Publishers Weekly
03/18/2024
For today’s millennials, having children “is a question more open-ended and fraught than ever before,” according to this rigorous and wide-ranging debut study. Probing the generation’s “ambivalence” toward having kids, Berg, an assistant professor of philosophy at Hebrew University, and Wiseman, managing editor of The Point, identify a “weakening of the motherhood mandate” and a shift to prioritizing one’s career and friends as sources of fulfillment. Also considered are concerns about having kids amid a worsening climate crisis, though in many ways those anxieties are hardly new, the authors point out; some 19th-century artists and thinkers believed “humans were laying waste the earth” and had “caused too much damage” to expect its repair. (Gustave Flaubert, whose 1838 Memoirs of a Madman features an “eschatological reverie” filled with apocalyptic depictions of civilization’s demise, wrote that “the idea of bringing someone into this world fills me with horror.”) Resisting easy answers and—for the most part—concrete guidance (“Only you can determine” if having kids is “right for you”), the authors instead offer scrupulous analysis enriched by vivid personal meditations. For example, Berg writes that after giving birth to her first child, she noted a “curious sense that nothing really happened” alongside an awareness of the responsibility she’d assumed: “to choose to be a parent is... to become inalienably vulnerable.” It’s an incisive look at a monumental life choice. (June)
From the Publisher
[A]n engaging, literary investigation ... a book for lovers of sound reasoning. A corrective to liberal neuroses about having kids, one that feels necessary at a time when the right wants to dictate the terms of the family.”—Jay Caspian Kang, The New Yorker
“Resisting easy answers … [Berg and Wiseman] ... offer scrupulous analysis enriched by vivid personal meditations ...It's an incisive look at a monumental life choice”—Publishers Weekly
“This is a brave, lucid book, and Berg and Wiseman deserve great credit for their readiness to ask tough questions.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Aptly highlights the paradoxes of parenting and gives readers grappling with the question of whether or not to have children an honest and balanced perspective that will help them decide what’s right for them.”—Library Journal
“In their widely researched and patiently argued book, Berg and Wiseman show how competing ideas about freedom, happiness, love, dignity, and justice attach to the increasingly ambivalent acts of having and raising children. What Are Children For? models the curiosity and the skepticism we need to imagine a collective future in dark times.”—Merve Emre, author of The Personality Brokers
“By far the most honest, unsentimental, unpredictable, and rigorously thoughtful exploration of parenting that I have ever read. Berg and Wiseman’s debut is a much-needed and impressively original inquiry into a topic that is almost always treated in deadeningly stale terms.”—Becca Rothfeld, author of All Things Are Too Small
“A lucid and sophisticated treatment of a question we all share a stake in: Ought there be future generations? Carving out a conversation about parenthood and the future that’s undisturbed by the warping effects of the culture wars, the book ably addresses contemporary challenges to parenthood—both practical and political—while developing its own optimistic case for human life.”—Elizabeth Bruenig, The Atlantic
Library Journal
05/01/2024
A growing number of people, all with different needs and desires, wrestle with the choice of whether to have children. Berg (philosophy, Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem; coauthor, Wanting Bad Things) and Wiseman (managing editor, The Point; Sowing the Seeds for Sustainability) advocate for prospective parents to consider factors far beyond external ones in order to gain true clarity on the best decision for them. They found that fewer parents today feel external pressure than generations of the past, but certain careers and circles seem to make many women feel pressure to become mothers, nonetheless. Some of the women profiled in this book thought motherhood might lead to losing track of themselves. Others said that unresolved issues within their families influenced their ambivalence. Unrest in the world and climate change fears continue to impact many people's decisions about kids. VERDICT Aptly highlights the paradoxes of parenting and gives readers grappling with the question of whether or not to have children an honest and balanced perspective that will help them decide what's right for them.
Kirkus Reviews
2024-02-01
A wide-ranging look at why more and more women are choosing not to have children.
For centuries, having children was viewed as an inevitable life duty to be approached without much thought about the personal and philosophical consequences. However, in the past couple of decades, there has been a significant shift in opinion, particularly in Western countries, with an increasing number of women not having children, either as a conscious decision or because they are unable to make a decision at all. Berg and Wiseman, editors at The Point magazine (Berg is also a professor of philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem), dig into the reasons for this trend. Each author offers deeply felt essays about their personal experiences, and they draw on a range of survey data and interviews. Many women feel caught between social and family pressures and the desire to keep hard-won autonomy. Often, the decision to not have children is entirely practical, with financial and career concerns weighing heavily. Other women have made the decision because they see the future as a series of rolling disasters, mainly linked to climate change and pushed along by an avalanche of apocalyptic news reports and fear-mongering books. This connects to another group, which has adopted the nihilistic attitude that not just they, but everyone, should remain childless, as humanity is essentially a parasite that continues to destroy the Earth. Ultimately, Berg and Wiseman are careful to avoid a prescriptive conclusion. The real point is to make a definitive choice rather than drift into motherhood by default. “It is because having children is such a genuine commitment that only you can determine if it is the right one for you,” they conclude.
This is a brave, lucid book, and Berg and Wiseman deserve great credit for their readiness to ask tough questions.
