Voicing voluntary childlessness : narratives of by Natalie Edwards

By Natalie Edwards

The choice to reject motherhood is the topic of a number of key works of literature in French because the new millennium. This e-book appears at first-person money owed of voluntary childlessness through girls writing in French. The publication explores how ladies narrate their choice to not mom, the problems that they face in doing so and the narrative thoughts that they hire to justify their tales. It asks how those authors problem stereotypes of the childless lady by way of claiming their very own id in narrative, publicly proclaiming their correct to decide on and writing a femininity that isn't attached to motherhood.
utilizing feminist, sociological and psychoanalytic theories to interrogate non-mothering, this paintings is the 1st book-length research of narratives that counter this long-standing taboo. It brings jointly authors who stake out a brand new terrain, making a textual house within which to take possession in their childlessness and phone for brand spanking new understandings of woman identification past maternity.

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84 Myra J. ’, Journal of Comparative Family Studies 31/3 (2000), 347–66. 85 Most women in her study who had chosen not to mother report that they refuse such categorisation and feel no less feminine than women with children. 87 Gillespie quotes women who state that they have a different understanding of femininity to that experienced by mothers and who resist the hegemonic ideas of femininity that have been reinforced by pronatalist discourse. She claims that, in this way, voluntarily childless women ‘reflect a radical departure from hegemonic understandings that to be a woman is inextricably bound to motherhood’ and argues that the increasing numbers of women who choose not to mother will establish a new model of female identity that does not rest upon reproduction.

Yet Knibiehler is more optimistic in her outlook. In La Révolution maternelle depuis 1945 [The Maternal Revolution Since 1945], for example, she argues that the post-war years have given rise to three loosely grouped ‘generations’ of women. The first, the baby-boomers, forged a Yvonne Knibiehler and Catherine Fouquet, L’Histoire des mères du Moyen Âge à nos jours (Paris: Montalba, 1980). 27 Yvonne Knibiehler, Histoire des mères et de la maternité en Occident, Que sais-je? (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2000), 5.

Several studies show that women advance concerns for the environment and the future of the planet, including the risks of overpopulation, as reasons for choosing childlessness. 62 60 Shapiro, ‘Voluntary Childlessness: A Critical Review of the Literature’, 6. 61 Helen Peterson, ‘Fifty Shades of Freedom: Voluntary Childlessness as Women’s Ultimate Liberation’, Women’s Studies International Forum (2014), 1–10, 8. ’, 196. 38 Chapter 1 A common factor in all of these explanations is a rejection of the stereotype of selfishness that can be levelled against the voluntarily childless and the hint that individuals who have children without confronting such ideas – especially those that may affect their ability to parent effectively – could be more equally accurately labelled as selfish.

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