Without Child: Challenging the Stigma of Childlessness

by Laurie Lisle

Book Overview

Without Child challenges the stigma of childlessness by offering childless women the lifeaffirming story of themselves. Beginning with the difficult inner journey a woman faces before finally deciding... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0415924936
• ISBN13: 9780415924931
• Release Date: August 1999
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.77 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

A bit dry but captures the ambivalence

Lisle captures the ambivalence of childlessness for most women. There is so much pressure in society to have children that only a few really independent women are really capable of saying "no, I think I will pass" and not looking back. Many make the decision just as she did, by not really making the decision or by waiting to try so late in life that the chances are low. Because of the extremely academic style employed by Lisle, this book will not appeal to all. Still, it is thought provoking and really points out all the reasons why it is almost impossible to choose to be childless without regrets. Understanding the source and reasons for all of the pressure does help, however.

I loved this book!

My husband and I chose not to have kids before we married. Some people and especially family members find this decision hard to take. I read this book after having an older family member tell me (for an hour and a half!)I would never be a complete woman without having children. I wanted historical background from this book. I wanted to be able to explain the courage involved in our decision, especially in our society. I love kids in my life, but don't want them to be my life. This book helps me to explain that there is nothing wrong with that. Thank you Laurie Lisle!

Exposing Mythologies: Gender, Family, and Children's Lives.

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.

Thank you Laurie

As an independent woman settling into my mid-twenties, its refreshing to have language that really addresses the choice of fertility and the personal and social relationship with that choice.

Very well researched; in great depth and feeling; EXCELLENT

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.