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19
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
21/100Critics
17/100Scholars
Author:
Peggy O'Donnell Heffington
Publisher:
Seal Press
Date:
April 18, 2023
History is full of women without children: some who chose childless lives, others who wanted children but never had them, and still others--the vast majority, then and now--who fell somewhere in between. Modern women considering how and if children fit into their lives are products of their political, ecological, and cultural moment. But history also tells them that they are not alone. Drawing on deep research and her own experience as a woman without children, historian Peggy O'Donnell Heffington shows that many of the reasons women are not having children today are ones they share with women in the past.
What The Reviewers Say
A feat of diligent research and, better yet, blazing argument.
Impeccably researched.
From the outset, she exposes the entangled forces of circumstance and decision that have led some women not to have children. In doing so, she offers a way of moving beyond motherhood as an overdetermined function of personal choice, and of an identity politics so profound and pervasive that it positions mothers and childless women at opposite ends of a spectrum..
Provocative and well researched, this book offers compassionate insight into the history and predicaments of women who have embraced the 'never... uncommon and [now] increasingly common' childless life..
