Love and Freedom: Professional Women and the Reshaping of Personal Life - Hardcover

Mackinnon, Alison

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521497361 ISBN 13: 9780521497367

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1997

Synopsis

In this 1997 book, Alison Mackinnon traces the history of women's challenges to changes in education, employment, reproductive science and law. She shows the connection between the lives of the first generation of women university graduates and the sudden decline in the national birthrate. So dramatic was this shift that it sparked a Royal Commission into its cause. Alison Mackinnon's extensive research shows that the declining birthrate was not simply the result of 'selfish', educated, young women refusing to bear the burdens of motherhood, but was symptomatic of a larger questioning of the role of women in procreation, the role of women in marriage and the institution of marriage itself. Utilising social and government history, autobiography and statistical analysis, this book shows that 'the Marriage Problem' exists as much in the 1990s as it did in the 1890s. Men and women today are still challenging the boundaries between work and home, profession and private life, trying to find a way to have it all.

About this title

Review

"Alison Mackinnon deftly weaves together three crucial changes in the lives of women during the past hundred years: feminism, education and birth control. This is a wonderfully lucid and convincing study." Martha Vicinus, University of Michigan

"In her excellent study, Alison Mackinnon extends to Australia a literature that examines the lives of early women college graduates and their entrance into professional life. Mackinnon has made an excellent contribution to women's history and to the history of work and family. her book is significant for all who are interested in the lives of women in the Anglophone world. The questions she shares about marriage, motherhood, and autonomy remain as relevant today as they were a century ago." Penina Migdal Glazer, American Historical Review

Book Description

Can the educated women of the 1990s have both a career and a fulfilling personal life? This 1997 book traces the history of women's responses to changes in education, employment, reproductive science and law since the 1890s.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521497361
• ISBN 13: 9780521497367
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 314