Firestone believed the historical origins of women’s oppression lay in the uncontrolled pregnancies undergone by fertile women before effective contraception became widely available. The fact that most women of childbearing age would be caught up in a constant cycle of pregnancy, childbirth and nursing small children, meant that women became dependent upon men for provision of the necessities of life such as food and shelter and excluded from other social functions. This created the first class division among humans – male producers, female reproducers.
With women freed from their traditional roles in reproduction, Firestone believed that a different kind of parenting could emerge. The nuclear family, which she saw as a symbol of male power, could be abolished and replaced by a diffuse structure of parenting in which children would be raised by groups of adults, named “households”. Sharing parental responsibilities would enable women to become mothers without having to sacrifice their former occupations and identities. Children would benefit from having nurturing relationships with multiple adults, while parenting would open up to people unable to become biological parents themselves.
What makes her book worth returning to is its central recognition that the capacity to become pregnant is the ground upon which much exploitation and inequality still operate, and that addressing this will require society to think in radical ways.
The full article is here:
theconversation.com/shulamith-firestone-why-the-radical-feminist-who-wanted-to-abolish-pregnancy-remains-relevant-115730
I copied this from a facebook thread which also has a link to a pdf version you can download of The Dialectic of Sex: The Case for Feminist Revolution which some say is THE radical feminist text. f.cl.ly/items/2B1K2i1N0Z0r0y2l3K3q/FS-DSCFR.pdf?fbclid=IwAR2kTDyV6hqpKDFOGRl-K8wB_s74JMW74H7Mr3c5-cT1lUDTvP89cQ7PAoo