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The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History pp 431–459Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Conditions of Illusion: Agency, Feminism, and Cultural Representations of Infertility in Britain, c. 1960–80

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Abstract

In the 1970s, reproductive control was perceived as essential to women’s liberation. In practice, however, feminist assertions of ‘the right to choose’ usually focused on the right not to have children. In the 1980s, a prominent strand within radical feminism critiqued new reproductive technologies as part of a technopatriarchal conspiracy, and portrayed infertile women as its passive victims. As a result of these critiques, the Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) is often depicted as unsympathetic or even hostile to infertile women. This chapter compares representations of infertility in mass-market women’s magazines and feminist publications. It explores the extent to which these publications enabled individual women to articulate their experiences of infertility, the contexts of these articulations, and how these representations of infertility related to wider perceptions of motherhood, biological determinism, and women’s capacity for agency.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook (London, 1962), p. 540.

  2. 2.

    B. Jane Elliott, ‘Demographic Trends in Domestic Life, 1945–87’, in David Clark (ed.), Marriage, Domestic Life & Social Change: Writings for Jacqueline Burgoyne (London and New York, 1991), pp. 96–7; Elizabeth Roberts, Women and Families: An Oral History, 1940–1970 (Oxford, 1995), pp. 18–19, 81, 125–7.

  3. 3.

    Jeffrey Weeks, Sex, Politics and Society: The Regulation of Sexuality Since 1800, 3rd edn (Abingdon, Oxon., 2010), pp. 321–56; Adrian Bingham, Family Newspapers? Sex, Private Life, and the British Popular Press 1918–1978 (Oxford, 2009), especially pp. 117–24.

  4. 4.

    John Peel, ‘The Hull Family Survey II: Family Planning in the First 5 Years of Marriage’, Journal of Biosocial Science, 4:3 (July 1972), p. 345.

  5. 5.

    Richard Titmuss, Essays on ‘The Welfare State’ (London, 1958), p. 91; Ronald Fletcher, The Family and Marriage in Britain, rev. edn (Harmondsworth, 1966), p. 230, emphasis in original.

  6. 6.

    Sue O’Sullivan, ‘Birth Control: Who Controls?’, in Sue O’Sullivan (ed.), Women’s Health: A Spare Rib Reader (London and New York, 1987), pp. 153–4.

  7. 7.

    Hera Cook, ‘The English Sexual Revolution: Technology and Social Change’, History Workshop Journal, 59:1 (2005).

  8. 8.

    Naomi Pfeffer, The Stork and the Syringe: A Political History of Reproductive Medicine (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 27–8, 111–41.

  9. 9.

    On adoption rates, see Pat Thane and Tanya Evans, Sinners? Scroungers? Saints? Unmarried Motherhood in Twentieth-Century England (Oxford, 2012), p. 103.

  10. 10.

    Michael Smith, Woman’s Own Guide to Birth Control (Middlesex, 1980), p. 16.

  11. 11.

    Margarete Sandelowski, ‘Failures of Volition: Female Agency and Infertility in Historical Perspective’, Signs, 15:3 (April 1990), especially p. 498.

  12. 12.

    Charis M. Thompson, ‘Feminists Theorize Infertility’, in Marcia C. Inhorn and Frank van Balen (eds), Infertility Around the Globe: New Thinking on Childlessness, Gender, and Reproductive Technologies (Berkeley, LA, and London, 2002), p. 52.

  13. 13.

    Margarete Sandelowski and Sheryl de Lacey, ‘The Uses of a “Disease”: Infertility as Rhetorical Vehicle’, in Inhorn and van Balen (eds), Infertility Around the Globe, pp. 42–3; Margarete Sandelowski, ‘Fault Lines: Infertility and Imperilled Sisterhood’, Feminist Studies, 16:1 (April 1990), p. 39.

  14. 14.

    Cynthia White, Women’s Magazines, 1693–1968 (London, 1970), pp. 216–7, 220, 232–5; Ros Ballaster, Margaret Beetham, Elizabeth Fraser, and Sandra Hebron, Women’s Worlds: Ideology, Femininity and the Woman’s Magazine (Basingstoke, 1991), p. 111.

  15. 15.

    Ballaster et al, Women’s Worlds, p. 109; Sammye Johnson and Patricia Prijatel, The Magazine From Cover to Cover: Inside a Dynamic Industry (Lincolnwood, IL, 1998), pp. 112–15.

  16. 16.

    Sarah Franklin, ‘Deconstructing “Desperateness”: The Social Construction of Infertility in Popular Representations of New Reproductive Technologies’, in Maureen McNeil, Ian Varcoe, and Steven Yearley (eds), The New Reproductive Technologies (Basingstoke, 1990).

  17. 17.

    Franklin, ‘Deconstructing “Desperateness”’, p. 215.

  18. 18.

    For a similar critique, see Sandelowski and de Lacey, ‘The Uses of a “Disease”’, p. 42.

  19. 19.

    Carolyn Faulder, ‘Women’s Magazines’, in Josephine King and Mary Stott (eds), Is This Your Life? Images of Women in the Media (London, 1977), p. 177.

  20. 20.

    Roberts, Women and Families, pp. 141–9.

  21. 21.

    ‘What a Woman Will Go Through to Have a Baby’, Woman, 21 October 1978; ‘Our Miracle Called Louise’, Woman, 6 October 1979; Joyce Mollet, ‘I Went to the Ends of the Earth to Find My Baby’, Woman’s Own, 22 April 1978.

  22. 22.

    Mary Grant [MG], ‘Letter: I Can’t Have Children’, Woman’s Own, 10 September 1977.

  23. 23.

    See Maggie Jones, Trying to Have a Baby? Overcoming Infertility and Child Loss (London, 1984), p. 7.

  24. 24.

    ‘What a Woman Will Go Through to Have a Baby’; ‘Our Miracle Called Louise’, p. 60.

  25. 25.

    Claire Rayner, ‘Diary of Hope’, Woman’s Own, 29 October 1977, p. 53.

  26. 26.

    Anna Raeburn [AR], ‘Letter: No Importance to Anyone’, Woman, 21 January 1978.

  27. 27.

    ‘What a Woman Will Go Through to Have a Baby’.

  28. 28.

    ‘What a Woman Will Go Through to Have a Baby’.

  29. 29.

    ‘What a Woman Will Go Through to Have a Baby’.

  30. 30.

    Evelyn Home [EH], ‘Letter: Baby-Yearning’, Woman, 1 January 1966.

  31. 31.

    ‘Our Miracle Called Louise’.

  32. 32.

    ‘To the World She’s a Miracle But to Her Parents John and Lesley, She’s Just…“OUR LOUISE”’, Woman, 20 October 1979.

  33. 33.

    Ruth Martin, ‘Letter: Foster Mum’, Woman, 2 April 1966; Virgil Damon and Isabella Raves, ‘Women, Love, Marriage and Babies’, Woman’s Own, 5 October 1963, p. 43.

  34. 34.

    ‘Marlene Dietrich’s ABC’, Woman’s Own, 6 October 1962, p. 16.

  35. 35.

    ‘The Mystery of Being a Woman’, Woman’s Own pull-out supplement, 4 October 1969, p. 2.

  36. 36.

    EH, ‘Response: Wanting a Baby’, Woman, 2 July 1966; Godfrey Winn, ‘What a Baby Can Mean to a Marriage’, Woman, 1 October 1966. See also Robert Newill, Infertile Marriage (Harmondsworth, 1974), p. 14.

  37. 37.

    ‘What a Woman Will Go Through to Have a Baby’.

  38. 38.

    EH, ‘Letter: Rejection’, Woman, 5 October 1968; AR, ‘Letter: He Changed His Mind’, Woman, 2 September 1978.

  39. 39.

    EH, ‘Letter: There May Be a Chance’, Woman, 8 July 1961; MG, ‘Letter: Too Old for a Family?’, Woman’s Own, 23 April 1977.

  40. 40.

    EH, ‘Letter: Babies Wanted’, Woman, 4 March 1961; ‘Your Letters to Matron’, Woman’s Weekly, 6 July 1963; MG, ‘Letter: We Long for a Baby’, Woman’s Own, 4 July 1964.

  41. 41.

    EH, ‘Letter: Longed-For Baby’, Woman, 5 October 1963.

  42. 42.

    AR, ‘Letter: In the Dark’, Woman, 1 July 1978; AR, ‘Letter: Can I Have Children?’, Woman, 14 October 1978; Virginia Ironside [VI], ‘Letter: Am I Too Small?’, Woman, 6 January 1979; VI, ‘Letter: Can’t Ejaculate’, Woman, 29 March 1980.

  43. 43.

    AR, ‘Letter: A New Start But…’, Woman, 11 February 1978; AR, ‘Letter: Complicated Operation’, Woman, 18 March 1978; AR, ‘Letter: Not Sexy’, Woman, 17 June 1978; VI, ‘Letter: Fertility and the Pill’, Woman, 7 July 1979; VI, ‘Letter: Orgasm for Fertility?’, Woman, 14 July 1979; VI, ‘Letter: Divine Retribution’, Woman, 26 January 1980.

  44. 44.

    VI, ‘Letter: Sex Puzzle’, Woman, 26 May 1979.

  45. 45.

    In part, this reticence related to concerns about what could and could not be published. In the late 1970s, editors were still wary of potential moral objections to artificial insemination. Peggy Makins, The Evelyn Home Story (Glasgow, 1975), pp. 142–4.

  46. 46.

    EH, ‘Response: Babies Wanted’, Woman, 4 March 1961; EH, ‘Response: There May Be a Chance’, Woman, 8 July 1961; ‘Your Letters to Matron’, Woman’s Weekly, 6 July 1963.

  47. 47.

    Sister Helen Grove, ‘Health Matters: Planning a Baby’, Woman’s Weekly, 7 January 1961; EH, ‘Response: Babies Wanted’; Joan Williams, ‘Talking about Health: Hoping for a Baby’, Woman, 8 July 1961; EH, ‘Response: Longed-For Baby’.

  48. 48.

    EH, ‘Response: Longed-For Baby’; MG, ‘Response: We Long for a Baby’; EH, ‘Response: Wanting a Baby’.

  49. 49.

    Quotations from EH, ‘Response: Wanting a Baby’, Woman, 2 July 1966 and Godfrey Winn, ‘Can You Compromise?’, Woman, 3 April 1971. See also Ruth Martin, ‘Woman-to-Woman Service’, Woman’s Own, 4 October 1969; EH, ‘Response: Girl Wanted’, Woman, 3 January 1970; EH, ‘Response: Wanting a Child’, Woman, 3 October 1970. On the perceived difficulties of adoption, see Pfeffer, The Stork and the Syringe, pp. 140, 160.

  50. 50.

    ‘The Mystery of Being a Woman’, p. 2.

  51. 51.

    Marjorie Proops, ‘Counselling-in-the-Round’, Woman, 14 October 1967; AR, ‘Response: A New Start But…’.

  52. 52.

    EH, ‘Letter: Beating the Handicap’, Woman, January 7 1961; AR, ‘Letter: We’re Thankful We Never Had Children’, Woman, 3 April 1976.

  53. 53.

    AR, ‘Response: No Importance to Anyone’, Woman, 21 January 1978.

  54. 54.

    MG, ‘Response: I Can’t Have Children’; ‘Our “Keep-It-By-You” Service’, Woman’s Weekly, 1 July 1961; Angela Talbot, ‘Letter: How It’s Done’, Woman, 5 January 1963; EH, ‘Response: Longed-For Baby’; EH, ‘Response: Wanting a Baby’, Woman, 2 July 1966; AR, ‘Response: No Importance to Anyone’.

  55. 55.

    Rayner, ‘Diary of Hope’, p. 53.

  56. 56.

    Joan Williams, ‘Talking about Health: A Hopeful New Year’, Woman, 7 January 1961; Ruth Martin, ‘News for the Childless’, Woman’s Own, 3 October 1964, p. 68; Claire Rayner, ‘Prostaglandins’, Woman’s Own, 1 January 1977, p. 25.

  57. 57.

    ‘Happy Birthday…Second Time Around’, Woman, 3 October 1970.

  58. 58.

    See for example Joyce Robinson, ‘Miraculous Joseph’, Woman, 6 July 1976; ‘The Miracle Babies’, Woman, 6 January 1979.

  59. 59.

    ‘Our Miracle Called Louise’, p. 42; Fred Austin, ‘Test-Tube Baby Doctor: What Drove Him On’, Woman’s Own, 5 August 1978, p. 46.

  60. 60.

    Elliott Philip, Childlessness: Its Causes and What to Do About Them (London, 1975), p. 178; Lucienne Lanson, From Woman to Woman: A Gynaecologist Answers Questions About You and Your Body (Harmondsworth, 1977), pp. 225, 240.

  61. 61.

    Makins, The Evelyn Home Story, pp. 67, 125, 134–5.

  62. 62.

    Angela Patmore, Marje: The Guilt and the Gingerbread (London, 1993), p. 57; Proops, ‘Counselling-in-the-Round’.

  63. 63.

    Claire Rayner, How Did I Get Here From There? (London, 2008), pp. 281–7.

  64. 64.

    Rayner, How Did I Get Here From There?, pp. 333–4, 397.

  65. 65.

    Faulder, ‘Women’s Magazines’, pp. 173–4. For analysis of this critique, see Penny Tinkler, Constructing Girlhood: Popular Magazines for Girls Growing Up in England, 1920–1950 (London, 1995), pp. 6–7.

  66. 66.

    Karl Marx, ‘A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right’ (1844), quoted in Michelene Wandor, ‘The Conditions of Illusion’, in Sandra Allen, Lee Sanders and Jan Wallis (eds), Conditions of Illusion: Papers from the Women’s Movement (Leeds, 1974), p. 207.

  67. 67.

    See Amaya, ‘False Consciousness Coops People Up’, Spare Rib [SR], 30 (December 1974); Sue Bruley, ‘Women Awake, The Experience of Consciousness-Raising’, in Feminist Anthology Collective, No Turning Back: Writings from the Women’s Liberation Movement, 1975–1980 (London, 1981); Sue Bruley, ‘Consciousness-Raising in Clapham: Women’s Liberation as “Lived Experience” in South London in the 1970s’, Women’s History Review, 22:5 (2013).

  68. 68.

    Marsha Rowe, ‘Introduction’, in Marsha Rowe (ed.), The Spare Rib Reader (Harmondsworth, 1982), pp. 13, 18; Elizabeth Nelson, The British Counter-Culture, 1966–73: A Study of the Underground Press (Basingstoke, 1989), p. 140.

  69. 69.

    Faulder, ‘Women’s Magazines’, p. 191; Janice Winship, Inside Women’s Magazines (London and New York, 1987), p. 123.

  70. 70.

    Rowe, ‘Introduction’, p. 19.

  71. 71.

    Marsha Rowe, ‘Editorial: How and Why Does Spare Rib Work as a Collective?’, SR, 32 (February 1975); Marsha Rowe, ‘Introduction’, p. 18.

  72. 72.

    Hilary Wilce, ‘How Long Did You Believe That One?’, SR, 5 (November 1972); ‘Invitation’, SR, 28 (October 1974), p. 33; ‘Shaping Things to Come’, SR, 35 (May 1975), p. 45; ‘A Day in the Life of…Ann’, SR, 60 (July 1977); Ads, SR, 44 (March 1976), p. 27.

  73. 73.

    ‘News: Meet the Readers’, SR, 43 (January 1976), p. 28.

  74. 74.

    Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Complaints and Disorders: The Sexual Politics of Sickness (London, 1973), pp. 9–11.

  75. 75.

    ‘Editorial’, SR, 21 (March 1974), p. 10.

  76. 76.

    ‘Self-Examination, Why It’s So Important’, SR, 21 (March 1974); Essex Road London Women’s Health Group, ‘How to Get an Abortion’, SR, 38 (August 1975).

  77. 77.

    See Susan Wells, ‘“Our Bodies, Ourselves”: Reading the Written Body’, Signs, 33:3 (Spring 2008), pp. 703–8.

  78. 78.

    See for example Lin Layram, ‘To Lose a Breast Seemed More Terrible Than Dying’; Jill Rakusen, ‘The Diagnosis, Treatment and Aftercare of Breast Cancer’; and ‘Breast Self-Examination’, all published in SR, 37 (July 1975).

  79. 79.

    Gillian Lacey, ‘Conditioning Goes Deeper Than I Cared to Imagine’, SR, 23 (May 1974); Archway Women’s Health Group, ‘Salpingitis’, SR, 61 (August 1977). See also the description of Lacey’s article in ‘Back Ribs on Health’, SR, 63 (October 1977).

  80. 80.

    An exception is Letter from Biddy de Muro, ‘Odds and Sods: Conception or Adoption?’, SR, 39 (September 1975).

  81. 81.

    ‘The Four Demands’, in Michelene Wandor (compiler), The Body Politic: Women’s Liberation in Britain (London, 1972), p. 2.

  82. 82.

    For a succinct statement of this view, see Juliet Mitchell, Woman’s Estate (Harmondsworth, 1971), pp. 107–8.

  83. 83.

    Ann Oakley, Subject Women (London, 1982), pp. 189–90, 207.

  84. 84.

    See, for example, ‘Editorial’, SR, 33 (March 1975).

  85. 85.

    Oakley, Subject Women, pp. 207–9.

  86. 86.

    Shulamith Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex (London, 1979) [1970], quotation p. 190; for a summary of her argument, see pp. 19, 192–7.

  87. 87.

    Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex, pp. 188–9, 224.

  88. 88.

    Sue O’Sullivan, ‘Sterilization’, SR, 33 (March 1975), p. 13: Emphasis in the original.

  89. 89.

    Quotation Michelene Wandor, ‘Reviews’, SR, 9 (March 1973), p. 29. See also Michelene Wandor, ‘From Tribal Kitchen Sink to Dishwasher’, Red Rag, 3 (1973); Brigitte Gohdes, ‘A Substitute for Nature, Chance and Human Relations?’, SR, 145 (August 1984).

  90. 90.

    Women and Science Collective, ‘Seeing Through Science’, SR, 39 (September 1975), p. 14; see also Ann Oakley, The Captured Womb: A History of the Medical Care of Pregnant Women (Oxford, 1984), pp. 282–3.

  91. 91.

    Jalna Hanmer and Pat Allen, ‘Reproductive Engineering: The Final Solution?’, in Brighton Women and Science Group, Alice Through the Microscope: The Power of Science Over Women’s Lives (London, 1980), pp. 226–7.

  92. 92.

    Hanmer and Allen, ‘Reproductive Engineering’, p. 209.

  93. 93.

    Gena Corea, The Mother Machine: Reproductive Technologies from Artificial Insemination to Artificial Wombs (London, 1988) [1985], p. 6; see pp. 327–30 for more on the foundation and aims of FINRRAGE.

  94. 94.

    Corea, The Mother Machine, pp. 169–70.

  95. 95.

    Corea, The Mother Machine, p. 173.

  96. 96.

    For a thorough critique of this position, see Sandelowski, ‘Failures of Volition’, especially pp. 498–9.

  97. 97.

    Lacey, ‘Conditioning Goes Deeper Than I Cared to Imagine’.

  98. 98.

    Lacey, ‘Conditioning Goes Deeper Than I Cared to Imagine’, p. 11.

  99. 99.

    Naomi Pfeffer and Anne Woollett, The Experience of Infertility (London, 1983), p. 1. Hereafter TEI.

  100. 100.

    Pfeffer and Woollett, TEI, pp. 54, 147: Emphasis in the original.

  101. 101.

    Pfeffer and Woollett, TEI, pp. 99, 118.

  102. 102.

    Boston Women’s Health Book Collective/ Angela Phillips and Jill Rakusen, Our Bodies Ourselves: A Health Book By and For Women, British edn (Harmondsworth, 1978), p. 497. Hereafter OBOS.

  103. 103.

    Pfeffer and Woollett, TEI, pp. 19, 23; OBOS, pp. 490, 493, 498.

  104. 104.

    Pfeffer and Woollett, TEI, pp. 5, 31–2, 43.

  105. 105.

    Pfeffer and Woollett, TEI, pp. 17–18.

  106. 106.

    OBOS, pp. 489–90, 495–6; Pfeffer and Woollett, TEI, pp. 8–9, 14, 37, 42–5, 47, 49–50, 54, 63, 88, 102–5.

  107. 107.

    OBOS, pp. 497, 500; Pfeffer and Woollett, TEI, pp. 18–19, 40, 43, 140.

  108. 108.

    Pfeffer and Woollett, TEI, pp. 15, 100. See also pp. 19, 30, 40, 65.

  109. 109.

    Pfeffer and Woollett, TEI, p. 140; see also pp. 107, 138, 141.

  110. 110.

    Sara Maitland in Jean Radford, ‘Women Writing’, in Feminist Anthology Collective (ed.), No Turning Back, p. 262.

  111. 111.

    See Sara Maitland, Daughter of Jerusalem (London, 1993) [1978], pp. 49–51, 88–90; Letter from Barbara Jane, ‘Infertile Women on Abortion’, SR, 155 (June 1985), p. 5.

  112. 112.

    OBOS, p. 498.

  113. 113.

    Sarah Moore, in Ann Oakley, From Here to Maternity: Becoming a Mother (Harmondsworth, 1981), pp. 39–40.

  114. 114.

    Oakley, From Here to Maternity, pp. 117, 251–3, 256–7, quotation p. 267; see also Pfeffer and Woollett, TEI, p. 121.

  115. 115.

    Sheila Kitzinger, Women as Mothers (London, 1978), p. 47.

  116. 116.

    Barbara Charles and Anna Briggs, ‘Reproduction Rights’, SR, 71 (June 1978), pp. 43–6; Kitzinger, Women as Mothers, p. 245.

  117. 117.

    Makins, The Evelyn Home Story, p. 80.

  118. 118.

    Elizabeth Wilson, Mirror Writing: An Autobiography (London, 1982), pp. 138–40.

  119. 119.

    Ann Dally, Inventing Motherhood: The Consequences of an Ideal (London, 1982), pp. 165–85; Oakley, The Captured Womb, p. 253.

  120. 120.

    Sue O’Sullivan, ‘Discussing Childbirth’, in O’Sullivan (ed.), Women’s Health, pp. 303–4.

  121. 121.

    Lynne Segal, Making Trouble: Life and Politics (London, 2007), pp. 84–6.

  122. 122.

    Anna Davin, in Michelene Wandor (ed.), Once a Feminist: Stories of a Generation (London, 1990), p. 65.

  123. 123.

    Terry Slater, ‘Why I Decided to Have a Baby’, SR, 63 (October 1977).

  124. 124.

    Tessa Weare, ‘Round in a Flat World’, SR, 78 (January 1979), p. 16.

  125. 125.

    Pat Garland, in Jean McCrindle and Sheila Rowbotham (eds), Dutiful Daughters: Women Talk About Their Lives (Harmondsworth, 1979), p. 292.

  126. 126.

    Janet Ree, in Wandor (ed.), Once a Feminist, pp. 97, 100–1.

  127. 127.

    O’Sullivan, ‘Discussing Childbirth’, p. 303; Sue O’Sullivan, ‘My Old Man Said Follow the Vanguard’, in Sara Maitland (ed.), Very Heaven: Looking Back at the 1960s (London, 1988), p. 125.

  128. 128.

    Jo Ingram, in Oakley, From Here to Maternity, pp. 268–9.

  129. 129.

    Michèle Roberts, Paper Houses: A Memoir of the ’70s and Beyond (London, 2008), p. 50; Audrey Battersby and Catherine Hall, in Wandor (ed.), Once a Feminist, pp. 114–5, 177.

  130. 130.

    Weare, ‘Round in a Flat World’, p. 17.

  131. 131.

    Ree, in Wandor (ed.), Once a Feminist, pp. 102–3.

  132. 132.

    Radford, ‘Women Writing’, p. 260.

  133. 133.

    Oakley, From Here to Maternity, p. 22.

  134. 134.

    Ann Oakley, Taking it Like a Woman (London, 1985), p. 129.

  135. 135.

    See Margaret E. Reid, ‘A Feminist Sociological Imagination? Reading Ann Oakley’, Sociology of Health and Illness, 5:1 (2008).

  136. 136.

    Marsha Rowe, ‘Up From Down Under’, in Maitland (ed.), Very Heaven, p. 165.

  137. 137.

    O’Sullivan, ‘My Old Man Said Follow the Vanguard’, p. 113.

  138. 138.

    Sara Maitland, ‘“I Believe in Yesterday” – An Introduction’, in Maitland (ed.), Very Heaven, p. 11.

  139. 139.

    Wilson, Mirror Writing, pp. 152–7.

Research Resources

Primary Sources

    Magazines

    Autobiographies, Memoirs and Feminist Writing on Infertility

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    Author information

    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Department of History, University of Essex, Colchester, United Kingdom

      Tracey Loughran

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    1. Tracey Loughran
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    Editors and Affiliations

    1. School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, UK

      Gayle Davis

    2. Department of History, University of Essex, Colchester, Essex, UK

      Tracey Loughran

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    The research on women’s magazines for this chapter was supported by a British Academy Small Grant. My thanks to Gayle Davis, Matthew Grant and Stephanie Ward for their helpful comments on an earlier version of this chapter.

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    Loughran, T. (2017). Conditions of Illusion: Agency, Feminism, and Cultural Representations of Infertility in Britain, c. 1960–80. In: Davis, G., Loughran, T. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Infertility in History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52080-7_23

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52080-7_23

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    • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-52080-7

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