Menopause

by Callahan, Joan C.

• ISBN13: 9780253208170
• ISBN10: 0253208173
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1993-09-01
• Publisher: Indiana Univ Pr

Summary

"In Menopause: A Midlife Passage, [questions about menopause] are considered in depth from a dazzling variety of angles. This is just the serious feminist discussion of menopause that I have been longing for.... its exquisite analyses renew us in our struggles to make sense of it all." -- Alice Dan, Women's Review of Books"Menopause has become a hot (with or without the flashes) topic in America. That's because a critical mass of us have reached it and are educated, aggressive, and confident enough to want to know what's happening to us, and then to talk about it.... Smart, useful, funny, Menopause: A Midlife Passage is a fine addition to the discussion, a healthy companion for this all-important life passage." -- Susan Stamberg, Special Correspondent, National Public Radio"Editor Callahan takes anything but a trendy approach to a very trendy topic. She's gathered essays by scholarly women who have thought through society's position on menopause and menopausal women and don't like what they see: older women denied positive portrayals in mainstream media, menopause treated by the medical establishment as if it were a disease rather than a natural occurrence, and devaluation of older women. Determined to change people's minds with their words, these women speak both powerfully and empoweringly. A must for feminist and women's health collections." -- Booklist"... a bold attempt to go beyond the standard medical framing of women's experience, and to contest the notion that the menopause is straightforwardly a hormonal 'deficiency disease'." -- New Scientist"... [an] entertaining and informative book that takes a very positive attitude toward the 'midlife passage'." -- Fertility News"This book should be required reading for all women's health care providers and anyone else doing counseling of menopausal women." -- Journal of Women & AgingEssayists from various walks of life present female-defined perspectives on menopause and the passage to new physical, social, and cultural development.

Author Biography

JOAN CALLAHAN, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kentucky, is editor of Ethical Issues in Professional Life and Reproduction, Ethics, and the Law: Feminist Perspectives (forthcoming from Indiana University Press), and is co-author with James W. Knight of Preventing Birth: Contemporary Methods and Related Moral Controversions.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Women, Film, and the Midlife Sophie's Choice: Sink or Sousatzka?	p. 3
Meno-Boomers and Moral Guardians: An Exploration of the Cultural Construction of Menopause	p. 23
Metaphors of Menopause: The Metalanguage of Menopause Research	p. 36
Heresy in the Female Body: The Rhetorics of Menopause	p. 59
Who Needs a Menopause Policy?	p. 79
Selfish Genes and Maternal Myths: A Look at Postmenopausal Pregnancy	p. 92
Disease or Development: Women's Perceptions of Menopause and the Need for Hormone Replacement Therapy	p. 123
Making a Reasoned Choice about Hormone Replacement Therapy	p. 136
The False Promises of Hormone Replacement Therapy and Current Dilemmas	p. 145
A Journey to the Center of the Cell: Understanding the Physiology and Endocrinology of Menopause	p. 160
Medical Decision Making: Issues Concerning Menopause	p. 194
Afterword: Creating a Visual Image of Menopause: The Hot Flash Fan	p. 205
Selected Interdisciplinary Bibliography on Menopause	p. 208
Contributors	p. 214
Index	p. 216
Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved.