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Acknowledgments

The idea for this book originated years ago, while I was hiking in New Hampshire with one of my graduate-school mentors, Lorraine V. Klerman. I had just read the CDC’s guidelines for pre-conception care, and Lorraine had recently served on the CDC’s expert select panel on pre-conception care. I had many questions about the emergence of this seemingly new idea for improving birth outcomes and how it might interface with cultural assumptions about gender, risk, and responsibility. A renowned public-health scholar, Lorraine was always very patient with and intrigued by my sociological interest in the relationship between medical knowledge and social order, and she helped me turn a project idea into a reality.

Along with her unwavering intellectual support and expansive knowledge on my subject, Lorraine’s connections to leaders in maternal and child health were key to the development of my project. Soon after our hike, in her usual collegial spirit, Lorraine invited Kay Johnson and me to her home in Waltham, Massachusetts, to discuss the history and potential implications of a pre-conception care framework in public health. Kay was lead author on the CDC’s pre-conception care guidelines, and her expertise on the subject ran deep. Kay’s encouragement was absolutely essential to the trajectory of my work, and she expedited my research in numerous ways, including supporting my attendance at the third National Summit on Preconception Health and Health Care. Additionally, Dr. Hani Atrash pleasantly welcomed me to CDC offices in Atlanta to pursue my research.

I am truly grateful to all the experts who took time out of their busy schedules to talk with me about pre-conception care. I learned so much from them, and I admire their dedication to healthy mothers and children. I realize that all of the professionals with whom I spoke will not agree with some of my arguments in this book, but I hope that my work will engender future dialogue about that which we indubitably share: a commitment to maternal and child health. I am in awe of the everyday work they all do in this realm and am thankful to be part of the conversation.

I am intellectually indebted to my mentors at Brandeis who were central in the development of this project. For years now, Peter Conrad has nurtured my thinking on this topic and many others, and his general equanimity kept me grounded during the uncharted journey of writing a dissertation and then a book. His knack for big conceptual thinking molded my own analytic mind in important ways. Karen V. Hansen facilitated my intellectual interest in the intersection of medicine and motherhood, and I thank her for being a model scholar and person. Sara Shostak helped me tremendously as I navigated key questions in the sociology of medicine and science. After Lorraine passed away, I was quite distressed, and Susan Parish graciously and competently stepped in as a policy expert during the latter stages of my dissertation research and provided essential assistance and support.

It is no secret that Elizabeth Mitchell Armstrong’s work has profoundly influenced my own. After crucially helping me formulate key arguments during my dissertation work, Betsy invited me to Princeton to study as a postdoctoral fellow. To say that this was a fortunate opportunity would be a massive understatement. During my time at Princeton, I was able to work with and talk with Betsy on a weekly basis, and I learned a terrific amount about how to navigate research projects, academia, and life. Betsy is a wide-ranging intellectual, a consummate mentor, and a kind friend. Thank you, Betsy, for making all this possible.

Susan Markens and Norah MacKendrick read countless drafts of chapters and were enduringly understanding and encouraging, uplifting me with their optimism, smart commentary, and good cheer. They were able to reveal clarity where I saw only blurred ideas, and they were quick to insert a thought-provoking comment where I most needed it. I am not sure the final manuscript would have come to fruition without them. For their camaraderie and friendship, I am immensely and continuously grateful. Rene Almeling and Kristin Barker offered extremely helpful insights in the early stages of this book project and read the penultimate manuscript in full. Their thoughtful and careful observations and suggestions vastly improved my work. Of course, any failings in this book are my own; but, for any of the book’s successes, I share them with my mentors, and Susan, Norah, Rene, and Kristin.

Additionally, a number of colleagues—including Elizabeth Chiarello, Michaela DeSoucey, Bridget Gurtler, Joanna Kempner, Erika Milam, Jan Thomas, Ashley Rondini, Rebecca Flemming, Keith Wailoo, and anonymous reviewers at Signs and Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law—read earlier versions of chapter sections and conference papers and offered very useful commentary. Over the last few years, my thinking on this topic has been enriched by conversations with Elizabeth A. Armstrong, Angela Creager, Cynthia Daniels, Kathleen Ferraro, Kathleen Gerson, Chris Gillespie, Larry Greil, Carole Joffe, Kelly Joyce, Martine Lappé, Emily Mann, Christine Morton, Lynn Paltrow, Jennifer Reich, Deana Rohlinger, Lindsay Stevens, and Shirley Tilghman.

A version of Chapter 6 previously was published as “Cultivating the Maternal Future: Public Health and the Prepregnant Self,” in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 40(4) (2015): 939–62. Several paragraphs throughout the text were previously included in “Motherhood Preconceived: The Emergence of the Preconception Health and Health Care Initiative,” published in Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 38 (2013): 345–71. Thanks to the University of Chicago Press and Duke University Press, respectively, for reprint permission.

While researching and writing this book, I benefited from generous institutional and financial support from Brandeis University, Princeton University, the University of Virginia, Florida State University, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Andrew Mellon Foundation, and the Eastern Sociological Society. Alexandra Turner, Hena Wadhwa, and Harry Barbee provided helpful research assistance at various stages of this project, and Heidi Muir was a delight to work with during the interview transcription process. Judy Hanley, Cheryl Hansen, Kay Bennett, and Nancy Cannuli also provided critical help with technical and administrative concerns at different moments in this project’s trajectory. Naomi Schneider, my editor at the University of California Press, buoyed me with her thoughtful patience and consistent support for this project. Renée Donovan and Nicholle Robertson were considerably helpful during the production process. And Gabriela Whitefield’s heartwarming and steady friendship during this time has been more vital than she knows.

I have been fortunate to spend time in multiple academic institutions over the past decade and a half, and throughout my time in each location, I received crucial support from colleagues and friends that sustained me in significant ways. When I was an undergraduate at the University of Texas, Christine Williams inspired me to pursue a career in sociology, and I also thank Marc Musick, Sharmila Rudrappa, and Gideon Sjoberg for their indispensable support during my time in Austin. During my years at Brandeis, Ashley Rondini, Ken Sun, Vanessa Muñoz, Tom Mackie, Meredith Bergey, Amanda Gengler, Sonja Jacob, Dana Zarhin, Giusi Chiri, Erin Rehel, Maia Hurley, and Nelli Garton were all brilliant friends to have as I began to traverse the world of academia. Special thanks are in order for Liz Chiarello who made my time at Princeton infinitely more humorous and intellectually stimulating than I could have imagined. Also at Princeton, I treasured my chats with Fah Vasunilashorn, and James Trussell provided steadfast support along the way, for which I remain very grateful. Michaela DeSoucey and Sarah Thébaud have been consistently lovely sources of friendship and wisdom—on topics sociological and maternal—since the day we met in New Jersey. From the University of Virginia, I thank Jeff Olick, Charlotte Patterson, Katya Makarova, and Corinne Field for their support. I feel privileged to have written the final version of this manuscript while among my wonderful and engaging colleagues at Florida State University.

My parents, John and Linda Waggoner, have provided support I cannot possibly recount, as it has been abundant and every day. They championed my educational path and intellectual pursuits from the very beginning, regularly took care of my young son so that I could work, consistently served as a sounding board for life and career questions, helpfully read chapters and listened to my arguments, and provided much emotional and gastronomical sustenance during the years of this project. Needless to say, I am deeply grateful. I also want to thank my grandparents, David and Leta Andrews, for being so inspirational and loving, and my late grandparents, Weldon and Adelle Waggoner, whom I miss dearly.

Finally, I end with a happy and wholehearted thanks to my husband, Sven Kranz, and our son, Anton—both came into my life during this work and brought love and joys unforeseeable and indescribable. Cliché, of course, because it’s true: there are no words.