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Vassar College

Publication Date

Spring 2007

Program Name

Jordan: Modernization and Social Change

Abstract

This project examines the ways in which family planning and reproductive health services and the institutions that provide them contribute to constructing definitions of family and motherhood in Jordan. The study is based on personal interviews conducted with representatives at six institutions – the Ministry of Health, the Higher Population Council, the Jordanian Association for Family Planning and Protection, Queen Zein Al Sharaf Institute for Development, the Arab Women’s Organization, and the Jordanian Women’s Union. This paper addresses the issues of family planning as a method of population control, the integrated medical and educational approach currently popular in family planning programs, and the intersectionality of the government and NGOs on issues of reproductive health. In examining the services of these institutions as well as their relationships to each other, this study concludes that the domination of family planning services by national policy as well as the programs’ emphases on scientific motherhood and women’s empowerment allows the state to politically and socially construct a self-serving ideology of family.

Disciplines

Family, Life Course, and Society | Maternal and Child Health | Public Health

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