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A review of Reconceiving Pregnancy and Childcare: Ethics, Experience, and Reproductive Labor. By Amy Mullin. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Cloth: 9780521844383; Paper ISBN: 9780521605861.

In Reconceiving Pregnancy and Childcare: Ethics, Experience, and Reproductive Labor, Amy Mullin argues that pregnancy and childrearing are "social activities that involve simultaneously physical, intellectual, emotional, and moral work from those who undertake them" (186). One of the most distinctive features of Mullin's book is that she devotes very little space - one short chapter out of six - to childbirth. Part of the reason for this is that focusing exclusively or almost exclusively on childbirth reinforces the general societal tendency to believe that pregnancy is valued solely for the product it produces and not at all for the experience of pregnancy. By illuminating the experience of pregnancy - not by universalizing it, but by looking at women's actual experiences - and by comparing pregnancy to other experiences that women and men have, Mullin reveals that all of us can learn something from the experience of pregnancy regardless of whether or not we are pregnant and whether or not we are capable of pregnancy. Mullin hopes that public recognition of the value of the experience of pregnancy will enable pregnancy to become part of the public discourse (34).

In order to show how pregnancy is active and thoughtful reproductive work, not just a passive physical process, Mullin claims that there are important similarities between the experience of a wanted pregnancy and a consciously chosen project such as writing a novel or improving one's soccer game. Just like the soccer player must work within the physical constraints of her body, respond to bodily changes, depend upon others to reach her goals (such as her coach and teammates), and incorporate soccer into her life along with her other projects and activities, so too does a woman with her pregnancy. Realizing that pregnancy is not a completely unique experience - but rather similar to other projects we undertake - allows us to better understand both pregnancy and these other projects and activities. Mullin's discussion shows us, for example, that it is a mistake to believe that personal projects, unlike pregnancy, are completely subject to individual control. Her discussion, in short, helps us to see how pregnancy is an active and intellectual project in addition to being an embodied one. As she notes, her view stands in stark contrast to the way most philosophers have understood pregnancy. Plato and Nietzche, for example, distinguished between material and spiritual pregnancy, granting the latter philosophical significance and using it as a metaphor to describe intellectual creativity while denying the former any significance outside of the fetus.

Mullin also compares pregnancy to illnesses and diseases. She explains that they are similar in that both pregnant women and people with disabilities have bodies that are not accommodated in public spaces, thus thwarting many of their projects. Revealing the often hidden role that the body can play in carrying out any project is important both because it helps able-bodied people better understand the experiences of people with disabilities and because it discloses the social aspect of the oppression of people with disabilities - that society refuses to accommodate their bodies.

Turning to childcare, Mullin observes that it rests upon the ideology of essential motherhood in which "mothers meet all the emotional needs of their young children, care of their bodies, and keep them safe, while fathers provide the material resources required for this mothering work" (120). Moreover, according to this ideology childcare should mainly take place in a private home. Resisting this ideology, which treats all caregivers other than mothers as custodial or surrogate caregivers, Mullin endorses sharing childcare among a number of people. She proposes a "three-pronged approach" that focuses on the needs of the care recipients and the care providers while taking into account power dynamics and equality among people of different genders, races, and social classes (149). She argues that sharing childcare is better for both the caregivers and the children: it is better for the caregivers because they have the time to participate in other activities (which benefits both them and the children) and it is better for the children because they have access to different people with different knowledge, skills, and values. Moreover, in working together caregivers learn from one another, thus improving their caregiving skills as well as the caregiving the child receives.

While I found Mullin's discussion of shared childcare quite persuasive, I would have liked to hear more about how this idea could be implemented in our lives and in society as a whole. Reading more about how Mullin envisions shared childcare working in everyday life as well as the structures, systems, and relationships in place that enable some cultures and social groups yet not others to participate in shared childcare would help us move towards making the ideal of shared childcare a reality.

To show that the mother-child and caregiver-carerecipient relationship can help us better understand other caring relationships, Mullin compares them to friendship. In examining the work of feminists who affirm the care giving relationship as a model for friendship, as well as those who critique it, Mullin shows that they all make an assumption that reinforces essential motherhood: that the mother works alone to meet the needs of an entirely dependent child. In assuming that the child is completely dependent, they are limiting their discussion to very young children and thus overlooking the fact that reciprocity and mutuality - which are typically denied a role in mother-child relationships, but are thought to be necessary in friendships - are possible for mother-child relationships that involve an older child. Mullin goes on to reveal that feminists on both sides of this care-giving model make a similar assumption in conceptualizing friendship relationships: that friendship involves just two morally component adults people who are in no way dependent on the other. This understanding of friendship, just like the ideology of essential motherhood, is not only inaccurate, but also quite problematic. In the end, Mullin argues that we need to understand friendship not as a dyadic relationship, but rather as involving networks of relationships. As with childrearing, modeling friendship on a network of relationships enables us to acknowledge and deal with dependency instead of denying it. While perhaps outside of her scope, I would have been interested in hearing Mullin's position on romantic relationships and how they fit into her view that networks of relationships are preferable to dyadic relationships.

Overall, Mullin's book is a significant contribution to feminist work on pregnancy and childcare. Her critical analysis of prior feminist work on mothering is useful in understanding this debate and will help move it forward. By examining pregnancy and childcare from the perspective of the pregnant woman and the caregiver, Mullin shows that pregnancy and childcare are active, thoughtful, and moral reproductive work that takes place within a social context. While she approaches these issues from a philosophical perspective, her book is highly interdisciplinary, which makes it interesting and useful both to philosophers - as it adds empirical research and literature to a discussion that has often been quite abstract - and to scholars in other disciplines - as it provides a philosophically rigorous critical analysis and ethical theory that is valuable to more grounded work. This well researched and accessible book is not only important for academics, but also for parents, childcare givers and workers, disability theorists and activists, and medical professionals specializing in obstetrics and pediatrics. Moreover, if we agree with Mullin that pregnancy and childcare are complex and rich forms of reproductive work that deserve recognition, value, and a place in the public discourse, then this book, and more generally the topics it raises, is relevant for all of us.

Lisa Campo Engelstein, Michigan State University