A Book Worth Reading
Book Review: What Are Children For? On Ambivalence and Choice by Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman (St. Martin’s Press, 2024).
By H. Duncan, M.F.A., a writer and copy editor at The VOICE.
Briefing: This book review examines a new work of nonfiction which explores contemporary attitudes toward whether to become a parent. The book draws from philosophy, theory, economic and political contexts, and art and literature as it provides a way of understanding and moving past the paralysis of uncertainty many women face.
What Are Children For? On Ambivalence and Choice by Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman (St. Martin’s Press, 2024).
2024 has been marked by a predominant mood of anxiety surrounding childlessness, from headlines sounding the alarm about declining birth rates—which reached a record low in the United States last year—to the seemingly unending fallout from Republican Vice-Presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s comments decrying “childless cat ladies.” Seen only in the big-picture framework of economics and politics, questions of family-building tend to obscure the swirl of motivations that go into this deeply personal decision a woman must make, a choice that touches on the most profound philosophical questions about what gives life its meaning.
Why are women delaying or forgoing motherhood? How should a person struggling with whether to start a family begin to approach this decision? Can one separate so-called “external factors”—whether one has enough money or the right partner—from the murkier trappings of one’s own wants and fears?
Enter What Are Children For? On Ambivalence and Choice, an engaging and often surprising new work of nonfiction by Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman. Both authors are editors of The Point, a magazine of philosophical writing, and Berg teaches philosophy at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
What Are Children For? seeks to “penetrate to the core the contemporary mood of ambivalence” toward parenthood. The tools are wide-ranging: survey data; an exploration of the roots and evolution of feminist discourse on motherhood; thoughtful probes into the role of attitudes toward dating, love, and personal fulfillment. The book quotes from sources as diverse as Angela Davis, Philip Larkin, Shulamith Firestone, and David Benatar. It is as much an explanation of “how we got here” as it is a guide for women suffering from “analysis paralysis.”
The authors also cast a refreshingly skeptical eye at common media narratives surrounding millennial and Gen Z women shirking motherhood. Regarding prophylactic or “social” egg freezing, the authors cite research showing many women choose egg freezing not primarily as a way to delay childbearing for the purpose of career advancement, as it is usually framed, but more often, to buy more time to find the ideal romantic partner with whom to raise kids (a point noted by CHR research fellow Dr. Sònia Gayete Lafuente in her piece on egg freezing in the September VOICE).
In another example, they investigate the notion that childless women face external pressure to become mothers, as exemplified by the trope of the mother nagging: ‘When are you going to give me grandkids?’ In fact, most of those surveyed reported facing no or little pressure from people in their lives and in the cases of some career fields, like academia, felt pressure not to have kids. (It is worth noting that most of the women Berg and Wiseman surveyed are more highly educated than the general population.)
The authors also dig deeper into the string of media headlines that cite the threat of climate change as a reason people aren’t having kids. Beyond the chatter, fear of ecological instability, they found, is rarely the primary or decisive factor in forgoing parenthood. Are people really concerned with the ethics of bringing children into a burning world, or can it be that it’s easier or more socially acceptable to couch one’s hesitancy in terms of environmental concern than to acknowledge one’s ambivalence?
A particularly interesting chapter examines the trend of so-called “motherhood ambivalence literature,” the spate of bestselling novels and memoirs of the past few years in which female narrators pore over the decision of whether to have kids in an “endless recursive” cycle. Often in these works, the question of motherhood is faced in “solitude and bewilderment.” Yet Berg and Wiseman point out that in a relationship, it is not only a woman’s decision to contend with; it can be unhelpful for men to simply remove themselves from the deliberations until their female partner makes her choice.
What Are Children For? is an illuminating read for anyone grappling with the question of whether to become a parent. It acknowledges the fraught reality of ambivalence while affirming that there are paths through it. And it states the urgency of finding that path; in Berg’s words—and as fertility doctors know all too well— “A decision delayed long enough makes itself.”