Results by title

5 books match the query 'Infertility, Female'

Sort by

Female Fertility and the Body Fat Connection

Rose E. Frisch

University of Chicago Press, 2002

Are girls entering puberty earlier than they used to? This question, which has been debated recently by doctors and scientists in the pages of Time magazine and the New York Times, proves that there is still a great deal to learn about women's reproductive health. Female Fertility and the Body-Fat Connection is the record of one scientist's groundbreaking and decades-long work on the connections among fertility, body fat, and reproductive health in women.

Rose E. Frisch explains here how, in women, a certain amount of body fat is crucial to the reproductive system and sexual maturation. Women who are too lean are infertile and cannot conceive children; young girls who are too thin have a delayed onset of their first period. Female Fertility and the Body-Fat Connection illuminates how and why a "critical fitness" level underlies a woman's reproductive health. In the process Frisch gives readers a comprehensive view of the research done to date on the relationship between body composition and fertility and also describes her own journey as a woman scientist working to advance her critical-fitness hypothesis both to the general public and the scientific community. Frisch answers the questions every woman has about the desirable weight for health and fertility and even includes tables to help women find their own best weight. She also demonstrates how important diet and exercise are for the long-term reproductive health of women, and shows what factors influence the onset of puberty in girls.

Each milestone of the reproductive life span is affected by food intake and energy output, the factors affecting the storage of fat. Female Fertility and the Body-Fat Connection is a cornerstone to understanding the health of girls and women.

[more]

Misconception

Social Class and Infertility in America

Bell, Ann V.

Rutgers University Press, 2014

Despite the fact that, statistically, women of low socioeconomic status (SES) experience greater difficulty conceiving children, infertility is generally understood to be a wealthy, white woman’s issue. In Misconception, Ann V. Bell overturns such historically ingrained notions of infertility by examining the experiences of poor women and women of color. These women, so the stereotype would have it, are simply too fertile. The fertility of affluent and of poor women is perceived differently, and these perceptions have political and social consequences, as social policies have entrenched these ideas throughout U.S. history.

Through fifty-eight in-depth interviews with women of both high and low SES, Bell begins to break down the stereotypes of infertility and show how such depictions consequently shape women’s infertility experiences. Prior studies have relied solely on participants recruited from medical clinics—a sampling process that inherently skews the participant base toward wealthier white women with health insurance.

In comparing class experiences, Misconception goes beyond examining medical experiences of infertility to expose the often overlooked economic and classist underpinnings of reproduction, family, motherhood, and health in contemporary America.

Watch a video with Ann V. Bell:

Watch video now. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz7qiPyuyiM).

[more]

Narrating Infertility in Spain

Catherine Bourland Ross

Bucknell University Press, 2026

The drop in Spanish birth rates in 1998 to their lowest level of 1.1 births per woman was accompanied by a boom in publishing about motherhood. New narrative forms, ranging from blogs to diaries to comics, expressed women’s experiences, including ambivalence about motherhood in the face of societal pressures. Narrating Infertility in Spain, the first study of infertility in post-2008 female-authored texts, analyzes discussions of adoption, assisted reproduction, egg and sperm donation, and the decision not to have children due to economic or social instability. By examining the work of writers and vocal activists Silvia Nanclares, Raquel Sánchez-Silva, Samanta Villar, Laura Freixas, and Diana López Varela, Ross situates infertility in Spain within the cultural context of the Great Recession, while considering it as a business, a crisis, a stigma, and a class issue, and offering broader understandings of contemporary fertility challenges in Spain and beyond.

Published by Bucknell University Press. Distributed worldwide by Rutgers University Press.

[more]

Not Trying

Infertility, Childlessness, and Ambivalence

Kristin J. Wilson

Vanderbilt University Press, 2014

One message that comes along with ever-improving fertility treatments and increasing acceptance of single motherhood, older first-time mothers, and same-sex partnerships, is that almost any woman can and should become a mother. The media and many studies focus on infertile and involuntarily childless women who are seeking treatment. They characterize this group as anxious and willing to try anything, even elaborate and financially ruinous high-tech interventions, to achieve a successful pregnancy.

But the majority of women who struggle with fertility avoid treatment. The women whose interviews appear in Not Trying belong to this majority. Their attitudes vary and may change as their life circumstances evolve. Some support the prevailing cultural narrative that women are meant to be mothers and refuse to see themselves as childfree by choice. Most of these women, who come from a wider range of social backgrounds than most researchers have studied, experience deep ambivalence about motherhood and non-motherhood, never actually choosing either path. They prefer to let life unfold, an attitude that seems to reduce anxiety about not conforming to social expectations.

[more]