Peggy O'Donnell Heffington

This book was not what I expected, in part because I do not seem to be the target audience. This is a read for middle upper class white women who want or wanted children but do not have them, for whatever reason (NOT specific to fertility issues). If you don’t have kids because your calling is definitely not caring for children, then I don’t think this is the book for you. I decided to read this book to open my mind to other ways of living that do not primarily involve caring for children, but this was not it.

The book uses the word “women” throughout but usually means middle upper class cisgender white women without specifying that. Sometimes experiences of women of color are incorporated, but this book really doesn’t do much to challenge systems of oppression. The author is critical of “individualist values arising from the revolution” but does little to critique systems of oppression.

Perhaps this is not intentional on the part of the author, but discussing the importance of community care and others ways that women can contribute without having biological children (e.g. by caring for other people’s biological children) without discussing the role that men should play in community care really frustrates me. There are also some dubious references to evolutionary psychology (grandmother hypothesis) to bolster these ideas.
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I’ve been thinking about why I didn’t get much out of this book, and I think it’s unfortunately the premise itself of an historical overview of American women without children. The author is an academic which makes sense for this, but really it’s her questions at the end that are actually relevant for today. The history shows that people are wretched which we know because people now are still pretty wretched, so really it’s not about why women aren’t having children but rather why aren’t we asking those with kids why they had them in the first place. I’m glad again that there are books on this being published, but for this one I feel as though the conclusion should have been the introduction with answers moving on from there.… (more)

As someone who is childfree by choice (or "voluntarily without children"), I'm apparently in a very small minority - 6% of adults. I'm always interested in reading about people like me - not because I have ever questioned the rightness of that choice for me, but to get some insight into why there are so few of us.

Heffington, as a historian, comes at this absolutely from a historical / social perspective. She describes how women have tried to limit or control their childbearing across centuries, across cultures and why. She clarifies how the generally-accepted model of the "nuclear family" is a fairly recent concept, and in spite of being brandished as the only "proper" way of life in this country, it is not globally considered or observed as such. The social pressure on women to have children is overwhelming, and the opprobrium for resisting it powerful.

She presents a set of reasons why some women do not have children: because many modern societies provide so little support, because it's simply impossible to raise kids AND work to earn enough to live decently or even just survive, for environmental concerns about overpopulation or a simple lack of basic resources, because of fertility issues, and because we want another kind of life. These are all intelligently laid out and illustrated.

This is all well and good, but one angle omitted is a psychological or even biological one - presumably because her considerable expertise does not lie in those disciplines. Her array of reasons for being without children is heavily socially imposed. I would have liked to see more exploration of individual women's internal motivations - or lack thereof. What about the much vaunted "maternal instinct"? Look at animals and birds - how they protect and care for their offspring without any of the sociological mumbo jumbo or cultural expectations. This suggests something entirely of nature. Then why don't some of us have it? I never liked dolls, only stuffed animals, and I considered them peer playmates, not babies. No human baby every born could light up my oxytocin the way a kitten does. Some surveys have demonstrated that living closer to one's own mother is associated with having more kids; if you have a difficult relationship with your mother, might that have an effect? And even mother cats, after doting and caring and washing and feeding their kittens, see them weaned... and walk away, done.

Heffington gives us a readable, enlightening look at the social, cultural, or medical reasons women may not have children and how they may feel about that. I'd like to see more from a more personal one.… (more)