Peggy O'Donnell Heffington, "Without Children: The Long History of Not Being a Mother" (Seal Press, 2023)
New Books in Sex, Sexuality, and Sex Work2 Juli 2023

Peggy O'Donnell Heffington, "Without Children: The Long History of Not Being a Mother" (Seal Press, 2023)

In an era of falling births, it’s often said that millennials invented the idea of not having kids. But history is full of women without children: some who chose childless lives, others who wanted children but never had them, and still others—the vast majority, then and now—who fell somewhere in between. Modern women considering how and if children fit into their lives are products of their political, ecological, and cultural moment. But history also tells them that they are not alone. In Without Children: The Long History of Not Being a Mother (Seal Press, 2023), historian Peggy O’Donnell Heffington shows that many of the reasons women are not having children today are ones they share with women in the past: a lack of support, their jobs or finances, environmental concerns, infertility, and the desire to live different kinds of lives. Understanding this history—how normal it has always been to not have children, and how hard society has worked to make it seem abnormal—is key, she writes, to rebuilding kinship between mothers and non-mothers, and to building a better world for us all. Dr Peggy O’Donnell Heffington teaches in History at the University of Chicago, and writes on feminism, women's movements, and motherhood in American and European history. She has been published in numerous outlets including the New York Times, Time Magazine and The Washington Post. Catriona Gold is a PhD candidate in Geography at University College London. She is currently researching the US Passport Office's role in governing Cold War travel, and broadly interested in questions of security, surveillance and mobility. She can be reached by email, Mastodon or Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Laurian R. Bowles, "Headstrong: Women Porters, Blackness, and Modernity in Accra" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

Laurian R. Bowles, "Headstrong: Women Porters, Blackness, and Modernity in Accra" (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025)

Headstrong: Women Porters, Blackness, and Modernity in Accra (U Pennsylvania Press, 2025) explores the experiences of women porters, called kayayei, in Accra, Ghana. Drawing on a decade of fieldwork, ...

24 Sep 20251h 3min

Averill Earls, "Love in the Lav: A Social Biography of Same-Sex Desire in Ireland, 1922-1972" (Temple UP, 2025)

Averill Earls, "Love in the Lav: A Social Biography of Same-Sex Desire in Ireland, 1922-1972" (Temple UP, 2025)

Averill Earls is an associate professor in history at St. Olaf’s College and her research focuses on sexuality and modern Ireland. Her writing has appeared in the Journal of the History of Sexuality, ...

10 Sep 202533min

Sexual Imperialism and English Language Teaching

Sexual Imperialism and English Language Teaching

In this episode of the Language on the Move Podcast, Dr Hanna Torsh speaks with Dr Vaughan Rapatahana about sexual predation in the English language teaching industry. The conversation addresses his ...

2 Sep 202531min

Patrice D. Douglass, "Engendering Blackness: Slavery and the Ontology of Sexual Violence" (Stanford UP, 2025)

Patrice D. Douglass, "Engendering Blackness: Slavery and the Ontology of Sexual Violence" (Stanford UP, 2025)

In Engendering Blackness: Slavery and the Ontology of Sexual Violence (Stanford UP, 2025) Patrice D. Douglass interrogates the relationship between sexual violence and modern racial slavery and finds ...

29 Aug 20251h 19min

Marla Segol, "Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A Mythical-Ritual Genealogy" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2022)

Marla Segol, "Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A Mythical-Ritual Genealogy" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2022)

In Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A Mythical-Ritual Genealogy (Penn State University Press, 2021) a provocative book, Marla Segol explores the development of the kabbalistic cosmology underlying Western sex ...

17 Aug 202556min

Marla Segol, "Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A Mythical-Ritual Genealogy" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2022)

Marla Segol, "Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A Mythical-Ritual Genealogy" (Pennsylvania State UP, 2022)

In Kabbalah and Sex Magic: A Mythical-Ritual Genealogy (Penn State University Press, 2021) a provocative book, Marla Segol explores the development of the kabbalistic cosmology underlying Western sex ...

17 Aug 202556min

Ayo Wahlberg, "Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China" (U California Press, 2018)

Ayo Wahlberg, "Good Quality: The Routinization of Sperm Banking in China" (U California Press, 2018)

From its crude and uneasy beginnings thirty years ago, Chinese sperm banking has become a routine part of China’s pervasive and restrictive reproductive complex. Today, there are sperm banks in each o...

8 Aug 20251h 12min

Hannah Charnock, "Teenage intimacies: Young Women, Sex and Social Life in England, 1950-80" (Manchester UP, 2025)

Hannah Charnock, "Teenage intimacies: Young Women, Sex and Social Life in England, 1950-80" (Manchester UP, 2025)

Teenage Intimacies offers a new account of the ‘sexual revolution’ in mid-twentieth century England. Rather than focusing on ‘Swinging London’, the book reveals the transformations in social life that...

2 Aug 202541min

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