Reconceiving Women Separating Motherhood from Female Identity

by Ireland, Mardy S.

• ISBN13: 9780898621235
• ISBN10: 0898621232
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1993-06-01
• Publisher: The Guilford Press

Summary

According to recent surveys, approximately 40% of American women between the ages of 18 and 44 do not have children. Yet these women are virtually missing from accounts of women's lives. In this important new work, Mardy Ireland defines a place for women outside the parameters of motherhood and gives voice to the significant number of women who are not mothers. She draws extensively from interviews with over 100 childless women from various ethnic and educational backgrounds, demonstrating the myriad ways they came to view themselves as complete adults without recourse to the traditional defining criteria of motherhood. Her work offers all women--mothers and nonmothers alike--a vision of self-defined adulthood and a recognition that every woman is the subject of her own life.

Author Biography

Mardy Ireland, Ph.D., is a psychologist with a clinical practice in Berkeley, California. She is also on the faculty of The Professional School of Psychology in San Francisco and Santa Clara University.

Table of Contents

Preface

Childless in the 1990s: The "Other" Woman and Why Now?

The Traditional Woman: Child-less

The Transitional Woman: Child-free and Child-less

The Transformative Woman: Child-free

The Development of Female Identity: Facts or Fictions?

Weaving an Alternative Understanding

The Gendered View of Identity: Limitations and Possibilities

Women but Not Mothers

Appendix: Research Data

Chapter Notes

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.