To contrast and compare the experiences of her interview subjects, she places them within the changing psychosocial context of the last few decades and categorizes them according to their reasons for childlessness. Using contemporary psychoanalytic theory, she reexamines female identity development and presents a positive interpretation of women who-for whatever reason-are not mothers. Ireland reframes childlessness as a concept and lays a groundwork for an expanded view of women's identity and psychic development. Challenging the assumption of deprivation or deviance that is traditionally applied to childless women in psychological theory and popular culture, Dr. 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. 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. 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. Yet these women are virtually missing from accounts of women's lives. According to recent surveys, approximately 40% of American women between the ages of 18 and 44 do not have children.
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