ABSTRACT
Apart from the difficulty of feeding children, many Gopalapalli women pointed out that they stopped having children in order to avoid bodily suffering. Women commonly referred to difficult pregnancies, prolonged and painful childbirths, and complications after parturition. They readily brought these topics to the fore when childbearing was being discusses. Procreation is a corporeal practice, even though fertility is often spoken about as if it did not have much to do with actual ‘mindful bodies’. Bodies are meaningful as the individual, embodied selves; as social bodies which act as natural symbols; and as bodies politic, the realms of surveillance and control (Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987; see also Seccombe 1992).
