Jewish mothers and Jewish babies: Childbearing and childrearing amongst Jewish women in England and Israel c. 1948-1990. (360G-Wellcome-098926_Z_12_Z)

Combining archival research with oral history, this research will contrast the experience of three groups: (i) women from Jewish communities in England, (ii) Jewish women of European (Ashkenazi) heritage in Israel and (iii) Jewish women of North African and West Asian (Mizrahi) heritage in Israel, in order to examine the relationship between scientific and religious discourses in the fields of maternal and child health. The project seeks to question existing historical interpretations which hav e viewed the approbation of medical technologies that intervene in maternity and reproduction as a facet of modernity and secularization. The project will examine the national and cultural differences that led to the divergence in responses towards the medicalization of birth in the two countries and will ask whether the Israeli state imposed one model of maternity care specifically in order to deal with the diversity of its population and establish national unity. It will interrogate how diff erent traditions of collective childcare in England and Israel shaped mothers' experiences, and the flow of ideas on child development between the two nations. Finally it will explore the effects of the different patterns of migration and settlement upon the three groups' experiences of childbearing and childrearing.