Title：Why Delayed Motherhood? Women’s Decisions, 1910s-2020s
Speaker：Rima D. Apple（Professor Emerita, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA）
Host：Chia-Ling Wu（Professor/Department Chair. Department of Sociology, NTU）
Time：2024/9/12（Thur.） 12:30-14:00
Venue：Department of Sociology and Social Work R319
About the Lecture:
Since the mid-20th century, women who choose to have their first child at an older age have become a significant demographic internationally. The trend has received increasing attention in the media, some of which celebrate and some denounce the phenomenon. This paper discusses the financial, social, cultural, and medical factors that have encouraged the rise in older motherhood. Most especially, it studies the reasons that women themselves provide for their decisions.
About the Speaker:
Professor Emerita Rima Apple held joint appointments in the School of Human Ecology Departments of Consumer Science and Interdisciplinary Studies in Human Ecology, Women’s Studies Program, and the Science and Technology Studies Program, and holds the position of Affiliate in the Department of the Medical History and Bioethics.
In 1998 her book Vitamania: Vitamins in American culture (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1996) received the Kremers Award from the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy. In 2011 she received the Mary Adelaide Nutting Award for Exemplary Historical Research and Writing from the American Association for the History of Nursing and in 2018 she received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Association of the History of Medicine.
Her current research, building on her work on “scientific motherhood,” focuses on the role of public health nurses in the evolution of maternal and childcare and the history of the changing characteristics of motherhood. She frequently lectures on these topics both in the United States and abroad.
