Barren in the Promised Land

Elaine Tyler May is Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota.

May documents a continuing American obsession with reproduction and shows how this public embrace of childbearing has inflicted anguish on childless women across the centuries.

• The public and private stake in reproduction; barren to infertile - childlessness before the 20th century; the "Race Suicide" panic - eugenics and the pressure to procreate; unfit for parenthood - class, race and compulsory sterilization; the baby craze - the rise of compulsory parenthood; infertility - Freud in the bedroom, sex at the clinic; childfree - the revolt against the baby boom; designers genes - the baby quest and the reproductive fix. Appendix: a note on the sample of letters.