This book is a groundbreaking study of a major ideological shift in the 1990s centered on birth, death, and parentage.

Since then, fathers have been encouraged to cut the umbilical cord, and mothers urged to breastfeed, practice skin-to-skin contact, and even contemplate the placenta. Parents are encouraged to see and touch their stillborn child.  Viewing the deceased has become a moral obligation, and cremation tends to be viewed as detrimental to the “grieving process.” Physical access to biological parents has become essential to those adopted or born through gamete donation. In short, in most Western countries, there has been a shift toward focusing on the body as the foundation of social bonds. Why have mental health, healthcare, and funeral professionals created these new practices? To understand this, author Dominique Memmi observed numerous gestures whose convergence had gone previously unnoticed.

With a wealth of information, a narrative style, and an interdisciplinary analysis, this book will be of interest to researchers and students in sociology, anthropology, social psychology, and history. First published in 2014 in French, this groundbreaking work is now available to an English-speaking audience.

Dominique Memmi, Director of Research in Social Science at the National Center for Scientific Research, Paris, France, has published widely on the social administration of life and death. Her books include Les Gardiens du corps (1996), Faire vivre et laisser mourir (2003), Le Gouvernement des corps (co-edited with Didier Fassin, 2004), La Seconde Vie des bébés morts (2011), and La vengeance des femmes (2025).