Barren in the Promised Land: Childless Americans and the Pursuit of Happiness - Softcover

May, Elaine T.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0674061829 ISBN 13: 9780674061828

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1997

Synopsis

Chronicling astonishing shifts in public attitudes toward reproduction, from the association of barrenness with sin in colonial times, to the creation of laws for compulsory sterilization in the early twentieth century, from the baby craze of the 1950s, to the rise in voluntary childlessness in the 1990s, to the increasing reliance on startling reproductive technologies today, Elaine Tyler May reveals the intersection between public life and the most private part of our lives—sexuality, procreation, and family.

About this title

About the Author:

Elaine Tyler May is Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota.

Review:

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)

About this edition

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0674061829
• ISBN 13: 9780674061828
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 336