Female Identity and the Woman Songwriter, by Charlotte Greig

In this chapter Greig differentiates between women artists from male artists, citing the difference in the way which women write about the experiences in their lives that differ from those in men.
This takes it's form in childbirth, an experience which is unique to the collective female.
It is not just having a child, but the central question it creates in women's lives; whether or not to have children, when, etcetera.
Even though the question is always looming, there are not many songs about this female experience in popular music; female stars are seen as being free and independent, in a state of romantic androgyny; never--suspended in a sort of potential.
The author outlines that this absence of voice can be traced to the change of the song being an art form of expression to a commodity within the music marketplace.
Greig argues that we are finally seeing a response by women songwriters, seeing a voice in which it is easier for women to talk about childbearing and motherhood.

Greig talks about Joni Mitchell, her influence as a female singer/songwriter and her, albeit narcissistic, conversation of the female experience, her music connected her to the shared collective female experience.

The following is a short clip from the film Love Actually
http://www.anyclip.com/movies/love-actually/getting-a-joni-mitchel-cd/
{there are two clips and the second will load automatically after the first; please watch both}

In her song Countdown, strong female pop persona Beyonce {who at the release of the music video was known by the public to be pregnant} briefly touches on trying to have a baby:

My baby is a 10

We dressing to the 9

He pick me up we 8

Make me feel so lucky 7

He kiss me in his 6

We be making love at 5

Still the one I do this 4

I'm tryna make us 3

From that 2

He's still the 1

In Cyndi Lauper's song Sally's Pigeons, she sings of the loss of a friend to a botched abortion

Queries

1. Childbearing is definitely a female experience, but isn't childrearing also a part of the male experience? Don't men also feel anxiety/excitement over the central question of having children?

From the other side of the spectrum? Kenny Chesney's There Goes My Life