Reconceiving Women: Separating Motherhood From Female Identity, by psychologist Mardy Ireland, Ph.D., remains a path breaking book on women who do not have children. Check out Dr. Ireland’s review of The Baby Matrix:
“In The Baby Matrix Laura Carroll articulately and systematically challenges the multiple conscious and unconscious assumptions that go into the insistent “pronatal” view of our American culture. She details seven assumptions that make up this ongoing pronatal bias and summarizes relevant research from the last twenty years thereby effectively drawing the reader in to actually ‘think’ about each assumption.
Describing seven post-pronatal assumptions she then brings the reader toward seeing a society in which every adult would have the psychologi
cal freedom to find her/his way to creating a fulfilling adult identity that would not by necessity include parenthood. She lays out a clear roadmap for those in childbearing years to think through their decision to be or not to be a parent and offers compelling reasons why in fact not every adult “should” become a parent.
This is a needed book for the twenty first century because we need to not only focus on individual and national identities, but, we must also begin to address the responsibilities we have as world citizens to our entire planet and its diminishing resources. Read this book.”
Thank you, Dr. Ireland!
Who has read Ireland’s Reconceiving Women?
Tags: childfree women, childless by choice women, motherhood, pronatalism, women's issues
August 28th, 2012 at 1:15 pm
(Sorry if this is going over territory already covered before. I read this somewhere recently, maybe even on this very site?)
I just read that some psychologists have revised Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs” by getting rid of all the self-actualization stuff and putting “parenting” at the top of the pyramid. I guess that means you have not really completed your human journey until you have children. Talk about a step backwards….
August 28th, 2012 at 4:59 pm
Hi Scott, I have read this recently too. Here is the article I saw: http://psychcentral.com/news/2010/08/23/updated-maslows-pyramid-of-needs/17144.html
I sure disagree with these psychologists logic on why “parenting” is now at the top. I am sure that not all experts would agree with this “revision.” ~L
August 30th, 2012 at 12:09 pm
The revision seems to be coming from an evolutionary biology approach, almost like “this is what the species Homo sapiens needs to prevent extinction.” Or, “Here’s what primates need, and humans are primates, therefore….”
It doesn’t make as much sense as something that describes the needs of any individual person. It’s not just an insult to anyone who’s childfree, but also anyone who’s single, celibate, polyamorous, serially monogamous, asexual, or frankly anyone who has any life outside of “mating” and reproducing. All those damn monks and nuns are just not complete human beings, the poor dears. Too busy partying, like all those other childfree people….
September 3rd, 2012 at 12:46 pm
Yes, I’ve read the book by Dr. Ireland.
No doubt this book was a path breaker in the study of the childfree. However, childfree by choice only made up 1/3 of the women interviewed. I remember most of them giving “I just don’t want to have children” as a reason for their decision. This kind of answers did not satisfy me back then, I was looking for a more philosophical approach. Now, older, I understand better the depth of these seemingly simple answers. What really matters in the choice of not having children is the inner determination, any rational reasons are needed more to explain the choice to the rest of the world (often in vain).
September 4th, 2012 at 10:22 am
Renard, One thing that was path breaking was segmenting the “Traditional” “Transitional” and The “Transformative” woman when it comes to separating motherhood from female identity- and the 3rd category being the childfree woman. It had never been talked about that way. She also really separated the childLess and childFree experience which not many works had done, and not through a psychological lens. I too recall that the childfree women’s reasons as simple lack of desire, but also recall some of the childfree women interviewed talking about wanting to “create” – just not wanting to create a child….this is something that I’d love to see more talked about, as well as accurate separation of childless and childfee–these words are still too often used synonymously!