Sex and destiny: The politics of human fertility - Germaine Greer (First edition)

Every so often an author of international reputation, wide readership and established following produces a book so startling and unexpected that the author's reputation must be built anew. This is such a book.

Beginning with a simple comparison between the parent-child relationship in the affluent West and in the villages of the Middle East, India and Africa, Germaine Greer leads the reader to ask some of the most profound and disturbing questions ever to challenge the ethos of the nuclear family. Do we in the West despise our children? And if we protest in shock that we do not, why do we segregate them, reject them, ignore them and repress them until they, in turn, retaliate by rejecting us in our old age?

Even more disturbing questions follow. Is the West's obsession with over-population part of its rejection of its own fertility? Do we, who take so little pleasure in our own families, insist that this rejection be imposed on others whose major pleasure and self-esteem derive from the vitality of their family life?

Witty, erudite, authoritative, brought to life with personal anecdote, this is Germaine Greer's most important book. Dealing as it does with the most vital issues confronting the world and its human population, it is bound to be one of the most hotly debated books of the 1980s.