Although some traditions are recent inventions, many are so deeply ingrained that they form the backbone of entire societies.
We’ve been conditioned with the idea that having a child together is the purest form of bonding. For centuries, though, being a mum or dad was not a choice at all, simply how things were ‘supposed to be’. The way parenthood itself is viewed has also changed over the years.
Freedom of choice
The late-1950s saw the development of the birth-control pill, one of the 20th century’s most important inventions. It enabled women to postpone motherhood – so they could study or work for longer – and to minimize their chance of an unwanted pregnancy: hello sex for fun! The little round pill gave women control over their wombs and marked the beginning of the sexual revolution. Despite criticism from some quarters, the pill has become one of the most widely used contraceptives.
It takes a village
Parenting takes many forms. Newborn babies of the Aka people in Central Africa are not only suckled by their mother but their father too. There are communities where all of the women take care of a child together, while in others, care is mainly provided by grandma and grandad. The traditional, heteronormative form of parenting is still the most common in the West, including the unequal male-female relationship. Almost half of women experience pregnancy discrimination at work. And women are still more likely than men to switch to part-time employment after the birth of a child.
LGBTQI+
Shared parenthood is common among partners in the LGBTQI+ community. But it is far from straightforward. Having a child remains complicated and expensive in the Netherlands for couples with male genitalia: adoption is currently only possible from six countries and is an extremely long process. It is also hard to find a donor egg and/or a surrogate mother.
Status symbol
Contemporary parenthood has become much more of a status symbol than it once was, from baby showers to gender reveal parties, and cashmere baby slings to hypermodern baby bouncers. All this means a nice pay-day for marketeers: brand-new parents are easy prey – only the best is good enough for their new arrival.
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Dance has become a billion-dollar industry, with major entertainment companies calling the shots. Massive dance festivals are held all over the world, featuring an international elite of DJs flying from party to party.
In the Netherlands, in the 1990s, gabber emerged in Rotterdam as a new branch of electronic dance music, joining styles such as house and techno that were already well-known in Europe.
Liberation is ingrained in electronic dance music. It’s crafted to make you dance freely. Drums and rhythm have always been the ritual tools of dance, and that remains true in our time, albeit now generated through electricity.
The appearance of sex toys tells us a lot about how people felt about lust and gratification at a particular time. About the taboos that might still attach to them. And about the future of sex and the ideals of designers.
Your first kiss. You never forget it. No matter how sweet, sloppy or bad it was. After that, there’s no stopping you: on average you’ll spend 20,000 minutes of your life kissing.
Not happy with your body? Then do something about it. That seems to be the credo of our age, with its obsession with perfect bodies. But is the body really so perfectible?
The contents of Bouquet romantic novels might still leave something to the imagination, but not so their covers: this is the image of the ‘ideal man’. What does it say about our perceptions?
Seven Nights with the Sheikh, A Kiss in the Moonlight, An Heir for the King: the titles of romantic fiction in the world-famous Bouquet series have always appealed to the imagination. Guilty pleasures full of desire, temptation and happy endings are still extremely popular.
Three little words with a huge meaning.
Butterflies in your stomach, unable to eat a thing, constantly daydreaming and checking your phone every five minutes to see if you’ve received a new message: falling in love is magical.
The heart has many meanings.
Only three things are truly important in a marriage: you, your beloved and your love for each other. All the same, there are a lot more factors at play in the background.
In addition to their biological family, many people have one they’ve chosen for themselves: people you’re not related to, people who understand, help and love you.
See them whizzing across the city on their fast bikes: his a men’s model, hers a woman’s. Both wrapped in a puffer jacket and with matching trainers. The dreary ‘ANWB couple’ in trendy jackets.
We’ve all grown up with stories and clichés that have unconsciously influenced our image of love. Love, designed explores these stereotypes and shows how design guides the way we both seek and ‘consume’ love.