Educational Media Reviews Online

Hamilton and Munger’s Small Family, Happy Family offers a well-conveyed explanation of the prejudice found within India’s Family Planning Program. Female, not male sterilization is central to this program. Providing emotional weight, a mother who undergoes her sterilization procedure is documented. The history of India’s Family Planning Program is described. And this program seeks to resolve poverty and overpopulation through female sterilization. The linchpin of this program assumes that reducing population will halt the spread of Communism within the country. Comprehensive in scope.

Well-paced with an excellent utilization of stock footage to support main ideas. Distinctive is the government funded animated propaganda that explains the sterilization procedure. This piece is a clear statement on women’s rights for reproductive autonomy. Difficulties such as a lack of sex education, unsterile make-shift sterilization camps as well as long-term health problems from those who undergo the procedure is revelatory. Government mandated “Targets” are inextricably linked to the number of sterilizations per district and the funding health care providers receive. This in-turn depicts the coercion at-play given the lack of alternatives to sterilization for women.

Suitable for collections that serve college and general audiences that endeavor to understand cultures beyond a Western sensibility. Hamilton and Munger’s Small Family, Happy Family is harrowing. Viewers will be compelled to advocate for women’s reproductive rights globally.