FYI: Childless Women Aren’t Villains

When Belle Boggs, a writer and educator living and working in North Carolina, wrote her first short story collection, she included a character undergoing fertility treatment. This was before Boggs and her husband explored in vitro fertilization treatments themselves, so the character, to her, was a symbol of yearning and unfulfilled desires. “Not only did I get some of the details of treatment wrong, but I also just ― I feel critical when I look back at the portrayal of that character,” Boggs said in an interview with The Huffington Post. “It bothered me when I looked back, the way I included IVF as this example of grasping at something. I was just interested in how I myself ― before I experienced any of these problems on my own ― had just integrated that narrative into my thinking.” Now, with her book, The Art of Waiting, consisting of connected essays that are both personal and rigorously researched, Boggs hopes to undo some of the myths we uphold about childlessness, fertility treatments, and the desire ― fulfilled or unfulfilled ― to have a family. The Art of Waiting explores negative portrayals of childless women and families in popular culture (as sinister, resentful). It manages also to delve deeply into the scientific and political processes of IVF, a treatment that’s much more accessible to some communities than it is to others. Boggs gracefully touches on her own brush with infertility, and by sharing stories of those ...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news