Rating: 
Summary: Childlessness and Womanhood
Review: This was my first book ever to read about childlessness today and in the past. If it is a choice, in many instances, it is tough choice to make. If the childlessness is a result of the circumstance(s), any woman may find it difficult at times to rationalize the outcome. But this is what makes it difficult about accepting the book completely. It is not the always woman who decides not to have children of her own. There is some, but not enough discussion in the book about the man who makes decision not to have children of his own. The extensive research by Ms. Lisle, which is quite remarkable, does not go deep into men's choices or circumstances about not having children. I only wish that both sexes were researched equally for this purpose. However, overall, this topic and the book is valuable support for anyone out there trying to assert themselves and resassure themselves, that there is nothing abnornal about making these choices and that after all, there are people out there across all continents, social backgrounds and professional backgrounds who feel quite comforable accepting the idea that they either do not wish to have children of their own, or can live quite hapily without children regardless of the reasons for not having them.
Rating: 
Summary: Exposing Mythologies: Gender, Family, and Children's Lives.
Review: WITHOUT CHILD is an important book about an important topic that is, all too often, hidden, selectively neglected, or distorted beyond recognition. Laurie Lisle uses her personal journey as an intentionally childless woman of the Baby Boom generation to explore the stigma surrounding childlessness. While exploring the status of childlessness (voluntary, involuntary, and the gray areas in between)the author finds not only the history of a social stigma that lives on in our time but in doing so unravels important but neglected domains in our understanding of gender, family, and the study of children.Although gender has undergone considerable change in recent decades, the author clearly shows that the idea of reproductive freedom DOES NOT include the freedom to choose childlessness. When American's speak of `reproductive freedom,' they usually are referring to the freedom to choose from the options leading to parenthood rather than the freedom to choose between parenthood and childlessness. Women making this choice encounter a good deal of negative and often hostile social pressure from family, friends, and professionals. Their stories reminding us that increased gender options are centered around an important contradiction in women's (and men's to a lesser degree)developmental psychology. The hidden history of childlessness also reminds us that across cultures and throughout hisory childless women have played a significant role in family functioning, a role that continues today. The role of the `social parent' appears to be an implicit legacy of childlessness. Whether they have been famous (Jane Addams) or not, they have contributed in a myriad of ways to the functioning of families. Indeed, it seems reasonable to state that they have often served as the invisible glue in family functioning, whether the family in question was their own or someone else's. The way we choose to recogonize these women, also exposes further distortions in our thinking about women and families which may be important at this time in history. Femaleness and motherhood have yet to be disentangled in much of our thinking and yet global and local social problems are intimately linked, at least in part, to reproductive decision making and the quality of children's lives. Laurie Lisle's book places in full focus a domain that is most often pushed to the side and dismissed as unimportant. The story she tells through the vehicle of her own life demonstrates the value of this work not simply to the childless themselves but to a broad audience, including experts concerned with pressing issues of our time.
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