Understanding life through unwanted childlessness: Ethnography and fiction from Ghana, Bangladesh and ‘dystopia’ (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate )

Drawing on ethnographic work in Ghana and Bangladesh, and on a British dystopian novel, we sketch the social, emotional, and existential consequences of childlessness for women who desperately want a child, as is still common in the two countries where the authors carried out research. For these women, childlessness leads to loneliness and a sense of uselessness. Underlying these emotions is the notion that children constitute and personify continuity; childlessness thus stands for the discontinuation of life.