ABSTRACT
The pregnant woman who shunned or failed at maternal entitlement was usually guilty of little more than presenting herself as a woman less devoted to self-realization and individualism than was thought fashionable: She risked no one’s life. In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, advice manuals and medical experts often forbade the pregnant woman from venturing outside her house, because it was always possible that there she would see a fearsome creature such as a dog, wolf, or “deformed” stranger. Nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century writing on activities during pregnancy amounted to counseling a woman to remain quiet and at home. Adopting a rhetoric of fetal endangerment, no matter its details, is facilitated and supported by folk beliefs and biological “knowledge” about women and pregnancy. Pregnancy conduct advice is of a piece, and cautions about fetal endangerment exist in the fuller context of advice about looking good, getting organized, and getting to know one’s fetus by conscientious information gathering.
