Maternal microbis: How kinship composes reproductive relations for a human-bovine maternal microbiome

Abstract

Reading across a burgeoning scientific literature that conflates microbial dynamics between mother:child bodies with normative mothering practices, we offer a model of maternal microbis that troubles the distinctions between productive and reproductive relations. We ground this argument in a systematic analysis of the content and circulation of descriptive maternal microbiome research between 2007 and 2021 along with the proliferation of lay narratives about the maternal microbiome inspired by such research. Following this research across the species line between human and bovine bodies, we trace the gendered effects of using humans as model animals and tie current microbiome hype to a much longer history of entangling reproductive and productive labors. More than a microbial retread of a familiar story within a history of distributing reproductive labor to other bodies, our focus on the maternal microbis as a gendered model of microbial relations enables us to ask specific questions about the effects of centering microbes into models of reproductive bodies (both Homo and Bos), leading us to consider how expectations of gendered care and gendered bodies make certain paradigms possible and foreclose others.