Customer Reviews

Women Without Children: The Reasons, the Rewards, the Regrets

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I enthusiastically recommend this interesting, well-written, well-researched, easy-to-read book. Wonderful interviews with real women--not composites--are interwoven with research results and statistics. Several chapters are arranged around reasons Lang's interviewees had not had children: "The Never Married, Choosing to be Child Free, No Time Was the Right Time, When Men Don't Want to Father, Infertility and Medical Interference, and Women Who Love Women."

See chapter 11 for a refreshing look at the stereotype that childless women are selfish, including self-centered reasons that parents give for having children. See chapter 15 for an eye-opening discussion of old age and childlessness: it isn't as gloomy as you might think. The tone throughout is neutral: not anti-motherhood or anti-children.

Women like me who wanted children can probably find both comfort and information here. This book would be useful for young women considering whether to have children and also for family members or friends of childless women. Possible drawbacks (which I did not mind) are that the research and statistics are now a decade old and that one might have to settle for a used copy. Index and end notes.

For practical emotional support on how to come to terms with unwanted childlessness in only one book, read Linda Hunt Anton, "Never To Be A Mother: A Guide For All Women Who Didn't--Or Couldn't--Have Children" (1992).

As a 41-year old woman who is coming to terms with continuing my life childless, aka "child free", I found this book a wonderful source of insight and inspiration. Granted, the book is not that scientific, but it's an important book for the minority of women who, either by chance or choice -- or a little of both -- are childless.

I would recommend it to anyone who is deciding whether or not to become a parent, who is struggling with infertility, grieving the loss of a child through miscarriage, or wants to reaffirm a child free existence.

Susan Lang sought out child-free women of several generations to interview for this book. Her interviews and research gave quite a bit of insight into the emotions and reasonings of these women. Several interviews hit so close to home that I was in tears. I would strongly recommend this book to any woman trying to decide on a child-free way of life. I could see where the book might also give some comfort to those women that didn't have a choice.

I bought this book before marrying a man who had two children and had been through a nasty divorce. As a result, he didn't want more children. This book along with step mothering books was informative and helpful in giving me insight into myself and whether or not I could live without children of my own.

This book was a Godsend for this time in my life as my biological clock has been ticking louder as I approach 40. After reading book I was happy to know other women go through many of the same feelings of anxiety, fear, worrying about missing out, as well sadness over not leaving a generation link - are all normal. This book helped me to feel at peace with my unconsicous decision to put off Motherhood and realize as in my case there just was no perfect time in the past and looking at current conditions in my life - now is not the time either. Great book......I will recommend it to others in my position.

A good read. However, I would have found it more compelling if the sample included other races. White women do not necessarily show a perspective of a minority in this society. We all know that. Also, the typcial white woman enjoying a cushy job is not indicative of a minorities reality.