Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids

by Meghan Daum

women aren’t going to achieve social equality until some technological alternative is invented to save us from being the only sex expected to go through it. If men were the ones forced to endure this ordeal, obviously such a technological solution would long ago have been devised.

we seldom ask ourselves whether we serve a greater social purpose; we are more likely to ask ourselves if we are happy.

unfortunately, it’s most often the mother who has to forgo some aspect of her life.”

The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that there was nothing harder to accomplish in life than being a good parent.

child care, still falls to the woman, whether or not she also works outside the home, whether or not she outearns her husband, whether or not she has, or is trying to have, a career.

But if being a mom really were something held in high esteem—if it were even regarded with the same respect as other work that people do—women everywhere would probably be a lot happier and more fulfilled than we know them to be.

Representative Todd Akin said that if a woman experienced a “legitimate” rape, she wouldn’t get pregnant because the female body has ways of “shutting that whole thing down.”

the decrease in fertility and the increase in homosexuality, may be an evolutionary adaptation to overpopulation.

Men who don’t want kids get a dismissive eye roll, but the reaction to women who don’t want them is more like: What’s wrong with you?