Reconceiving Women: Separating Motherhood from Female Identity
Ireland, Mardy S.
This book was very heavy on theories but I found it to be quite satisfying. The author categorized women as 'traditional' (wanted to be mothers but infertile), 'transitional' (women who delayed children by life circumstance) or 'transformative' (women who actively chose to not have children).
I obviously fall into the last category, but this book was a great chance for me to understand other women. The book also focused a LOT on theories and different psychologist and the formation of the conscious and unconscious lives of humans. It touched on Freud and other theorists. This bit got to be quite heavy, but was still informative and interesting.
This book was published in 1993 which is nearly 20 years ago. The author looks at women who were born after World War II as part of our culture's duty to thrive. So there have been changes in the demographic makeup since then, but this doesn't make the book/research irrelevant by any means. It basically reminded that many of these women experienced life during the wave of feminism and it helped to formulate them.
There were many interesting parts to this book having to with gender and personal identification. I appreciated that the book/author focused on the creativity that women are allowed to pursue in their lives that is a valid lifestyle. I view myself as a creative person, so I know that my creativity is my 'child'.
There were SO many good parts to this book, that I find it hard to wrap up without a looooong reivew as previous entries. (The purpose of these reviews should be to give you an opinion on the work, not give you a novel to read before the book!)
Basically, the author posits that by limiting humans to gender roles, we prevent men and women from tapping into their strengths whether a woman be more aggressive and a man more nurturing or what have you. And that the childfree woman is often seen as a threat to both mothers and males, but needs to be welcomed as a valid life choice.
The theory part of the book was sometimes hard to read (and some hard to stomach, especially when Freud and Lacan talk 'lack') but the interesting point mentioned in some of it was 'language' and creating the language necessary for females to be seen outside the realms of motherhood only. That was part of the reason for creating this blog... to give us another method of describing our lives, without referring to something our life does not involve. I am Independent of Dependents, I am Childfree, I am a Creative Person with Purpose.
I do really recommend this book and want to know if anyone else has read it or plans to read it. It's different from many of the other Childfree/Childless books because it is more intellectual and theoretical than any I've read before.
I obviously fall into the last category, but this book was a great chance for me to understand other women. The book also focused a LOT on theories and different psychologist and the formation of the conscious and unconscious lives of humans. It touched on Freud and other theorists. This bit got to be quite heavy, but was still informative and interesting.
This book was published in 1993 which is nearly 20 years ago. The author looks at women who were born after World War II as part of our culture's duty to thrive. So there have been changes in the demographic makeup since then, but this doesn't make the book/research irrelevant by any means. It basically reminded that many of these women experienced life during the wave of feminism and it helped to formulate them.
There were many interesting parts to this book having to with gender and personal identification. I appreciated that the book/author focused on the creativity that women are allowed to pursue in their lives that is a valid lifestyle. I view myself as a creative person, so I know that my creativity is my 'child'.
There were SO many good parts to this book, that I find it hard to wrap up without a looooong reivew as previous entries. (The purpose of these reviews should be to give you an opinion on the work, not give you a novel to read before the book!)
Basically, the author posits that by limiting humans to gender roles, we prevent men and women from tapping into their strengths whether a woman be more aggressive and a man more nurturing or what have you. And that the childfree woman is often seen as a threat to both mothers and males, but needs to be welcomed as a valid life choice.
The theory part of the book was sometimes hard to read (and some hard to stomach, especially when Freud and Lacan talk 'lack') but the interesting point mentioned in some of it was 'language' and creating the language necessary for females to be seen outside the realms of motherhood only. That was part of the reason for creating this blog... to give us another method of describing our lives, without referring to something our life does not involve. I am Independent of Dependents, I am Childfree, I am a Creative Person with Purpose.
I do really recommend this book and want to know if anyone else has read it or plans to read it. It's different from many of the other Childfree/Childless books because it is more intellectual and theoretical than any I've read before.
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