Without Child

Without Child challenges the stigma of childlessness by offering childless women the lifeaffirming story of themselves. Beginning with the difficult inner journey a woman faces before finally deciding or realizing she will not bear children, Without Child explores the myth of the childless woman's rejection of the maternal instinct. It also examines the childless woman's relationship to mothers and mothering, to her femininity, to men, to achievement, to her body,and to old age.
Laurie Lisle contends that childless women are part of an ancient and respectable cultural tradition that includes biblical matriarchs, celibate saints, and nineteenth-century social reformers. However, like other aspects of women's history, this tradition has been forgotten and, in the process, maligned. Without Child bring childless women out of obscurity and places them back in women's history.
Without Child brings scope and depth to a subject that has long been misunderstood. Weaving rich materials from history, literature, religion, and sociology with the author's own and other stories, this groundbreaking book does what no other has done before-presents childlessnessin a multifaceted and positive light.
Most women grow up thinking they will become mothers, and many do follow that path. But for those women who are willingly or unwillingly without children, childlessness is a way of life that many of them must constantly defend. Without Child explores the facts and fallacies behind childlessness,what it means for women and society, and reminds us of how women can and do embrace this choice.
In the shadow of a culture that claims to adore the child, Without Child bring a long forbidden topic into the light. Wide-ranging, yet intimate, philosophical, yet clear~sighted, this important book will reassure millions of women that they are not alone, not unusual, and, in fact, are part of a long and honorable tradition.
Laurie Lisle is the author of four other books besidesWithout Child: two biographies of women artists, a history of a girls'school, and a memoir from the point-of-view as a gardener. Raised in Rhode Island, she lives with her husband in Litchfield County,Connecticut and in Westchester County, New York. For more information, please see her website at www.laurielisle.com.
"Laurie Lisle, by telling her own story and struggle of living childless in a childbearing world, has given a voice to all of us ... This is not only an excellent book, but a true act of courage ... She bravely and unapologetically talks about issues heretofore rarely discussed ... one feels the electricity and importance of these facts, and they jump from the page right into your lap ... After reading Without Child, I am armed with fact and knowledge that there were others before me who fought this stigma, and I will proudly continue the fight."
— Stephanie Dickison, Canadian Women's Studies
"At last, an intelligent analysis of the powerful societal pressure upon women to become mothers, and a searching description of how the decision not to bear a child may result from any number of choices, neither selfish nor irrational. The enormous contribution of childless women to our cultural heritage is astonishing, but we have rarely drawn intelligent conclusions from this fact. Laurie Lisle has written a timely book assuring us that the true definition of womanhood need not include childbirth."
— Carolyn Heilbrun, author of Writing a Woman's Life
"This book is a pleasure to read, seamlessly weaving together personal narrative with a variety of literary, historical, and cross-cultural examples of childlessness...