Reconceptualizing the Mexican Family: Population Control and Bodily Autonomy in 1970s Mexico City

This paper examines the emergence of population control rhetoric and feminist discourses in relation to bodily autonomy and the Mexican family in 1970s Mexico. It argues that the Mexican government co-opted feminist language to advance their own family planning campaigns that were liberating for some, and repressive for others. Simultaneously, Mexican feminists attempted to gain bodily autonomy through legislative means under the guise of “voluntary motherhood.” Feminists were able to enter political spaces and mainstream discourses like never before through notions of motherhood. Furthermore, both feminists and the Mexican government re-imagined the definition of the Mexican family through their interpretations of bodily autonomy and gendered conceptions of responsible parenthood. Both “responsible fatherhood” and “voluntary motherhood” helped redefine the role of women and men in forming part of the “Mexican family”. Ultimately, women’s bodily autonomy took on distinct meanings to different groups in Mexican society during the 1970s and helped inform the making of a new definition of what it meant to be a “Mexican family”.