The American empire military needs people. As Condoleeza Rice, as Secretary of State, said some decades back: Generational commitments require the generation of more people. In other words, it is American womens job to feed the war machine. Today, American women are having fewer children or none at all. Unlike the U.S., when other comparable countries birth rates drop governments panic and act. They offer things like underwriting childbearing and childrearing, paid maternal or parental leave, free or subsidized childcare, universal health care, cash payments to parents, free schooling through college, and subsidies for housing. In the U.S., the labor of bearing and rearing children is on the backs of families. There are others that are interested in womens labor production besides the military. A higher birth rate serves an economic goal: a continually expanding workforce raised with a minimum of public spending and a maximum of womens unpaid work. Brown contends that as long as we think of the battle over abortion and birth control as primarily a cultural conflict in which the two sides simply hold different world views, it is not clear why corporate owners and establishment planners would have much interest in it one way or another. But if we look at the battle as a fight over the production of humanshow many, how fast, and at what costthen it seems likely that employers, as a class, would have an intense interest. Whatever you call the power elites, they continue to have a lot of power, prestige, money, and control, and continue to want more. Brown cites the reason they spend so much money on think tanks and foundations is that they have to figure out how to get around peoples natural demands for liberty, equality, and a fair share of the good things in life. Her book is consciousness-raising, thought-provoking and revolutionary. She brings transparency, anathema to the ruling elites. Brown believes that when women understand the true value of womens work and direct their anger to those who are responsible for womens poor conditions, they will open the opportunity for fundamental changes. Eleven chapters are: international comparisons; small government, big families, is it a birth strike? Women testify; Comstockery to the baby boom; population panic to the baby bust; longevity: crisis or blessing? Immigration: instant adults: reproduction and race; cheap labor; cannon fodder; controlling the means of reproduction. Annotation 2019 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)
