The public and private stake in reproduction; barren to infertile - childlessness before the 20th century; the "Race Suicide" panic - eugenics and the pressure to procreate; unfit for parenthood - class, race and compulsory sterilization; the baby craze - the rise of compulsory parenthood; infertility - Freud in the bedroom, sex at the clinic; childfree - the revolt against the baby boom; designers genes - the baby quest and the reproductive fix. Appendix: a note on the sample of letters.
Elaine Tyler May is Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota.
May documents a continuing American obsession with reproduction and
shows how this public embrace of childbearing has inflicted anguish
on childless women across the centuries.
*New York Times Book Review*
Through rich anecdotes from the past and the testimonies of more
than 500 contemporary Americans who do not have children, [May]
creates a compelling portrait of the growing isolation of the
childless.
*Ms. Magazine*
The first major historical study of childlessness in the United
States...[Barren in the Promised Land] provides an intriguing
analysis of shifts in public attitudes and values toward
parenthood, while surveying developments in reproductive
interventions. Most important, this engaging book establishes the
importance of the changing practices and meanings of childbearing
and fertility for American history.
*Journal of American History*
[I]t is in her analysis of the new cultural divide between the
child-seekers and the child-free that May is most
interesting...Having carried out extensive archive research when
describing childlessness in past centuries, May based her study of
the 1990s on correspondence from 500 men and women who answered her
request for personal testimony...[which] lend[s] an otherwise
fact-laden tome the vivid colours of oral history.
*New Statesman*
Everyone who thinks about childbearing--in the personal sense of
whether or when to have children, or in the context of social
policy choices, including legislation to support parenting or
encourage birth control--will soon be talking about this book.
*Linda K. Kerber, University of Iowa*
A powerful and sensitive chronicle of America's struggle to deal
with the issue of childlessness, giving us new insight into how
race, economic status, and changing cultural norms have shaped the
way we feel about women bearing children.
*William H. Chafe, Duke University*
May documents a continuing American obsession with reproduction and
shows how this public embrace of childbearing has inflicted anguish
on childless women across the centuries. -- Susan Chira * New York
Times Book Review *
Through rich anecdotes from the past and the testimonies of more
than 500 contemporary Americans who do not have children, [May]
creates a compelling portrait of the growing isolation of the
childless. -- Hagar Scher * Ms. Magazine *
The first major historical study of childlessness in the United
States...[Barren in the Promised Land] provides an
intriguing analysis of shifts in public attitudes and values toward
parenthood, while surveying developments in reproductive
interventions. Most important, this engaging book establishes the
importance of the changing practices and meanings of childbearing
and fertility for American history. -- Lynn Weiner * Journal of
American History *
[I]t is in her analysis of the new cultural divide between the
child-seekers and the child-free that May is most
interesting...Having carried out extensive archive research when
describing childlessness in past centuries, May based her study of
the 1990s on correspondence from 500 men and women who answered her
request for personal testimony...[which] lend[s] an otherwise
fact-laden tome the vivid colours of oral history. -- Cristina
Odone * New Statesman *
Everyone who thinks about childbearing--in the personal sense of
whether or when to have children, or in the context of social
policy choices, including legislation to support parenting or
encourage birth control--will soon be talking about this book. --
Linda K. Kerber, University of Iowa
A powerful and sensitive chronicle of America's struggle to deal
with the issue of childlessness, giving us new insight into how
race, economic status, and changing cultural norms have shaped the
way we feel about women bearing children. -- William H. Chafe, Duke
University
``Do we want children?'' This major question has only recently been asked in our society. As May, professor of American studies at the University of Minnesota, points out in this well-thought-out analysis, childbearing was an economic necessity until this century. After WWII, the family became the center of social status and stability. ``Procreation shifted from a matter of survival and necessity to a source of expansion, national identity, and personal happiness.'' In the domestic ecstasy of the '50s, those without were considered at best handicapped, at worst deviant. And now the pendulum swings back. In the '70s, the concept of ``childfree'' emerged, preferred over the term``childless'' because the latter ``implies that one's natural state is to have children.'' May cites Ellen Peck (The Baby Trap), who claims, ``The men I meet who don't have children talk about their wives. The men who have kids ask me out.'' May takes readers through the shifts in opinion over the centuries, from barren women being perceived as witches to childfree women being accused of hedonism and self-indulgence; from pregnancy as a life-threatening state to designer genes and contemporary couples unwilling to accept the prospect of no children. She doesn't take sides but places the available information at the disposal of her readers. Photos. (June)
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