Mass Hysteria

<I>Mass Hysteria</I> examines the medical and cultural practices surrounding pregnancy new motherhood and infant feeding. Late eighteenth century transformations in these practices reshaped mothers' bodies and contemporary norms and routines of prenatal care and early motherhood have inherited the legacy of that era. As a result mothers are socially positioned in ways that can make it difficult for them to establish and maintain healthy and safe boundaries and appropriate divisions between public and private space.