Childlessness in the age of communication [electronic resource] : deconstructing silence / Cristina Archetti.

Cristina Archetti started researching childlessness after being diagnosed with "unexplained infertility". She soon discovered that, although involuntary childlessness affects an increasing number of women and men across the world, this topic is shrouded taboo and shame. This bookis both a first-person reflection about the existential questions posed by involuntary childlessness and a readable account of the way the silence surrounding this topic is socially and politically constructed. Revealing the invisible mechanisms that, from the microscopic details of everyday life to policy, make up the structure of silence around childlessness, Archetti demonstrates what it means not to have children in a society that is organized around families. Through a prose that mixes analysis, excerpts of interviews, media fragments, and evocative writing, she develops a new language of feeling-in-the-body fit for the twenty-first century and exposes the devastating effects infertility has on relationships, identity, health and well-being, in societies that fetishize parenthood. Childlessness in the Age of Communication draws upon a range of disciplines and fields including sociology, health, gender and sexuality studies, communication, politics and anthropology. It is a book for all those interested in childlessness and innovative qualitative research methodologies.

Cover -- Half Title -- Series Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Dedication -- Table of Contents -- List of Figures -- Author biography -- Preface -- 28 May 2016, Stockholm. A woman out of place -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction: breaking the silence -- Untold stories -- A personal and a public issue -- Aims of the book I: documenting childlessness -- Aims of the book II: reclaiming childlessness -- Reaching out -- Structure of the book and a warning -- Notes -- References -- Part I -- Unravelling silence -- Of silence and invisibility -- Notes -- References

Section 1 T-word: the story behind my story -- Finding a place for "me" -- "Me" the researcher: where I come from and where I am going -- Notes -- References -- Section 2 The body and communication -- Note -- References -- Section 3 What my story brings to the debate -- Studies of (in)fertility and childlessness -- Understanding stigma -- Political communication from a minority perspective -- Notes -- References -- Section 4 Silence, deconstructed -- Reality and fiction: not an odd couple -- Explaining silence: when bodies, narratives, and suffering collide across the private-public domain

The wrong solutions for no problem: Is life without children impossible? -- References -- Folder 2 Relationships -- Variable pressure -- Lack of time, deadlines, and love -- Mental geographies that matter -- Unetiquette and the uncivilizing process -- Intimacy and life-saving decisions -- References -- Folder 3 Identity -- My first year in Oslo: fragments of everyday trench war -- Self-respect and getting an academic coach -- The unused love -- 24 September 2017, my diary. The dream of the gun and the cupcakes -- References -- Folder 4 Objects and the body

Spaces and objects that make up the self -- Leaving Leeds -- Living spaces' transitions -- The body -- Mind-body relationships -- The pain diary I (Leeds, September 2013) -- The pain diary II (Oslo, February 2017) -- Yoga conflicts (July 2017) -- Reading breasts -- Genes, conferences, and academic children -- References -- Folder 5 Media, social wallpaper, and the cycle of silence -- Talking to walls -- Limbo (2010) -- Bias at the royal wedding -- The Italian constitutional crisis -- The importance of filler dialogue -- When even emoticons are pronatalist -- Researching childlessness

OCLC-licensed vendor bibliographic record.