Losing Sleep

“Losing Sleep is a superb contribution to the literature on infant risk, maternal responsibility, and reproductive justice. Framing infant safe sleep as a social construct, Harrison analyzes the ways safe sleep campaigns reproduce inequalities and fail to account for structural causes of infant death. The book is insightful, engaging, and timely.” (Monica J. Casper, author of Babylost: Racism, Survival, and the Quiet Politics of Infant Mortality, from A to Z) “Losing Sleep has an impressive scope and dynamic analysis….Harrison artfully draws on scholarship across sociology, feminist theory, feminist science studies, and reproductive justice to showcase how medical, political, legal, and public policy approaches work together to reward some parents (primarily mothers) and punish others….Harrison invites readers to reflect on taken-for-granted parenting advice about infant sleep to demonstrate the social and political dimensions of it, an absorbing read.” (Laury Oaks, author of Giving Up Baby: Safe Haven Laws, Motherhood, and Reproductive Justice)

Laura Harrison is Associate Professor in the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She is the author of Brown Bodies, White Babies: The Politics of Cross-Racial Surrogacy.