies for Social Research

Abstract: The rise of digital technologies has the potential to open new directions in ethnography. Despite the ubiquity of these technologies, their infiltration into popular sociological research methods is still limited compared to the insatiable uptake of online scholarly research portals. This article argues that social researchers cannot afford to continue this trend. Building upon pioneering work in 'digital ethnography', I critically examine the possibilities and problems of four new technologies — online questionnaires, digital video, social networking websites, and blogs — and their potential impacts on the research relationship. The article concludes that a balanced combination of physical and digital ethnography not only gives researchers a larger and more exciting array of methods, but also enables them to demarginalize the voice of respondents. However, access to these technologies remains stratified by class, race, and gender of both researchers and respondents.