Fertility, Parenthood, and “The Great Decline”
Children often evoke our strongest emotions. When we think about them — when and whether to have them, whether we can have them, whether we’ll have the freedom to make the choices we want — we confront our deepest fears and hopes.
This month Tracy Frisch interviews Shanna Swan, an environmental and reproductive epidemiologist. Since the 1990s Swan has studied the way chemicals in industrial products harm reproductive health.
We’ve highlighted some selections from our archives on the complexities of bringing life into the world.
The Unknowing
Last summer one of our authors reflected on the twilight world between life and death — one that she and her wife inhabited while awaiting the birth of their child. At every step in their pregnancy, small omens of death shadowed their movements and haunted their thoughts.
July 2021
Talking to Trees
In a prose poem from twenty-two years ago, the author reflects on his wife’s efforts to save an injured baby raccoon — only to find the animal is as abandoned by rigid human regulations as it is by its own mother.
February 2000
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