Non-motherhood: Ambivalent autobiographies

Feminist Studies

Volumn 25, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 719-728

  Letherby, Gayle ^a   Williams, Catherine ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0033196783     PISSN: 00463663     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3178673     Document Type: Review

References (31)

1. We place quotations marks around several words throughout this article to highlight the problems of definition. We also use the term "childfree" at times when the original researcher used "voluntarily childless."
2. For example, see Ann Phoenix, Anne Wollett, and Eva Lloyd, eds., Motherhood: Meanings, Practices, and Ideologies (London: Sage, 1991); Sheila Rowbotham, "To Be or Not to Be: The Dilemma of Mothering," Feminist Review 31 (spring 1989): 82-93; Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," Signs 5 (summer 1980): 631-60; Sheila Rowbotham, Women's Consciousness, Man's World (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1973); and Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (London: Four Square Books, 1960).
3. For example, see Ann Phoenix, Anne Wollett, and Eva Lloyd, eds., Motherhood: Meanings, Practices, and Ideologies (London: Sage, 1991); Sheila Rowbotham, "To Be or Not to Be: The Dilemma of Mothering," Feminist Review 31 (spring 1989): 82-93; Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," Signs 5 (summer 1980): 631-60; Sheila Rowbotham, Women's Consciousness, Man's World (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1973); and Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (London: Four Square Books, 1960).
4. For example, see Ann Phoenix, Anne Wollett, and Eva Lloyd, eds., Motherhood: Meanings, Practices, and Ideologies (London: Sage, 1991); Sheila Rowbotham, "To Be or Not to Be: The Dilemma of Mothering," Feminist Review 31 (spring 1989): 82-93; Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," Signs 5 (summer 1980): 631-60; Sheila Rowbotham, Women's Consciousness, Man's World (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1973); and Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (London: Four Square Books, 1960).
5. For example, see Ann Phoenix, Anne Wollett, and Eva Lloyd, eds., Motherhood: Meanings, Practices, and Ideologies (London: Sage, 1991); Sheila Rowbotham, "To Be or Not to Be: The Dilemma of Mothering," Feminist Review 31 (spring 1989): 82-93; Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," Signs 5 (summer 1980): 631-60; Sheila Rowbotham, Women's Consciousness, Man's World (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1973); and Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (London: Four Square Books, 1960).
6. For example, see Ann Phoenix, Anne Wollett, and Eva Lloyd, eds., Motherhood: Meanings, Practices, and Ideologies (London: Sage, 1991); Sheila Rowbotham, "To Be or Not to Be: The Dilemma of Mothering," Feminist Review 31 (spring 1989): 82-93; Adrienne Rich, "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," Signs 5 (summer 1980): 631-60; Sheila Rowbotham, Women's Consciousness, Man's World (Harmondsworth, U.K.: Penguin, 1973); and Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (London: Four Square Books, 1960).
7. For example, see Michelle Stanworth, "Reproductive Technologies and the Destruction of Motherhood," in Reproductive Technologies: Gender, Motherhood, and Medicine, ed. Michelle Stanworth (Oxford: Polity, 1987); Maureen V. McNeil and Steven Yearley, eds., The New Reproductive Technologies (Hampshire and London: Macmillan, 1990); and Sarah Franklin, Embodied Progress: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception (London: Routledge, 1997).
8. For example, see Michelle Stanworth, "Reproductive Technologies and the Destruction of Motherhood," in Reproductive Technologies: Gender, Motherhood, and Medicine, ed. Michelle Stanworth (Oxford: Polity, 1987); Maureen V. McNeil and Steven Yearley, eds., The New Reproductive Technologies (Hampshire and London: Macmillan, 1990); and Sarah Franklin, Embodied Progress: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception (London: Routledge, 1997).
9. For example, see Michelle Stanworth, "Reproductive Technologies and the Destruction of Motherhood," in Reproductive Technologies: Gender, Motherhood, and Medicine, ed. Michelle Stanworth (Oxford: Polity, 1987); Maureen V. McNeil and Steven Yearley, eds., The New Reproductive Technologies (Hampshire and London: Macmillan, 1990); and Sarah Franklin, Embodied Progress: A Cultural Account of Assisted Conception (London: Routledge, 1997).
10. Carolyn M. Morell, Unwomanly Conduct: The Challenges of Intentional Childlessness (London: Routledge, 1994).
11. Sara Maitland, Daughter of Jerusalem (London: Pan, 1978), 52.
12. Gayle Letherby, "Mother or Not, Mother of What? Problems of Definition and Identity," Women's Studies International Forum 17 (winter 1994): 525-32.
13. Stanworth, 15.
14. Maitland, 3.
15. Letherby, "Mother or Not, Mother or What?" "Choice" as mentioned here is only available to a minority of the world's women. See Gayle Letherby, "'Infertility' and 'Involuntary Childlessness': Definition and Self-Identity" (Ph.D. diss., Staffordshire University, 1997).
16. Letherby, "Mother or Not, Mother or What?" "Choice" as mentioned here is only available to a minority of the world's women. See Gayle Letherby, "'Infertility' and 'Involuntary Childlessness': Definition and Self-Identity" (Ph.D. diss., Staffordshire University, 1997).
17. Respondents in the research project were aged between twenty-five years and seventy-two years. Despite the differences of age and experience (see main text), other differences were not represented. Respondents were predominantly white and heterosexual which can be partly explained by the publications that did and did not agree to print Gayle's advert/letter asking for people to come forward. Also, although she did stress that she was interested in the social, emotional, and medical aspects of "infertility" and "involuntary childlessness," the majority of her respondents had had/were having medical treatment which is more available to heterosexual women. Cultural differences related to conception and motherhood and to talking to "strangers" may have prevented other women from being involved.
18. Morell, 48-49.
19. Jane Bartlett, Will You Be Mother? Women Who Chose to Say No (London: Virago, 1994). Recent research by the Family Policy Studies Centre, London, concerned with "voluntary childlessness" also suggests that the "voluntarily childless" are "thoughtful and responsible about what parenting might mean. They find it variously undesirable, difficult or impossible to incorporate it into their lives. Far from being a generation who can 'have it all,' respondents saw themselves as making considerable effort to maintain a reasonable quality of life without children." See Fiona McAllister with Lynda Clarke, Choosing Childlessness (London: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 1988), 58.
20. Jane Bartlett, Will You Be Mother? Women Who Chose to Say No (London: Virago, 1994). Recent research by the Family Policy Studies Centre, London, concerned with "voluntary childlessness" also suggests that the "voluntarily childless" are "thoughtful and responsible about what parenting might mean. They find it variously undesirable, difficult or impossible to incorporate it into their lives. Far from being a generation who can 'have it all,' respondents saw themselves as making considerable effort to maintain a reasonable quality of life without children." See Fiona McAllister with Lynda Clarke, Choosing Childlessness (London: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 1988), 58.
21. Letherby, "'Infertility' and 'Involuntary Childlessness.'"
22. Ibid.
23. Morell.
24. Susan Borg and Judith N. Lasker, When Pregnancy Fails: Coping with Miscarriage, Stillbirth, and Infant Death (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982).
25. Letherby, "'Infertility' and 'Involuntary Childlessness.'"
26. Bartlett.
27. Morell; Letherby, "'Infertility' and 'Involuntary Childlessness.'"
28. Letherby, "'Infertility' and 'Involuntary Childlessness.'"
29. Morell.
30. Liz Stanley and Sue Wise, "Method, Methodology, and Epistemology in Feminist Research Processes," in Feminist Praxis: Research, Theory, and Epistemology in Feminist Sociology, ed. Liz Stanley (London: Routledge, 1990).
31. Morell; Bartlett; Letherby, "Mother or Not, Mother or What?" and "'Infertility' and 'Involuntary Childlessness.'"