Citizen Fetus (eBook)

This book discusses many aspects of fetuses and motherhood from fields as wide as sociology and medicine. It examines changing perceptions of the fetus over recent decades, comparing western ideas with those of non-western countries; examining maternal mental health during COVID-19 and charting the ascent of the 'fetus' to a cult phenomenon, which has currently reappeared in the courts. This work, given its multifaceted approach, will be of interest to a varied and wide range of people, from parents to doctors and nurses, to anthropologists and ethnologists, to scientists, to students of various disciplines, to psychologists and psychoanalysts, to lawyers dealing with the topic and to a general public simply interested in these fundamental themes.


Alessandra Piontelli is an fomrer Professor at the University of Milan, Italy, where she studies different aspects of motherhood, focusing in particular on modes of maternal-infant coping in extreme environmental and social conditions. Her medical work brings her into contact with many developing countries, and her stages are aimed at improving maternal and child physical and mental health, and at instructing local personnel in basic notions of Psychiatry, Neurology and Obstetrics. Her book Twins in the World was published with Palgrave in 2008.