#20. Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed
A sampler platter from 16 essays about the decision not to have kids.
A few weeks ago, I finished an anthology full of essays about the decision not to have children. It split me wide open, and I knew I wanted to share the book in some way. Instead of writing a “review” or jumping into writing my own essay on this subject–which I will definitely do at some point–I wanted to first really appreciate and let these essays soak in. I marked so many passages throughout the book that it was hard to choose, but ultimately I’ve decided to share one excerpt from each of the 16 essays that really stood out or impacted me in some way.
One thing I loved and appreciated about these essays is that they are written from the perspective of people who are past their childbearing years looking back. There’s something really magical and reassuring about these women (and a few men) sharing a big part of their lives in this way, holding the torch for those who will follow in their footsteps. May these essays live on to pave the way for some of us, assist others in better understanding this choice, and help even a select few find their way through this decision, representing the road less traveled.
“Babes in the Woods” by Courtney Hodell
I’m no Facebooker, but I started checking in daily to see photos of them settling in, 3,500 miles away. One morning, Christian posted: Last day of my paternity leave. Devastated. My little angel is five weeks old today. From this moment on, everything I do is for her and her wonderful daddy.
Here it was: I’d been kicked out of our tiny Narnia. The wardrobe held only coats. The cold stone in my chest was the rightness of what he’d written. In his novel On the Black Hill, Bruce Chatwin describes grown twins: “Because they knew each other’s thoughts, they even quarreled without speaking.” Now my brother was thinking and feeling things I never would. In college he’d taught me how to speak, but this was something I could never say aloud: Don’t leave me behind.
“Maternal Instincts” by Laura Kipnis
Though no one exactly says it, women are voting with their ovaries, and the reason is simple. There are too few social supports, especially given the fact that the majority of women are no longer just mothers now, they’re mother-workers. Yet virtually no social policy accounts for this. Interestingly, women with the most education are the ones having the fewest children, though even basic literacy has a negative effect on birthrates in the developing world–the higher the literacy rate, the lower the birthrate.
In other words, when women acquire critical skills and start weighing their options, they soon wise up to the fact that they’re not getting enough recompense for their labors.
“A Thousand Other Things” by Kate Christensen
I picture my life without children as a hole dug in sand and then filled with water. Into every void rushes something. Nature abhors a vacuum. Into the available space and time and energy of my kid-free life rushed a thousand other things. I published seven books in fourteen years and am writing two more now; I’ve written countless essays, interviews, reviews, blog posts, emails. My days are so busy and full and yet so calm and uninterrupted and self-directed, I can’t imagine how kids would fit in.
Kids talk so much. They require their parents’ undivided attention on demand. They are expensive. They require oceans of energy and attention. And so forth. No matter how much you love your kids, they’re always there, and you are entirely responsible for them, and this goes on for many, many years. Meanwhile, I’m an introvert, and so is Brendan. Children exhaust us, even the ones we love most. Our solitude is the most valuable thing we have, and we cherish it above most other things and work hard to maintain it.
“The New Rhoda” by Paul Lisicky
Imagine it. Look at a drop of your blood, your semen, your saliva, and think of it containing a thousand little grenades. Not just for you, but for the lover you came into intimate contact with. How would your life change? Could you ever disappear into yourself, your skin again? When you finally got the nerve to be tested, and found out that you did not carry those grenades, could you still think of that fluid as a substance you’d choose to make a baby with? Imagine it.
One does not feel exactly undead after being dead for so long.
“Be Here Now Means Be Gone Later” by Lionel Shriver
However rewarding at times, raising children can also be hard, trying, and dull, inevitably ensnaring us in those sucker values of self-sacrifice and duty. The odds of making you happier are surely no better than fifty-fifty. Studies have repeatedly documented that the self-reported “happiness” index is lower among parents than among the childless. Little wonder that so many women like me have taken a hard look at all those diapers, playgroups, and nasty plastic toys and said no, thanks.
“The Most Important Thing” by Sigrid Nunez
I remember a woman, a mentor, who once asked me if I thought I’d make a good mother. When I told her honestly that I didn’t know, she was mightily displeased. It was as if I’d confessed to being a bad person. But I am astonished at those who are unfazed by the prospect of child raising. A male friend of mine, childless but confident, once assured me, “You just give them lots and lots of love.” Perhaps only a man could believe it is as simple as that.
“Mommy Fearest” by Anna Holmes
The example set by my own mother is one that informs much about my decision to not have kids, and her story fills me with both pride and guilt. A skinny, curious Midwestern girl who escaped her insular, tiny Ohio town and headed east to New York City, where she earned the first of two graduate degrees, worked in social justice, and traveled the world, my mother found herself, a decade and a half later, trapped in a wholly unremarkable suburb ten miles west of Sacramento, California, teaching typing skills to snotty thirteen-year-olds and supporting two grumpy daughters desperate to be left alone in their rooms except for occasional shopping trips to Macy’s in search of Guess? jeans.
Is this the life she imagined for herself? My mother would no doubt take issue with what I’ve just written. She would flinch at the idea that her two children are anything but beautiful blessings, beings made from love between her and my adoring father, conduits through which she was able to channel all of her love, and to experience and further indulge her curiosity and wonder at the world. She would deny that she lost something of herself in motherhood, and, though she might concede to having felt the occasional bout of frustration, and maybe even acknowledge a relationship between child rearing and ambitions left unfulfilled, she would maintain that she had never communicated this to her children with any specificity. She’d be right; she did not. But my sister and I did not need to hear our mother acknowledge how much parenting–much of it single parenting–limited her life; we saw it every day. We understood that by devoting her life to us, she was, in some ways, giving up herself.
“Amateurs” by Michelle Huneven
Meanwhile, these tiny newcomers changed my friendships. Anything a baby did–chortle, fart, emit a piercing scream–trumped whatever we adults were talking about. Conversations, once our great pleasure, were now sound bites snatched between negotiations over toys and candy. One friend who lived forty miles away had me over for dinner–her husband was out of town, so we’d have a whole night to talk! Before dessert, she went to put her three-year-old to bed. And never came back. I called out to her a few times, at intervals. In all, I sat at the table for more than an hour, politely refraining from the pot de créme.
Then I drove the forty miles home.
“Save Yourself” by Danielle Henderson
I recognize the work and sacrifice that goes into being a good parent and I think I’d be well suited to the task; though the idea of pushing a baby out of my body has always seemed painful and ruinous to me, I’m not afraid of babies. I’m not afraid of all the things you have to do to keep them alive, and I think I’d be able to do it all without worrying about them constantly. I don’t think babies need thousands of dollars’ worth of toys or equipment to be happy and well-adjusted, and I already stay awake until three A.M. most nights, bleary eyed but focused as I work on projects or finish writing essays like these. Parenting doesn’t freak me out.
But I spent the majority of my formative years healing from what felt to me like bad parenting, which made me realize that sometimes your willingness to be a parent isn’t enough. Sometimes love runs out. It took me a long time to figure out how to fill my life with the love my parents didn’t seem to be able to give me. I decided to take the love I’d have for a child and give it to myself instead.
“The Trouble With Having it All” by Pam Houston
Try this on. What if I didn’t want to have babies because I loved my job too much to compromise it, or because serious travel makes me feel in relation to the world in an utterly essential way? What if I’ve always liked the looks of my own life much better than those of the ones I saw around me? What if, given the option, I would prefer to accept an assignment to go trekking for a month in the kingdom of Bhutan than spend that same month folding onesies? What if I simply like dogs a whole lot better than babies? What if I have become sure that personal freedom is the thing I hold most dear?
“Beyond Beyond Motherhood” by Jeanne Safer
Trivial as it may sound, I’m thrilled I never had to set foot in Disneyland (or feel guilty about not taking someone there), or worry about playdates or, down the road, online pornography and all the other scourges of adolescence. I don’t miss any of it. Neither do I feel selfish or “barren,” as childless women used to be called (it is telling that there is no parallel term for childless men).
“Over and Out” by Geoff Dyer
For many people, having and raising a child is the most fulfilling thing in their lives. Quite a few friends who’d been indifferent to having kids found that once the plunge had been taken, often accidentally, their lives had a meaning and purpose that they previously lacked. People realize that a life that had seemed enjoyable (travel, social life, romance) and fulfilling (work) was actually empty and meaningless. So they urge you to join the child-rearing party: they want you to share the riches, the pleasures, the joys. Or so they claim. I suspect that they just want to share and spread the misery.
“You’d Be Such a Good Mother, If Only You Weren’t You” by M.G. Lord
In retrospect, I should have left the relationship. I should have heard my body’s message. It knew who I was and how far I could travel from my core self without breaking.
“The Hardest Art” by Rosemary Mahoney
I often ask my brothers and sisters how they let their children go off to school alone in the morning in a world full of bullies and pederasts, drunk drivers and drive-by shooters. I would not be able to let my child leave the house without a helmet on his head until he was thirty years old. I would have to follow him around everywhere he went, safeguarding him from everything that could cause him harm or suffering. I would be unhinged by the dangers he faced and would be so overprotective I fear I would destroy him and myself in the process.
“Just An Aunt” by Elliott Holt
In my early thirties, I thought I wanted kids. Most of my friends were having children. (I hosted five different baby showers between 2006 and 2010, and attended at least twenty-five more. I’ve spent thousands of dollars on tiny outfits and charming bath toys.) Watching my friends marry and reproduce while I remained single and childless made me feel like a foreign exchange student: I could understand some of the language of coupledom and parenthood, but I was not a native speaker, and I was always trying to catch up in conversations. “Having kids gives you perspective,” a friend once said to me, smugly, in response to my worries about what he considered a minor problem. He wasn’t the first person to make me feel like my childless state was a character flaw.
“The End of The Line” by Tim Kreider
The childless, on the other hand, like to claim that they’re living more fully conscious lives than those brainless docile hordes helplessly breeding at the dictates of their DNA. They cite the imminent threats of overpopulation, global warming, peak oil, and, don’t let’s forget, nuclear war, still very much on the table–all of which are perfectly valid and persuasive reasons for not procreating, and none of which do I believe for one second is anyone’s real reason.
Our real reasons may be less obvious than those of parents–or the child curs’d, as we like to call them–but I have no doubt they’re just as unconscious and primal. The rise in voluntary childlessness, like the decrease in fertility and the increase in homosexuality, may be an evolutionary adaptation to overpopulation. Or, since the phenomenon is more prevalent in the West, maybe it’s an effect of wealth and plenty. Or perhaps it’s a symptom of a civilization in its decadence, a loss of vitality or optimism. Or maybe bad parenting, like vampirism, grows exponentially with each new generation, and we’ve finally reached a critical mass of people whose own childhoods were so lousy they’ve taken Philip Larkin’s famously dout advice: “Don’t have any kids yourself.”
If you’re intrigued and would like to read the rest of these essays, you can find the book here.
P.S. I’m not the biggest fan of the author who put this anthology together, Meghan Daum, but I didn’t want that to take away from what I got out of the book. I did not include an excerpt from the forward.
What’s Up This Week
Wine: ????????
MSRP: ????
Color: Rosé, in honor of The Bachelor finale, of course. There’s something that gives a lot of French rosé away immediately. It’s the color. If it’s salmon colored, there’s like a 60% chance it’s from Provence. New world rosé tends to be more saturated and more pink.
Nose: Notes of gunpowder and lead pencil, which in a rosé is almost a sure bet we’re in France. Raspberry bush and tight, white florals. Lovely!
Palate: This is a summer wine to drink outside in the grass. It’s mineraly, salty, floral, and bright. Exactly what I love in a rosé. None of the too-sweet gummy bear notes you often get from new world rosé, which I like a lot less.
Paul’s official blind guess: A 2022 rosé from Provence for around $18
The REVEAL…
2021 Miraval Rosé from Provence
MSRP: $20-$25
Availability: Extremely wide! You might have even had this before.
Worth it: That’s a yes.
Conclusion: I kind of unknowingly served Paul two wines blind right in a row that are some of his absolute favorites–he’s had probably hundreds of French rosés and New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc over the years, so these two were easy for him. I’ll throw him a curveball next time! We both loved this rosé and would 100% buy it again. We also both agree this wine would make an incredible gift–the bottle is really lovely, and this isn’t a wine we’d call “polarizing.” Most people who try this will like it. An absolutely perfect summer picnic wine, or congratulatory gift for your friend who just got into grad school. Enjoy!!!
Daisy Jones & The Six absolutely stuck the landing for me. So far it’s unclear if there will be another season, but I really loved the finale. I know there are several changes from the book (which I read in 2019, so I honestly remember very little) but I love that Daisy ultimately became the heroine we needed, even if she’s far from perfect. I cried a little bit when she told Billy to go during their last ever song. What a moment!!
In other TV news, obviously I am already caught up on all the episodes that have been released so far of Love is Blind Season 4. Damn, this season is MESSY. More than any other season so far, there has been a lot of speculative “partner switching” that I wish was actually incorporated into the show somehow! I’m VERY EXCITED to see what happens next episode in the cliffhanger conversation between Zack and Bliss. This is kind of the first time we’ve seen this actually in the show (Kyle and Deepti, who were each other’s second choices from the pods phase in Season 2, got together for a while after their season of Love is Blind, which was less fun for us as the viewers). If Bliss and Zack decide to give it a go, will they just try to play massive catch up before wedding week? Will they get engaged?! I doubt it, but you never know…
I still stand by my assertion that the Daisy Jones & The Six album is only okay, despite becoming the first ever fictional band to hit #1 on the iTunes chart. Pitchfork similarly gave Aurora a 6.6/10 and said, “The soundtrack seeks to emulate the magic of Fleetwood Mac. More often than not, it ends up sounding like a Broadway tribute” which feels spot on. HOWEVER, “Let Me Down Easy” has really grown on me and I’ve listened to it so many times recently I had no choice but to name it my song of the week. Best listened to in the car on full blast with the windows partially down.
Well congrats to Zach and Kaity, which we all saw coming from a mile away several episodes ago. My attention this week was really focused more on Gabi, who has clearly entered her Reputation era. It’s unknown at this point why she isn’t the next Bachelorette–after everything that went down, there’s no doubt in my mind she deserved it–but maybe she doesn’t want it. I’m almost wondering if Gabi turned down the chance to lead her own season and is sick enough of this show that she won’t end up in Paradise, either.
As much as I love Kaity and Zach together and believe that was the right choice, the wind was taken out of my sails a bit watching the finale because I was still really hurting for Gabi. I don’t know if we’ve ever seen someone get out of the limo knowing it wasn’t them and actually saying that to the host before. That was tough to watch, and then seeing how she is still really going through it at AFR just made me really sad. I loved this Reel Kaity posted a few days ago featuring her and Gabi, and Gabi’s response in the comments. Really living for their friendship!! I’ll watch Charity’s season when it premieres in June, but I’m really just waiting for the next season of Paradise to start. Until then…
Thanks for reading!
K bye,
Kelly
P.S. On Sunday I published my longest issue to date (by far!), issue #19. It’s a practical guide to buying an engagement ring that combines my experience working in the jewelry industry selling engagement rings for a living with my experiences as a buyer/wearer myself. It includes a 10-step guide, insider’s tips, answers to your questions, an educational crash course, stores I like, and a glossary. It took approximately 100 years to put together and though it’s niche, I hope it’s helpful to whoever needs it!! If you know of anyone who is looking or will be soon, send it their way, with my thanks <3