Childfree across the Disciplines : : Academic and Activist Perspectives on Not Choosing Children / / ed. by Davinia Thornley.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2022 English
• MitwirkendeR: Arias, Erika M.,; Avivi, Adi,; Brewster, Melanie Elyse,; Brewster, Melanie,; Carroll, Laura,; Cherjovsky, Natalia,; Clausen, Christopher,; Dam, Rhonny,; Fisher, Berenice M.,; Fisher, Berenice,; Gotlib, Anna,; Lisle, Laurie,; Scott, Laura S.,; Shigihara, Amanda Michiko,; Snow, Olivia,; Thornley, Davinia,
• HerausgeberIn: Thornley, Davinia,
• Place / Publishing House: New Brunswick, NJ : : Rutgers University Press, , [2022]; ©2022
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (236 p.) :; 1 b&w iillustration, 3 tables

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 This collection engages with these (mis)perceptions about childfree people: in media representations, demographics, historical documents, and both psychological and philosophical models.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.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: Childfree across the Disciplines -- Part I Childfree Subjectivities -- 1 Affirming Social Value: Women without Children -- 2 Childfree Minority Stress: Considerations for Life at the Margins of Adulthood -- 3 “You Will Change Your Mind” The Controlling Function of Microaggressions on the Minds of Parents and Non-parents -- 4 Selfish Is Not a Four-Letter Word: Self-Care and Other-Care among Childfree Women -- 5 Childfree in Toyland -- 6 The Annual Global Childfree Event: International Childfree Day -- 7 Reproductive Villains: The Representation of Childfree Women in Mainstream Cinema and Television -- Part III Childfree Economic and Environmental Perspectives -- 8 Excerpts from An Atypical Chick: A Gay Man in a Woman’s Body -- 9 The Breadwinner Dilemma: The Real and Opportunity Costs of Children -- 10 Voluntary Childlessness: An Upstream Choice in the Anthropocene -- Part IV Childfree Redefinitions -- 11 Recognizing Our Womanhood, Redefining Femininity -- 12 Refusing to Be Othered: Redefining the “Silent Bodies” of Childfree Women -- Concluding Thoughts -- Notes on Contributors -- Index