Childfree across the Disciplines: Academic and Activist Perspectives on Not Choosing Children
Childfree across the Disciplines: Academic and Activist Perspectives on Not Choosing Children
edited by Davinia Thornley contributions by Natalia Cherjovsky, Rhonny Dam, Laura S. Scott, Erika M. Arias, Laurie Lisle, Anna Gotlib, Davinia Thornley, Berenice Fisher, Melanie Brewster, Olivia Snow, Adi Avivi, Amanda Michiko Shigihara, Christopher Clausen and Laura Carroll
Rutgers University Press, 2022 Paper: 978-1-9788-2308-2 | eISBN: 978-1-9788-2312-9 | Cloth: 978-1-9788-2309-9 Library of Congress Classification HQ755.8.C4485 2022 Dewey Decimal Classification 306.87
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
Recently, childfree people have been foregrounded in mainstream media. More than seven percent of Western women choose to remain childfree and this figure is increasing. Being childfree challenges the ‘procreation imperative’ residing at the center of our hetero-normative understandings, occupying an uneasy position in relation to—simultaneously—traditional academic ideologies and prevalent social norms. After all, as Adi Avivi recognizes, "if a woman is not a mother, the patriarchal social order is in danger." This collection engages with these (mis)perceptions about childfree people: in media representations, demographics, historical documents, and both psychological and philosophical models. Foundational pieces from established experts on the childfree choice--Rhonny Dam, Laurie Lisle, Christopher Clausen, and Berenice Fisher--appear alongside both activist manifestos and original scholarly work, comprehensively brought together. Academics and activists in various disciplines and movements also riff on the childfree life: its implications, its challenges, its conversations, and its agency—all in relation to its inevitability in the 21st century. Childfree across the Disciplines unequivocally takes a stance supporting the subversive potential of the childfree choice, allowing readers to understand childfreedom as a sense of continuing potential in who—or what—a person can become.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
DAVINIA THORNLEY is a senior lecturer in film, media, and communication studies at the University of Otago in Aotearoa New Zealand. She is the editor of True Event Adaptation: Scripting Real Lives and the author of Cinema, Cross-Cultural Collaboration, and Criticism: Filming on an Uneven Field.
REVIEWS
"Offering a timely rejoinder to pronatalism, Childfree Across the Disciplines features numerous authors who see 'reproductive consciousness' as a key component of reproductive justice. This volume’s perspective is especially vital in a world that too often assumes childlessness to be a sacrifice, default, or deficit, rather than accurately representing what childfreedom is: a reasoned and purposeful attempt to forge identities and life pathways that are not circumscribed by reproductive imperatives."
— Suzanne Leonard, co-editor of Imagining "We" in the Age of "I": Romance and Social Bonding in Contemporary Culture
"Childfree Across the Disciplines is a first of its kind, bringing academic and activist voices together as it challenges readers to rethink what they think they know to be true about the childfree choice, who makes it, and why."
— Amy Blackstone, author of Childfree by Choice: The Movement Redefining Family and Creating a New Age of Independence
TABLE OF CONTENTS
List of Figures and Tables
Introduction: Childfree across the Disciplines by Davinia Thornley
Part I: Childfree Subjectivities
Chapter 1. Affirming Social Value: Women without Children [republished] by Berenice Fisher
Chapter 2. Childfree Minority Stress by Melanie Brewster and Olivia Snow
Chapter 3. “You will Change Your Mind”: The Controlling Function of Microaggressions on the Minds of Parents and Non-Parents by Adi Avivi
Chapter 4. Selfish is Not a Four-Letter Word: Self-Care and Other-Care among Childfree Women by Amanda Michiko Shigihara
Part II: Childfree Representation
Chapter 5. Childfree in Toyland [republished] by Christopher Clausen
Chapter 6. The Annual Global Childfree Event: International Childfree Day by Laura Carroll
Chapter 7. Reproductive Villains: The Representation of Childfree Women in Mainstream Cinema and Television by Natalia Cherjovsky
Part III: Childfree Economic and Environmental Perspectives
Chapter 8. Excerpts from An Atypical Chick: A Gay Man in a Woman's Body [republished] by Rhonny Dam
Chapter 9. The Breadwinner Dilemma: The Real and Opportunity Cost of Children by Laura S. Scott
Chapter 10. Voluntary Childlessness: An Upstream Choice in the Anthropocene by Erika M. Arias
Part IV: Childfree Redefinitions
Chapter 11: Recognizing Our Womanhood, Redefining Femininity [republished] by Laurie Lisle
Chapter 12. Refusing to be Othered: Re-defining the “Silent Bodies” of Childfree Women by Anna Gotlib
Concluding Thoughts by Davinia Thornley
Notes on Contributors
Index
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