Elaine Tyler May

In this book, May examines the history and social impact of people who cannot or will not have children. It's the "cannots" who receive the most attention from May, though she does devote one small chapter to the childfree. But it is ultimately the research into the minds and trials of the infertile that are most fascinating in May's writing. As we read through the historial timeline, we notice America's increasingly fervent insistance that everyone have children, first as a necessity to show more populate the new land, then as a patriotic duty, and finally as a means of "having it all," fitting in, and appearing "normal." Infertiles had the burden of feeling they have let down their country and, more recently, that they have let down themselves. Infertiles who wrote to May when she requested their points of view wrote of intense feelings of despair, of invasive and indignified treatments, jeopardizing their jobs and marriages, and even planning suicide if they should reach a certain age before reproducing a biological child.

Adoption is a course taken by some, but to many who go this route, it is like coming in second place. This is why many who adopt, according to May, choose adoptees who look most like them, to fulfill the fantasy of having a fertile family. One heartbreaking story, told by a woman who adopted a baby girl with her husband, imparts how the couple insisted they loved the child, but gave her back to the agency after discovering she was biracial, a fact withheld by the birth mother. This is just one of the many anecdotes that can frustrate the reader. From many such accounts in the book, the most logical conclusion appears to be that our society needs to ease up on the pressure to reproduce. However, May sees it a little differently, and while she notes that Americans are obsessed with reproduction (their own and others), her conclusion is that society looks to the family to solve its problems, but doesn't give the family any support. She does a very good job on describing how society looks to the idealized version of "family" (hetero couple, with kids) to be America's salvation, but has little to no information to back up her claim that these children aren't supported after they are born. Her book is about the decision to have children, and she should have stuck with it, unless she wants to elaborate more on what happens after the children are born. Only in the chapter dedicated to the childfree, does she really hint at what is unappealing about parenthood, through the voices of those who volunteered their stories.

In this vein, I believe more could have been said about the childfree. While trying to highlight a point that Americans have become more focused on their private lives, she paints the childfree as selfish, choosing not to have children because of reasons like moral superiority, preservation of good looks, and unwillingness to put in the time and money. While the plight of infertiles that wipes out their bank accounts and health gets the full pathos treatment, the childfree get no such break. Truly, May overlooks a major factor brought up by many childfree people in their first-hand accounts: that not every woman has a maternal instinct. But I suppose it is more interesting to juxstapose them against the sob stories of the infertile to show how badly some want babies, and here are people simply not trying to have any. But like infertiles, the childfree are also treated like outcasts in society.

What this book is most valuable for is gender studies: how men and women are treated according to their status as fertile/infertile. Women, particularily, get the brunt of the baby battle: throughout history, they are the ones who are blamed, poked, prodded, and ultimately ostracized if a hetero couple cannot produce children. In early America, a childless woman was a suspected witch unless she proved her worth by becoming active in the community. In modern America, the childless are seen as incomplete and immature, as the passage into adulthood is now defined by giving birth. Women still have to deal with the guilt and blame from peers and strangers, and even themselves.

It would be interesting to see how May views the changing perceptions of adoption in these current times, in light of rich, white women like Angelina Jolie and Madonna adopting children of other races, and making it more acceptable than in past years. show less

A brief, but completely fascinating, history of the Pill and the birth control movement of the last century. It was so interesting to read how the Pill came to be; especially the segments that talked about it from the male perspective and why there will never be a male pill.

First published in 1988, Homeward Bound is an important cultural study focusing on family and the baby boom phenomenon after WWII. May lays out gender relationships since the Depression and carefully analyzes and explains the connection between national security and home in the context of the Cold War. As May shows, American people from both sexes willingly entered into marriage after WW II. Women left the work forces and quit school for marriage. Family and children were the signs of show more masculinity and success for men, as well. On the one hand, because of the fear of the atomic bomb, Americans became conservative about sex and developed a more rigid definition of the ideal family. On the other hand, the housing policy and the success of consumer capitalism during the Cold War became a force and also a change for “atypical” Americans, such as European immigrants and poor whites, to integrate into the mainstream society during the social reform. By analyzing movies and social science research, such as the Kelly Longitudinal study, May shows a historical consciousness formed and accepted by the people from all levels of society and the importance of understanding sexuality from a broader context. show less

In America and the Pill: A History of Promise, Peril, and Liberation, Elaine Tyler May argues, “‘The Pill,’ as it quickly came to be known, was more than simply a convenient and reliable method of preventing pregnancy. For its advocates, developers, manufacturers, and users, the pill promised to solve the problems of the world” (pg. 2). May writes of the production and marketing of the pill, “This was the era of the expert, and experts seemed to be solving problems right and left. show more Americans were well primed to place their faith in scientists, doctors, and the pill to solve global, social, and personal problems” (pg. 5). Finally, May writes, “The pill took its place not as the miracle drug that would save the world, but as an important tool in women’s efforts to achieve control over their lives” (pg. 6). May’s work invokes politics, gender, and the history of science. Further, her father, Edward Tyler, played a key role in FDA approval of the pill.
Discussing criticisms of the trials of the pill, May writes, “While there were certainly some clear cases of abuse and unethical practices, such as the coercive studies using psychiatric patients, the testing of the pill largely conformed to the standards of the day and often exceeded them” (pg. 28). May argues that postwar fears of overpopulation helped spread advocacy for the pill. She writes, “The birth control movement emerged parallel to the population control movement, and although they did not always have the same aims, the two often intersected” (pg. 38). Beginning with Kennedy and until Reagan’s gag rule, presidential administrations included contraception in foreign aid to help curtail fears that overpopulation in the third world would lead countries to embrace communism. May writes, “Regardless of the motives of advocates, poor women took advantage of whatever contraceptive services were available to them” (pg. 47). In this way, “women sought birth control wherever it was available. But their motives were personal. They used contraceptives to control their own fertility, not to control world population” (pg. 50).
In terms of gender roles, May argues, “The pill disrupted power relations between the sexes” (pg. 70). She works to overturn the idea that the pill directly led to the sexual revolution. May writes, “The pill’s liberating potential was not actualized by the sexual revolution. Only when women themselves took control of the pill, not only by consuming it but also by making demands on their sexual partners, doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and lawmakers, would the pill begin to fulfill its potential to change women’s lives for the better” (pg. 91). Gender biases also impeded the impetus to find a male equivalent of the pill. May writes, “The emphasis on women is embedded in the institutional frameworks of science, medicine, and pharmaceuticals. Both women and men think of reproduction in terms of women’s bodies and of birth control as a woman’s responsibility” (pg. 110). In terms of cultural authority, May writes, “The pill weakened the power of the papacy in the lives of Catholics, and after Humanae Vitae, turned many Catholics away from the Church altogether” (pg. 126). Addressing these types of unforeseen impacts, May writes, “Another unexpected effect of the pill was its contribution to increasing openness regarding matters of sex, reproduction, and contraception. Open communication enhanced women’s relationships with the men in their lives, their female friends, and their health care providers” (pg. 157).
May concludes, “Without the political and cultural upheavals of the last fifty years, particularly those brought about by the feminist movement, the pill would have been just one more contraceptive – more effective and convenient than those that came before, but not revolutionary. Instead, it became a flash point for major social transformation” (pg. 171). show less