The following are my Kindle highlights from Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids by Meghan Daum.
Buy the book. It’s so good.
Introduction by Meghan Daum
Page 2
Those of us who choose not to become parents are a bit like Unitarians or nonnative Californians; we tend to arrive at our destination via our own meandering, sometimes agonizing paths.
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A few actively pursued parenthood before realizing they were chasing a dream that theyād mistaken for their own but that actually belonged to someone elseā a partner, a family member, the culture at large.
Page 3
I wanted to show that there are just as many ways of being a nonparent as there are of being a parent. You can do it lazily and self- servingly or you can do it generously and imaginatively. You can be cool about it or you can be a jerk about it.
Page 10
Itās about time we stop mistaking self- knowledge for self- absorptionā and realize that nobody has a monopoly on selfishness.
āBabes in the Woodsā by Courtney Hodell
Page 16
She had a record contract, she toured, and now she played her electric guitar slung sidesaddle to her enormous belly. I thought that she, if anyone, might be able to invent a new kind of motherhood. But when I visited, the baby cried and cried and cried and cried, creating a sort of huge ear- popping pressure that shoved all thought out of the room. I quietly got up to leaveā it somehow seemed almost an indecent thing to witness. My indomitable friend stood with her back to me, gripping the porcelain of the kitchen sink, and said dully, āPlease donāt go.ā Even her bright mind seemed ground down. Her bravery terrified me, and so did the foreverness of what sheād done. I still feel the ecstatic release of driving away from that house along the coast road, the long way around just because I could, twiddling the radio dial for a good midnight song to rinse away the static.
Page 20
Hereās where I tell you that I love children, and where you look at me skeptically. But I do. I love them for their wild experiments with language; for their inability to feign interest in things that do not truly grip them; for their seriousness and total immersion in play.
Page 20
āBoredom in children is useful. Boredom in adults is not.ā I, too, was sometimes aghast at the short- fibered thoughts of my friends whose small children beseeched or bellowed as their stories were begun again and again and never finished, whereas I got to spoil myself with long hours of unspooling daydreams. (A nagging thought: What did I have to show for all that free time the mothers didnāt have?) But itās also true that I was staggered by the transformation of these women. Their devotion, their patience (not something Iād always noted in them before the kids came). They were not showing off; this was not display. There was no statute saying they had to give themselves over so completely. They were going to wipe the face, wipe the bottom, feed, bathe, lull, teach by word, teach by example, read the books, put away the toys, buy the tiny clothes, six months later buy a slightly larger set of clothes, fret about the schools, and on and on; the caring and the worry was never, ever, ever going to stop, not until death. I wasnāt sure I had it in me.
Page 28
Iāve learned from the work of the primatologist Sarah Hrdy that aunts exist in nature. Of course they are everywhere, biologically speaking, but some (marmosets and langurs, Iām looking at you) truly behave as the aunt I want to be, the aunt I have already become, and this is called allomothering. They will feed, groom, hold, and carry a child when they have had none of their own. So there is a word for what this is that Iām doing, I and all my sisters of the genetic dead end. Whatever Iāve learned in this life will not stop with me; Iāll teach it to Elsa.
āMaternal Instinctsā by Laura Kipnis
Page 37
I realize, looking back, that the image of myself struggling on the train with too much baggage was analogous to my sense of what being a mother would feel like: weighted down and immobilized, though my ambivalence surely had as much to do with my perception of the social role of āmotherā as with diaper bags. (I probably could have bought a car for the commute instead of struggling on the trainā I later did just that.) But one of the pleasures of living with a jazz musician was picking up and meeting him in far- flung places on short notice, or traveling as a band girlfriend for stretches: jaunts to Japan, Europe, Omaha. I learned to pack light and not carp about delays. (Also to go through a different customs line than the band unless I wanted every last toiletry opened and sniffed.) I liked having the kind of life where you didnāt know what was going to come next; the opposite of what life as a mother would be, or so I presumed.
Page 38
I was willing to contemplate kids, though if Iām being honest, among the factors militating against it was my profound dread of being conscripted into the community of other mothersā the sociality of the playground and day- care center, and at the endless activities and lessons that are de rigueur in todayās codes of upper- middle- class parenting. It terrified me. For one thing, Iāve never been good at small talk, or female conventionality. Also, the mothers I met struck me as a strange and unenviable breed: harried, hampered, resentful. I didnāt want to accidentally become one of them. I know there are unparalleled joys in having childrenā the deep love for another creature; the connection to a greater human purpose. But then there are the day- to- day realities. Letās face it: childrenās intellectual capacities and conversational acumen are not their best features. Boredom and intellectual atrophy are the normal conditions of daily life for the child- raising classes. All of which I could see all too plainly on the faces of the other women around the swing set when I hauled my beloved niece and nephews to various playgrounds or trotted them around to kiddie museums over the years.
Page 45
In retrospect, not having children feels to me like having dodged a bullet. I think the lifestyle would have felt too constraining, too routine, though I do sometimes encounter women who seem to manage it with panache. (Usually these are women with the resources for lots of child care.) Still, I confess to feeling an unseemly little pleasure at having eluded natureās snare, saying āfuck youā to all that, though natureās going to get us all in the end, obviously.
āA Thousand Other Thingsā by Kate Christensen
Page 59
There was, and still is, no void where they would have been. In fact, I have no room in my life for kids, no place for them, no time. I remember my long- ago feverish urge to have a baby fondly and with relief. It seems to me, in hindsight, that it was a biological, hormonal impulse, an imperative that arose when the right moment came and then, unfulfilled, simply went away over time. If I had had children with my ex- husband, I would have had to choose between staying in a marriage that was unsatisfying and lonely and leaving and breaking up my family and sharing custody with my ex- husband, negotiating everyoneās schedule for many years. Instead of being autonomous and traveling light, I would have had a hard time leaving New York and separating my kids from their father. I might have been stuck there, too. I might never have met Brendan, never moved north to the White Mountains and Maine. I would have missed out on so much. 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.
Page 60
My days are so busy and full and yet so calm and uninterrupted and self- directed, I canāt imagine how kids would fit in. Kids talk so much. They require their parentsā 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, theyāre always there, and you are entirely responsible for them, and this goes on for many, many years. Meanwhile, Iām 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.
Page 60
Sometimes we posit a scenario in which we were both young when we met, and we imagine that we would have had kids, if only because I would have wanted them. And we would have raised them with all our best efforts and unflagging commitment. But we also would have become different people, made different choices, and had a different relationship with each other; more distant and harried, more responsible, more grown- up. Instead, we have this life, and we are these people. We get to go to bed every night together, alone, and wake up together, alone. Our shared passions thrill and satisfy us, and our abundant freedomsā to daydream; to cook exactly the food we want when we want it; to drink wine and watch a movie without worrying about whoās not yet asleep upstairs; to pick up and go anywhere we want, anytime; to do our work uninterrupted; to shape our own days to our own liking; and to stay connected to each other without feeling fracturedā are not things weād choose to give up for anyone, ever.
Page 62
I let them go back to the void, those unknown people I would have loved with all my heart and soul but will never know. I canāt miss what Iāve never had.
āThe New Rhodaā by Paul Lisicky
Page 76
In spite of my doubts, Iād probably say yes if I ever became involved with someone who wanted to be a parent. Iām not saying that lightly, though I might be saying it with the same level of commitment with which Iād say, āOf course Iād move to Tokyo.ā How do we even talk about the future when thereās less and less of it every minute? Who are we kidding when we speak of planning the time ahead? So Iāll just talk to the Child- Who- Might- Never- Be instead: It is too late for me to be the kind of parent you might want. I will not be like the parents of your friends. I will probably hang out with your friends, and when they come to the house to visit, theyāll probably want to see me as much as they want to see you. My mother was just like that, remember? We will squeeze chocolate syrup onto our yogurt. We will take the stereo out into the backyard and turn up the volume too loud, disturbing the next- door neighbors. We will name the birds in the branches and on the lawn: song sparrow, house finch, marsh wren, cardinal. I will probably embarrass you by the way I dress. (Skinny jeans again? Dad!) No, I will not put on another pair of pants. You will get used to my awkwardness, my kisses, my dropped keys, my trying to be present with you, now and now and now and now.
āBe Here Now Means Be Gone Laterā by Lionel Shriver
Page 82
But medical technology is only one piece of the puzzle. During the Industrial Revolution, Western fertility rates plunged in a similar fashion. This so- called ādemographic transitionā is usually attributed to the conversion from a rural agrarian economy to an urban industrialized one, and thus to childrenās shift from financial asset to financial burden. But what is fascinating about the abrupt decrease in family size at the turn of the last century is that it was accomplished without the Pill. Without diaphragms, IUDs, spermicides, vaginal sponges, estrogen patches, or commercial condoms. Whether through abstinence, backstreet abortion, infanticide, or the rhythm method, people who couldnāt afford more children didnāt have them. Therefore the increased availability of reliable contraception around 1960 no more than partially explains plummeting birthrates thereafter. The difference between Germany and Niger isnāt pharmaceutical; itās cultural.
Page 83
To be ridiculously sweeping: baby boomers and their offspring have shifted emphasis from the communal to the individual, from the future to the present, from virtue to personal satisfaction. Increasingly secular, we pledge allegiance to lowercase gods of our private devising. We are concerned with leading less a good life than the good life. In contrast to our predecessors, we seldom ask ourselves whether we serve a greater social purpose; we are more likely to ask ourselves if we are happy. We shun self- sacrifice and duty as the soft spots of suckers. We give little thought to the perpetuation of lineage, culture, or nation; we take our heritage for granted. We are ahistorical. We measure the value of our lives within the brackets of our own births and deaths, and weāre not especially bothered with what happens once weāre dead. As we ageā oh, so reluctantly!ā we are apt to look back on our pasts and question not did I serve family, God, and country, but did I ever get to Cuba, or run a marathon? Did I take up landscape painting? Was I fat? We will assess the success of our lives in accordance not with whether they were righteous, but with whether they were interesting and fun.
Page 85
āI remember being astonished to meet contemporaries who had decided to have children within years of leaving university. It seemed utterly nonsensical. Here we were, just emerged from the tedious constraints of a seemingly endless education, financially independent for the first time, tasting our liberties at last, and the first thing they decided to do was to enter the prison of child rearing, with all its boring routines and dreadful responsibilities. Having children in my twenties would have spelled the end of everything I had spent my life working toward and was about to really enjoy: the ability to spend my money the way I wanted, travel where I wanted, choose my partners, live as I wished.ā By her late thirties, however, she had misgivings. Friends were having children, and she felt left out. Encountering other peopleās children, she realized āthere were great joys to be had from the processā and that āwatching something [sicā to nonparents, children are often mistaken for objects] growing and changing each day was also an intellectually intriguing process.ā Ergo, kids just might be interesting and fun.
Page 87
When I ask her what she believes redeems her life in the absence of children, her answers are unhesitating. āFirst, my work. Not in the sense of ambition and earning power (ha- ha), but in the sense that the only imprint I can leave on this earth is my work. My motto, as the years go by, has become that of Voltaireās Candide: āIl faut cultiver notre jardin.ā We need to tend the garden. Do it as well as you can. Writing is my only skill; I apply it to the best of my abilities.ā Second, āI live for friendships and family. I have friendships that have gone on for so long and have been so close that I suppose they constitute a form of marriage.ā On her own account, she has no regrets. āHad I had children, I would have written no books, nor would I have been a particularly successful journalist. I certainly wouldnāt have gone off to Africa. Iād rather pine for children than die saying to myself, āI could have been a contender.ā I was a contender.ā
Page 88
āIām an atheist. Iām a solipsist. As far as Iām concerned, while I know intellectually that the world and its inhabitants will continue after my death, it has no real meaning for me. I am terrified of and obsessed with my own extinction, and what happens next is of little interest to me. I certainly donāt feel I owe the future anything, and that includes my genes and my offspring. I feel absolutely no sense of responsibility for the propagation of the human race. There are far too many human beings in the world as it is. I am happy to leave that task to someone else.ā *
Page 92
Leslie offers evidence that Be Here Nowā living for the presentā is not always morally arid. āI certainly donāt see my purpose as being to perpetuate the human race. What makes my life worth living for me and also what, I think, redeems my life is my relationships and interaction with others, be they family, friends, lovers, colleagues, total strangers. I think what redeems individuals is their acts of humanity.ā
Page 95
Womenā men as wellā are free to choose from a host of fascinating lives that may or may not involve children, and couples are opting for the latter in droves. My friends and I are decent peopleā or at least we treat each other well. Weāre interesting. Weāre fun. But writ large, weāre an economic, cultural, and moral disaster.
Page 96
When Islamic fundamentalists accuse the West of being decadent, degenerate, and debauched, you have to wonder if maybe theyāve got a point.
āThe Most Important Thingā by Sigrid Nunez
Page 104
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, āYou just give them lots and lots of love.ā Perhaps only a man could believe it is as simple as that.
Page 105
āThere is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children.ā
Page 110
Grace Paley once jeered at the idea that had been put over on women that taking care of children was a profession, a specialization, that had to be done perfectly. To her, this reeked of self- importance. āThat is not a profession for grown- up people, to bring up one child,ā she said. āItās a joke.ā
Page 111
āI canāt find a model, a female literary model who did the work she wanted to do and led an ordinary heterosexual life and had children. Where is she?ā
Page 112
although women have always written fiction about the experience of taking care of children, it is only with Knausgaardās Struggle, an international literary hit that contains much minutely detailed description of such things as diaper changing, baby feeding, and dealing with tantrums, that the world has sat up and found this confessional domestic material, now that it is revealed through male eyes, not just worthy of interest but sensational.
Page 113
āI do think itās plenty hard to be a man. Think if Iād had to support a family, in those early years of failure?ā
Page 113
All the years when I was considering whether to have a child, I kept wondering how on earth this was supposed to work. It did not help that among older, established writers I knew, there were precious few models. What I saw was a huge group of dysfunctional (mostly divorced) parents whose children all seemed to have problems. It did not help that with each passing childbearing year, I was discovering more and more how incompatible my writing life was with any other kind of life.
Page 114
Many times, just having a man in my life seemed like one person too many, with the relationship inevitably coming between me and my work. And since writing novels is rarely a lucrative profession, like almost all writers, I had to do some other kind of work in order to live, meaning that a substantial amount of time had to be given up to teaching. Finally, it did not help that my career coincided with a period in which the publishing industry has been in a state of chronic instability, not to say crisis, forcing me and most writers I know to accept precariousness and unrelenting anxiety as occupational hazards. All this contributed to my sense that starting a family was as reasonable as building a house on quicksand.
Page 114
Who knows. If Iād gone ahead and had a child, maybe what happened to Natalia Ginzburg would also have happened to me. I would have begun to feel contempt for writing, my bundle of joy replacing it as the most important thing. This is not impossible for me to imagine. But the picture that comes far more readily to mind is one in which I am typing with one hand and batting a toddler away with the other. And how would I have felt in that situation? I know exactly how I would have felt: angry, frustrated, burning with resentment toward the child, and no doubt toward its father, too. Full of self- loathing, tormented with guilt for having made my child the adversary to my vocation. And if there is one thing I am certain would have destroyed me, it is this conflict.
Page 115
Can I be the kind of mother I would have wanted to have? Just give them lots and lots of loveā oh, this I believed I could do. But I also believed that writing had saved my life and that if I could not write, I would die. And so long as this was true, and so long as writing continued to be the enormously difficult thing it has always been for me, I didnāt think I could be a real mother. Not the kind I would have wanted for my child. The kind to whom he or she was the most important thing, object of that unconditional love for which I had desperately yearned as a child myself and the want of which I have never gotten over. āChildren detect things like that,ā acknowledged Munro.
Page 116
āBut you love children,ā people say to me. Meaning, surely I must have regrets. It is true that Iād rather spend an afternoon hanging out with someoneās kids than with many adults I know. And not too much time passes in the course of my days without my remembering that I have missed one of lifeās most significant experiences. But let me say this: the idea of having it all has always been foreign to me. I grew up believing that if you worked incredibly hard and were incredibly lucky, you might get to have one dream in life come true. Going for everything was a dangerous, distracting fantasy. I believe I have been incredibly lucky.
āMommy Fearestā by Anna Holmes
Page 126
Some might call my trepidation at the idea of motherhood āselfishnessāā I would call it āagencyāā but those people are probably either (1) dudes or (2) self- satisfied professional parents, and Iām not sure I care enough about their opinions that I wouldnāt just agree with them and shrug my shoulders in shared chagrin.
Page 130
it often takes a long time for women to āget intoā taking care of themselves, and that her need for autonomy was as much about basking in her hard- won self- actualization as it was a reaction to the exhaustion that comes with tending to a childās every need. These days, as I enter my forties, I find that I am only now beginning to feel comfortable in my own skin, to find the wherewithal to respect my own needs as much as othersā, to know what my emotional and physical limits are, and to confidently, yet kindly, tell others no. (No, I cannot perform that job; no, I cannot meet you for coffee; no, I cannot be in a relationship in which I feel starved for emotional and physical connection.) Despite (or because of) my single status right now, becoming a mother would feel like a devolution as much as an evolution, and the irony is that if and when I reach the point where I feel able to give my all to another human being and still keep some semblance of the self Iāve worked so hard to create, I will probably not be of childbearing age. Themās the breaks.
āAmateursā by Michelle Huneven
Page 133
kids aroused my impatience and jealousy, especially when their parents fussed over them or, worse, stopped everything to reason with them.
Page 135
āYou should have a baby,ā a friend reported the day after giving birth, āif only to feel the great tidal wave of love that crashes through you.ā I didnāt want to feel such love for someone else. I still wanted to be the object of that tidal wave. I knew better than to voice this, of course. Ashamed of such a selfish, infantile craving, I kept it secret. But I knew that so long as I begrudged a child love and attention, I would never be a good parent, and it was wise not to become one. Meanwhile, these tiny newcomers changed my friendships. Anything a baby didā chortle, fart, emit a piercing screamā 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 dinnerā her husband was out of town, so weād 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 crĆØme. Then I drove the forty miles home. With second children, friends disappeared fully into family life. They were inducted into new modes of socializing that I did not envy or wish to join: kiddie birthday parties and group camping trips with other young families and the rare fragment of adult conversation. Even as I grieved the damping off of these long- enjoyed friendships, I was never tempted to join the ranks of motherhood. I had no interest in having a family or being in one.
āSave Yourselfā by Danielle Henderson
Page 150
sometimes your willingness to be a parent isnāt enough. Sometimes love runs out.
Page 157
āBut youāre so good with kids,ā my friends say. āYou know youād be a good mom just because youāll never make the same mistakes your mom did. Children have a way of healing you.ā That sounds like a spectacularly shitty premise to me, and way too much pressure to put on a child. In an attempt to piece myself back together, I was in therapy for most of my twenties. I would later go to graduate school for English literature and gender studies, but in between I moved around the country a lot, including to Alaska, and tried my hand at several different careersā barista, bookstore employee, bartender. Finally, I figured out that I didnāt need to have my mother in my life to feel deeply loved, and that I could choose what kind of relationship I wanted to cultivate with her (which, as it turns out, is no relationship at all).
Page 160
choosing not to become a parent means that Iāve had to redefine my concept of family. I consider my family to be a cobbled- together group of friends and people Iām related to, all defined by the fact that I can count on them. My grandmother is my family and so is my older brother; my husband is my family for sure, and through him Iāve been able to count his mother, father, and brother among my family. My best friends are my familyā Alexis, whom Iāve known since sixth- grade science with Mr. Waleski; Sarah, whom I met through blogging when we were aimless twentysomethings; and Sandra, whom I met at a concert in New York City when I was twenty- two and who immediately felt like a missing link to happiness.
Page 161
Though Iāve often said Iām not afraid to get old without the built- in support system most people find in their children because Iāve created my own chosen support system, the truth is that I wonāt know for sure until I get there. What I do know is that I have nieces and nephews whom Iām proud to see growing into interesting, thoughtful people. I have friends whose children I adoreā even children I havenāt met yet. As I write this essay, three of my closest friends are pregnant after years of uncertainty as to whether they even wanted to have kids. I call all these buns- in- ovens āPorkchop,ā and I look forward to passing along my own wisdom and being part of their lives.
Page 162
Every day, I try to be my own parentā the parent I never had. Every day, I learn new ways to treat myself with compassion and patience. Iāve made a life that centers around writing and that gives me freedom to travel and to construct my day around my moods and thoughts. Yoga helps me alleviate stress and get out of my head a bit. A couple times a week, I like to sit and have coffee with my neighbors on the back porch. We catch up on each otherās lives and talk about the world, or our place in this city we love so much. My husband and I spend a lot of time together, reading or going out to eat or just talking about the dreams and goals we have for the future, like buying and renovating a house, adopting a dog, or retiring in Paris. My childhood was so inconsistent that I never expected normalcy, and itās enough for me to be able to have time and space to be good to myself and the people around me. Children are nice, but I decided to save myself instead.