{"id":36666,"date":"2025-10-11T04:01:58","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T04:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=36666"},"modified":"2025-10-11T04:01:58","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T04:01:58","slug":"how-designers-changed-motherhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/?p=36666","title":{"rendered":"How designers changed motherhood"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> \n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Stay informed with free updates<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content-sign-up-topic-description o3-type-body-base\"><span>Simply sign up to the <!-- -->Arts<!-- --> myFT Digest &#8212; delivered directly to your inbox.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"article__content-sign-up-iframe close\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"signUpIframe\" data-prev-url=\"\/register\/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=88b448c1-d468-4832-8ebe-ce435b02c01a&amp;concept-id=db569e65-6814-4993-9155-73bc7c8115cd\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>In 1938, the Third Reich began awarding German women the \u201cCross of Honour of the German Mother\u201d, a medal ranked according to how many times their wombs had produced live-born children (not the Jewish ones, of course, nor the Romani). If they managed four, they got bronze.\u00a0A few more, silver. Gold was awarded rarely, only to those who\u2019d created eight or more \u201cAryan\u201d children in the low dark of their bodies, foetal skeletons grown like so many machine guns in a factory.<\/p>\n<p>The blue and gold Nazi cross of motherhood is missing from\u00a0<em>Designing Motherhood<\/em>\u00a0at New York\u2019s Museum of Art and Design.\u00a0No matter \u2014 over the century and a half of fascinating reproductive design illustrated in the exhibition, from the darkest sorts of medical-misogynist control to the most liberating breast pump, the motherhood medal casts a long shadow, darkening even our American present.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The eugenicists of the 1930s understood that motherhood is, and has always been, the fulcrum of human culture.\u00a0Win the story of what mothers are and should do and, eventually, you win the future.\u00a0Sometimes that story is made of words.\u00a0Sometimes well-designed objects. Sometimes it\u2019s made of flesh itself.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"n-content-image n-content-image--full\" data-component=\"image-set\"><picture><source media=\"(min-width: 700px)\" srcset=\"https:\/\/images.ft.com\/v3\/image\/raw\/ftcms%3A8ea6025c-88c6-4b9e-ab4f-cc0f0486de80?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=700&amp;dpr=1 1x,https:\/\/images.ft.com\/v3\/image\/raw\/ftcms%3A8ea6025c-88c6-4b9e-ab4f-cc0f0486de80?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=700&amp;dpr=2 2x\" width=\"1550\" height=\"2255\"\/><\/picture><figcaption class=\"n-content-picture__caption o3-editorial-typography-caption\"><span>Sam Maloof\u2019s \u2018Cradle Cabinet\u2019 (1968): all a newborn\u2019s needs in one piece of furniture<\/span><span> <!-- -->\u00a9 Eva Heyd. Courtesy Museum of Arts and Design <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Visitors in New York walk through a stylish display of more than 250 examples of human techne, each in their own way shaping the story of motherhood: from the forceps and oxidised speculums of the Victorian obstetrician to the whimsical plastic blister pack of the Pill, from a glass Stork nursing bottle from the 1930s (replete with a raised design of an Easter rabbit wearing some sort of natty tuxedo) to the 1980s beige and orange Fisher-Price baby monitor.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"n-content-pullquote o3-editorial-typography-pullquote n-content-pullquote--no-image\" aria-hidden=\"true\">\n<p>The breast pump was wielded as both salve and cudgel for working mothers<\/p>\n<footer class=\"o3-editorial-typography-pullquote__author\"\/><\/blockquote>\n<p>All of these we\u2019re invited to consider in light of the many cultural anxieties that accompanied their production. The kidnapping of 20-month-old Charles Lindbergh was the initial trigger for the invention of the baby monitor in 1932, and they massively proliferated later, as a wave of women entered the workforce in greater numbers in the 1970s and \u201980s, producing a feminine domestic life that was nevertheless expected to be even\u00a0<em>more<\/em>\u00a0productive and ever-vigilant, tethered even as the child sleeps.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>While the breast pump was invented as a medical tool for mothers who had difficulty directly breastfeeding (a shockingly common condition), it was also wielded during the rise of the \u201cbreast is best\u201d movement as both salve and cudgel for working mothers (and continues to be so).\u00a0No matter that American mothers are offered, by federal law, only 12 weeks of <em>unpaid<\/em> maternity leave, for which they only qualify if they have worked for the same company for at least a year.\u00a0A nursing mother can spend up to 2,200 hours breastfeeding in the first year of a child\u2019s life \u2014 that is, 55 full-time weeks\u2019 worth of labour.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"n-content-image n-content-image--full\" data-component=\"image-set\"><picture><source media=\"(min-width: 700px)\" srcset=\"https:\/\/images.ft.com\/v3\/image\/raw\/ftcms%3A55343cca-bc44-4179-b9a7-840a30244d9c?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=700&amp;dpr=1 1x,https:\/\/images.ft.com\/v3\/image\/raw\/ftcms%3A55343cca-bc44-4179-b9a7-840a30244d9c?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=700&amp;dpr=2 2x\" width=\"1781\" height=\"1187\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.ft.com\/v3\/image\/raw\/https%3A%2F%2Fd1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net%2Fproduction%2F55343cca-bc44-4179-b9a7-840a30244d9c.jpg?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=700&amp;dpr=1\" alt=\"Two mannequins display a U.S. Army uniform labeled &quot;Ronske&quot; and a form-fitting, velvet maternity jumpsuit against a red wall with framed photos.\" data-image-type=\"image\" width=\"1781\" height=\"1187\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/picture><figcaption class=\"n-content-picture__caption o3-editorial-typography-caption\"><span>Maternity clothes on display <\/span><span> <!-- -->\u00a9 Jenna Bascom. Courtesy Museum of Arts and Design <\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The exhibit has toured in various iterations before, from the tech-hallowed halls of the Gates Discovery Center in Seattle (I saw it there myself in 2023), to Houston, Texas, where it reached last November \u2014 surely a fascinating moment of curatorial tension, given the state\u2019s near-total ban on abortion. The show\u2019s New York iteration was booked well before an elected American president, against the consistent and overwhelming opinion of international medical authorities and the scientific research community, would <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/24d64d82-7101-4432-a5f4-082d38ca513a\" data-trackable=\"link\">blame pregnant women<\/a> taking the painkiller Tylenol for a rise in autism diagnoses. It is, let\u2019s say, very\u00a0<em>now<\/em>\u00a0to think carefully about how we should care for and talk about pregnant, birthing and post-partum bodies.<\/p>\n<p>Padding quietly through the gallery\u2019s well-buffed floors, you\u2019ll see a giddy array of speculative design, video, political documents, receipts, pamphlets, a bevy of tools (both medical and not), and contemporary artworks that interrogate maternal suffering even as they celebrate the many bizarre and luscious qualia of having bodies like these that can do such wondrous things.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"n-content-image n-content-image--full\" data-component=\"image-set\"><picture><source media=\"(min-width: 700px)\" srcset=\"https:\/\/images.ft.com\/v3\/image\/raw\/ftcms%3Ac8ea946e-bec4-4467-bedc-56459f3b0112?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=700&amp;dpr=1 1x,https:\/\/images.ft.com\/v3\/image\/raw\/ftcms%3Ac8ea946e-bec4-4467-bedc-56459f3b0112?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=700&amp;dpr=2 2x,https:\/\/images.ft.com\/v3\/image\/raw\/ftcms%3Ac8ea946e-bec4-4467-bedc-56459f3b0112?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=700&amp;dpr=3 3x\" width=\"2289\" height=\"1527\"\/><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images.ft.com\/v3\/image\/raw\/https%3A%2F%2Fd1e00ek4ebabms.cloudfront.net%2Fproduction%2Fc8ea946e-bec4-4467-bedc-56459f3b0112.jpg?source=next-article&amp;fit=scale-down&amp;quality=highest&amp;width=700&amp;dpr=1\" alt=\"A clear plastic Predictor home pregnancy test kit from 1971, containing two test tubes and a dropper inside.\" data-image-type=\"image\" width=\"2289\" height=\"1527\" loading=\"lazy\"\/><\/picture><figcaption class=\"n-content-picture__caption o3-editorial-typography-caption\"><span>The Predictor Home Pregnancy Test Kit, 1971<\/span><span> <!-- -->\u00a9 Brendan McCabe<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The gorgeous work of Ani Liu interrogates her own maternal labour through things like delightfully sci-fi tangles of breast milk tubing or \u201cpregnancy menswear\u201d, reinterpreting what \u201cmaternity fashion\u201d might be for pregnant folk who don\u2019t identify as women. That piece is rendered through silk and boning as a kind of 3D sketch in suspension, a fuzzy in-between of what could be realised, but isn\u2019t; gender as a thing that\u2019s dreamt and worn in a loose halo around our mammalian bodies.<\/p>\n<p>And therein lies the rub: it quickly becomes insufficient to walk through an exhibit like this thinking you\u2019re either on a heroine\u2019s journey or a little shop of horrors. It\u2019s always both: not all of these designs were invented for the purpose of aiding reproductive health or even to relieve suffering. Much grew out of the 20th century\u2019s wars: early baby monitors used bands of radio that transmitted along a house\u2019s electrical wires, a technology previously used for spying.\u00a0Medical uses for plastics largely grew out of trauma medicine on battlefields.\u00a0It remains true that things that are designed for death are quickly repurposed for the living. One assumes the next version of this exhibition will need to add a bottle of Tylenol. No title, no notes.<\/p>\n<p><em>To March 15, <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/madmuseum.org\/exhibition\/designing-motherhood\" data-trackable=\"link\"><em>madmuseum.org<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>Find out about our latest stories first \u2014<\/em> <em>follow FT Weekend on<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/ft_weekend\/\" data-trackable=\"link\"><em> Instagram<\/em><\/a><em>, <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/bsky.app\/profile\/ftweekend.com\" data-trackable=\"link\"><em>Bluesky<\/em><\/a><em> and<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ftweekend\" data-trackable=\"link\"><em> X<\/em><\/a><em>, and <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/ep.ft.com\/newsletters\/subscribe?newsletterIds=56d42625a2b6c30300fd5748\" data-trackable=\"link\"><em>sign up<\/em><\/a><em> to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/88b448c1-d468-4832-8ebe-ce435b02c01a\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stay informed with free updates Simply sign up to the Arts myFT Digest &#8212; delivered directly to your&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":36667,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36666","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-us","cs-entry","cs-video-wrap"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=36666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/36667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/financialrush.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}