- Paperback: 288 pages
- Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (9 Sep 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0415924936
- ISBN-13: 978-0415924931
- Product Dimensions: 20.8 x 13.7 x 1.8 cm
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 947,145 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Review
..."groundbreaking..infused with sense and sensibility."
-Booklist
...".Laurie Lisle has written a timely book assuring us."
"that the true definition of womanhood need not include childbirth."
-Carolyn Heilbrun
..."pierces some of the myths and stereotypes that surround non-mothers."
-Publishers Weekly
..."Carefully argued, non-polemical."
-Newsday
-Booklist
...".Laurie Lisle has written a timely book assuring us."
"that the true definition of womanhood need not include childbirth."
-Carolyn Heilbrun
..."pierces some of the myths and stereotypes that surround non-mothers."
-Publishers Weekly
..."Carefully argued, non-polemical."
-Newsday
Product Description
In a society in which most women grow up thinking they will become mothers-and in which many women go to great lengths to make that desire a reality -- not having a child is often met with incredulity and scorn. But as the author of this thoughtful and meticulously researched examination of childlessness points out, childless women are part of an ancient and respectable cultural tradition that includes biblical matriarchs, celibate saints, and nineteenth-century social reformers.
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First Sentence
The realization that I will never give birth to a child has enveloped me gradually and aroused in me an intense, combustible mixture of emotions that follows no existing script. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
The realization that I will never give birth to a child has enveloped me gradually and aroused in me an intense, combustible mixture of emotions that follows no existing script. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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12 reviews
38 of 38 people found the following review helpful
Exposing Mythologies: Gender, Family, and Children's Lives.
11 Feb 2000
Format:Paperback
WITHOUT CHILD is an important book about an important topic that is, all too often, hidden, selectively neglected, or distorted beyond recognition. Laurie Lisle uses her personal journey as an intentionally childless woman of the Baby Boom generation to explore the stigma surrounding childlessness. While exploring the status of childlessness (voluntary, involuntary, and the gray areas in between)the author finds not only the history of a social stigma that lives on in our time but in doing so unravels important but neglected domains in our understanding of gender, family, and the study of children.
Although gender has undergone considerable change in recent decades, the author clearly shows that the idea of reproductive freedom DOES NOT include the freedom to choose childlessness. When American's speak of `reproductive freedom,' they usually are referring to the freedom to choose from the options leading to parenthood rather than the freedom to choose between parenthood and childlessness. Women making this choice encounter a good deal of negative and often hostile social pressure from family, friends, and professionals. Their stories reminding us that increased gender options are centered around an important contradiction in women's (and men's to a lesser degree)developmental psychology.
The hidden history of childlessness also reminds us that across cultures and throughout hisory childless women have played a significant role in family functioning, a role that continues today. The role of the `social parent' appears to be an implicit legacy of childlessness. Whether they have been famous (Jane Addams) or not, they have contributed in a myriad of ways to the functioning of families. Indeed, it seems reasonable to state that they have often served as the invisible glue in family functioning, whether the family in question was their own or someone else's.
The way we choose to recogonize these women, also exposes further distortions in our thinking about women and families which may be important at this time in history. Femaleness and motherhood have yet to be disentangled in much of our thinking and yet global and local social problems are intimately linked, at least in part, to reproductive decision making and the quality of children's lives.
Laurie Lisle's book places in full focus a domain that is most often pushed to the side and dismissed as unimportant. The story she tells through the vehicle of her own life demonstrates the value of this work not simply to the childless themselves but to a broad audience, including experts concerned with pressing issues of our time.
36 of 37 people found the following review helpful
More for the childless than the childfree
31 Mar 2001
Format:Paperback
As someone who is intentionally childfree and has never experienced much ambivalence on the issue, I was disappointed that this book did not really speak to my experiences. I found myself becoming irritated every time Lisle stopped to reassure the reader that, in fact, she quite likes children. It was almost as if she was constantly apologizing for not having any of her own, and rather than "challenging the stigma of childlessness," these apologies seemed almost to reinforce that stigma. I think it would have been a better (more meaningful, more significant) book if she had come to her decision not to have kids out of a position of conscious childfreedom, rather than ambivalent childlessness.
While people who are childless, or who are contemplating not having children might find this book useful, I would not recommend it for those who know they are childfree.
17 of 17 people found the following review helpful
Very well researched; in great depth and feeling; EXCELLENT
18 Sep 1998
Format:Hardcover
I chose to not have children at age 18 - and I've never regretted it. Now in my thirties, I've spent countless hours reviewing and explaining my choice, often for people who had no right to know but insisted anyway. But here, for the first time ever, all the arguments and thoughts I've had about choosing childnessless are discussed in depth and wonderfully in this book. Ms. Lisle wrote the book I would have written if I could have done so. She has my eternal respect and gratitude for putting in print what I've been trying for years to explain.
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