Let’s lay off the Baby Boomers
The world doesn’t need another book eviscerating the Baby Boomers. Fortunately, the American satirist PJ O’Rourke has written something less boring instead. O’Rourke’s account of ‘The Baby Boom’ begins promisingly with the preface, ‘to a book attempting to capture the spirit of a generation of God’s favourite spoiled brats’. ‘Herein is a ballad of the […]
What do young people in Britain really think about abortion?
Polls can tell us something about attitudes, and statistics can tell is something about behaviour. But they can’t tell us everything we want to know. We know that young people have abortions. In 2013, there were 127,000 abortions to women under the age of 30, out of a total of 185,000 for all women in […]
What’s the problem with older mothers?
This Q&A reviews the scientific and medical debates about later motherhood, seeking a balance between understanding the biological barriers to having babies in later life, and the lived reality – that many women do have healthy pregnancies in their late thirties. It situates this discussion in its wider social context, and indicates the policy implications […]
‘Pro-family’ politicians: a threat to the family
One of the great myths of British politics is that those who champion a liberal approach to abortion and divorce are ‘anti-family’, while those who wish to deny people the ability to have abortions and leave failed relationships are ‘pro-family’. To begin with, it is a myth in historical terms. Arguments that women should be […]
The politics of childbirth
In her new book Bumpology, the British science journalist Linda Geddes aims to ‘investigate the truth behind the old wives’ tales, alarming newspaper headlines and government guidelines’ that frame a woman’s pregnancy in the twenty-first century. Though her research led her to question the orthodoxy on drinking alcohol in pregnancy and exclusive breastfeeding, what ‘most […]
The ‘generation war’ over abortion rights
A generation war seems to have erupted in the US pro-choice movement. A front-page feature article in Time magazine, published in the 14 January edition, began with the bold statement: ‘Abortion-rights activists won an epic victory in Roe v Wade. They’ve been losing ever since’. The author, Kate Pickert, sees the famous US Supreme Court ruling […]
From the freewheelin’ Sixties to the fearmongerin’ Noughties
Arthur Marwick’s history of the Sixties, first published in 1998, is one of those books that you just want to have on your shelf. Covering every cultural development from the rise of the mini-skirt to the birth of hippy culture, from sex and urban planning to art, film and literature, it’s a fascinating romp through […]
How the nationalisation of parenting stoked the riots
‘We have nationalised child-raising’, claimed Shaun Bailey, head of the charity My Generation, during an autopsy of the riots and looting that swept England in summer 2011. Bailey continued: ‘People think that the government is responsible for their children – that weakens the family structure. One of the worst things as a parent is having […]
Divorcing marriage from morality
‘It is like a hydra: you cut off one head and get rid of a boring partner but inherit 26 new problems, your new partner’s children, family and so on.’ In such graphically grim terms did Sir Paul Coleridge, a senior High Court judge, launch a new campaign to promote marriage. Sir Paul told The Times (London) that he […]
A fresh-faced look at growing old
‘But hoping for worse health and shorter lives hardly seems consistent with the American dream.’ With such pithy insights, Susan Jacoby – the fiercely rational intellectual whose previous books include The Age of American Unreason – exposes the banality of modern prejudices that have become attached to old age and the process of ageing. One such prejudice […]