Misconceptions


Misconceptions

 

A new book by Naomi Wolf

"A book of striking honesty. Naomi Wolf writes vividly about the deception and betrayal to which women are exposed in pregnancy and childbirth, and the abuse that comes from a society that is hostile to mothers and babies." (Sheila Kitzinger)

Every year, millions of women have their lives turned inside out by the experience of pregnancy. A contemporary woman finds herself caught in an absurd paradox: while in the grip of one of the most primal, lonely, sensual and, in some ways, psychologically debilitating and physically dangerous experience. She is overwhelmed by invasive, trivialising and infantilising cultural messages about what is happening to her - and who really owns the experience.

Naomi Wolf takes a critical look at the powerful vested interests in the pregnancy 'business' and at the social message coming at women: an amalgam of sentimentality, psychologically dangerous half-truths and conflicting ideologies.

She discusses with devastating honesty her own two pregnancies and those of other women, from the physical and emotional effects of having your body taken over, through the elation and the fear, to the choice of delivery method - where mother-friendly childbirth is often in conflict with hospital-friendly practice - and the shock of the postnatal experience.

Part memoir, part contemporary analysis, "Misconceptions" is a moving, provocative and unusually candid account of pregnancy and childbirth which for the first time tells the truth about women's conflicting emotions and society's hypocritical attitudes to women's experience.

Naomi Wolf's first book, The Beauty Myth, was named one of the most significant works of the twentieth century by the New York Times. Published in more than fourteen countries, it was an international bestseller.

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