Despatches from a mother who started late (and is running to catch up)

Why not to have children

Interesting piece in The Times yesterday about a new bestseller by French author Corinne Maier called No Kid: 40 Reasons Not to Have Children. I say 'interesting' advisedly, if only because the story made me wonder how Maier's managing chez elle, where I imagine her two teenage children have presumably had something to say to their mum about breaking this social taboo. I don't know anyone who's dared to admit they don't want kids, so I quite admire Maier for tackling this thorny subject.

Despite its provocative title and tongue-in-cheek content, No Kid actually makes some sensible arguments, with Maier suggesting, for example, that it's a mistake to pity people who do not have children, when many of them have chosen a positive and sensible alternative to becoming parents. Better to label them child-free, rather than childless, she argues. Perhaps it's an issue of semantics, but I couldn't argue with the underlying sentiment.

The book apparently emerged from Maier's concern that no one is doing anything to temper an idealised view of motherhood fostered by two potent forces in her native France: the state, which wants more babies to help pay pensions, and the baby industry. Belonging to a generation of women who despair at their own inadequacy if their babies don't possess the most desirable audio-visual stimulatory toys of the moment, ('stimulation' being one of the current baby industry buzz words) I know what she means.

The book certainly does its best to counter any idealistic views, listing all the things parents have to give up when they have kids:

1. A full night's sleep,

2. A lie-in

3. Deciding to go to the cinema on the spur of the moment

4. Staying out later than midnight (babysitters have to be relieved)

5. Visiting a museum or exhibition (children start playing up).

Then there's the colossal strain on parental relationships to take into account, when having sex has to be dutifully squeezed into those tiny windows when neither partner is too exhausted even to contemplate it, when differences of opinion on the best way to warm a bottle of milk (before adding powder or after?) assume monumental proportions it would take a peace camp to resolve.

This sounds like a clever, sophisticated book; it's already climbed to the top of France's best-seller lists, and its publishers, Michalon, must be hoping it will do the same here in the UK, but even so, I still can't agree with its basic premise. Having a baby is fab. 

Posted 21 August 2007 14:28

Parenting gurus Books Childcare Dilemmas Domestic chaos Etiquette Guilt Paradoxes

• StumbleUpon
• Delicious
• Reddit
• Facebook
• Digg