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A provocative and intimate exploration of modern parenthood by “a gutsy young third wave feminist” – The New York Times
If parenting is making Americans unhappy, if it’s impossible to “have it all,” if people don’t have the economic, social, or political structures needed to support parenting, then why do it? And why are anxious new parents flocking to every Tiger Mother and Bébé-raiser for advice on how to raise kids?
In Why Have Kids?, Valenti explores these controversial questions through on-the-ground reporting, startling new research, and her own unique experiences as a mom. She moves beyond the black and white “mommy wars” over natural parenting, discipline, and work-life balance to explore a more nuanced reality: one filled with ambivalence, joy, guilt, and exhaustion. A must read for parents as well as those considering starting a family, Why Have Kids? is an explosive addition to the conversation about modern parenthood.
- Sales Rank: #261597 in Books
- Published on: 2012-09-04
- Released on: 2012-09-04
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x 5.75" w x .75" l, .75 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 208 pages
Review
“This timely volume, which should generate much controversy, is a call for much-needed change and may unite a new generation of moms.” –Publishers Weekly
“Timely…[Valenti] states early on that her book is meant to anger people and incite discussions…She wades deeply into the moral and logistical problems facing mothers, with interviews, research and her own anecdotal experiences.” –Kirkus Reviews
“For mothers like Valenti, who felt guilty admitting impatience at the drudgery and boredom that constitutes much of parenting, this book may be a revelation. And a comfort.” – People Magazine
“A brave and bracing critique of our unrealistic parenting ideals.” – Elle
“There’s a lot of really profound, great questions in this book. As a new father myself, they cut pretty deep.”- Chris Hayes, host of Up with Chris Hayes on MSNBC and the author of Twilight of the Elites.
“In a culture that glamorizes motherhood, Jessica Valenti daringly articulates the hard work and the personal decisions that are an essential part of parenting. This book is a must-read for new parents.” –Gayle Tzemach Lemmon, New York Times best-selling author of The Dressmaker of Khair Khana
“Jessica Valenti is a breath of fresh air. She offers the kind of raw honesty that can feel like a punch in the gut, but leaves you with the warmth of a deep embrace.” – Ms. Magazine
“Jessica has been hailed as one of the most influential female voices of the last decade, so it’s not surprising that after she had her first child, she had plenty to say about the culture of modern motherhood.” –Meagan Francis, Babble.com
“When it comes to unpacking what it means to be female in America right now, Jessica’s one of the smartest minds out there.” –Jesse Ellison, The Daily Beast
“In Why Have Kids?, feminist author Jessica Valenti poses a question that few people actually wrestle with before taking the plunge into parenthood.” – Lori Leibovich,Huffington Post
One of “20 New Releases Check Out” in The Atlantic’s Fall Books Preview
A “Fall 2012 Must Read” –Huffington Post
“Why Have Kids? should be required reading in sex education classes.” – Kathy Megyeri, USA Today Letter to the Editor
From the Inside Flap
If parenting is making Americans unhappy, if it’s impossible to “have it all,” if people don’t have the economic, social, or political structures needed to support child rearing, then why do it? And why are anxious new parents flocking to every Tiger Mother and Bébé-raiser for advice on how to raise kids?
In Why Have Kids?, Valenti explores these controversial questions through on-the-ground reporting, startling new research, and her own unique experiences as a mom. She moves beyond the black and white “mommy wars” over natural parenting, discipline, and work-life balance to explore a more nuanced reality: one filled with ambivalence, joy, guilt, and exhaustion.
Would-be parents must navigate the decision to have children amidst a daunting combination of cultural expectations and hard facts. And new parents find themselves struggling to reconcile their elation with the often exhausting, confusing, and expensive business of child care. When researchers for a 2010 Pew study asked parents why they decided to have their first child, nearly 90 percent answered, for “the joy of having children.” Yet nearly every study in the last ten years shows a marked decline in the life satisfaction of those with kids. Valenti explores this disconnect between parents’ hopes and the day-to-day reality of raising children—revealing all the ways mothers and fathers are quietly struggling. A must-read for parents as well as those considering starting a family, Why Have Kids? is an explosive addition to the conversation about modern parenthood.
From the Back Cover
Praise for Jessica Valenti
“A gutsy young third wave feminist.” – New York Times
"Valenti’s writing has a wonderful defiant quality reminiscent of the days of the movement’s youth.” – Washington Post
"[Jessica Valenti] . . . dragged feminism into the 21st century." – Guardian
Most helpful customer reviews
204 of 216 people found the following review helpful.
Bringing sanity back to parenthood
By Bookphile
Though the title of Valenti's book is provocative and sure to inflame, this is not a book that's making an argument against parenting. What this book actually does is take a critical look at the social and cultural constructs surrounding pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting, and break them down piece by piece. Valenti is attempting to open a dialog that is long past due, one that forms a cornerstone of American culture and that has a lot of influenced not only on how successful we are as individuals, but as a culture.
Divided into two parts, Valenti's book takes a look at some things she terms "lies" and others she terms "truth", but her ultimate conclusion is this: we need to have a much more honest dialog about parenting, its challenges and rewards, and what society needs to do to support parents before we can really make any progress, and she is absolutely right about that. The only way we're ever going to progress beyond the wage inequalities, the ridiculous "mommy wars", and the continuing discrimination against parents who are members of a minority is by having an honest and open dialog about how parenting looks in America and how we really want it to look.
I'll start with the "lies" portion of the book. In it, Valenti considers such cultural constructs as "mother knows best", "breast is best", and that having children will "complete" a person. I found this portion of the book so refreshing, because so much of the rhetoric surrounding these kinds of issues reeks of condescension and outright misinformation. It is designed to make women feel badly, to convince women that they ought to chain themselves to home and hearth, ignore their own well-being, and subsume themselves completely, all in the interest of maintaining some impossible standard of perfection. Valenti isn't arguing against breastfeeding or stay-at-home moms--and, as someone who has both breastfed my children and decided to be a stay-at-home mom, neither am I. Instead, what Valenti says--with which I wholeheartedly agree--is that people should be empowered to make the decisions that are best for them and their families. Instead, we currently live in a society that ignores years of scientific research in favor of creating a hostile environment in which women are made to feel inadequate for being unable to live up to an unrealistic image of the uber-mom.
The "truth" section deals with discussion of such issues as the decline of the nuclear family and the rise of women--and men--who are choosing not to have children. We have a sort of cult of the "traditional" family in this country, and Valenti is making an argument for why it's a myth that it's unnatural for people not to want to be parents, or that children who have same sex parents are somehow damaged. Valenti cites a great deal of research to back up her points, and she illuminates the fact that a lot of the misinformation serves as a smoke screen that prevents us from having truly fruitful discussions about what we need to do to improve society, which would improve outcomes for everyone.
Valenti shows how entrenched interests buck against truthful dialog because it doesn't serve them well to have a progressive discussion about the nature of families and parenthood, and how their regressive policies damage all Americans. Rather than mothers banding together to work toward affordable, high-quality child care, the current system encourages women to viciously tear one another apart for the decisions they make about their work/family balance. Rather than Americans demanding more flexibility and better pay from their employers--which would have serious impact on the quality of home life for both parents and children, they can argue about whether or not children are best served by families that observe traditional gender roles.
As I read, I couldn't help but feel like Valenti was helping to bring some sanity back into the world. The bottom line is that most parents dearly love their children and want the best for them. Yet, rather than taking steps to ensure a brighter future for their children, parents are often either bogged down with crippling guilt over their perceived failures or they're busy waging war against one another over the choices they've made.
For my part, I'm with Valenti. Let's talk about what makes Scandinavian countries so successful when it comes to family/work balance and the overall happiness and satisfaction of women. Let's take a look at our broken systems in the United States (health care, education, support for working parents) and figure out what we can do to fix them so that all Americans will have better outcomes, which in turn would lead to better outcomes for our country as a whole.
188 of 212 people found the following review helpful.
Kids are not for everyone
By Amazon Customer
I was very eager to read this book. As a woman in my early 30s, I am proudly child-free. I have never wanted kids, I don't plan on having kids, and I am sick and tired of always having to justify my decision to ignorant people who claim that a life without children is empty and meaningless, blah blah blah. I think that every woman should read this book, regardless of if they have kids or not. "Why Have Kids?" is especially interesting because it was written by a woman who is a mother, and yet she does not shy away from proclaiming that being a parent royally sucks for the most part and that it's certainly not for everyone.
This is not an anti-child book by any means. Author Jessica Valenti loves her daughter very much. But she is one of the few mothers on this planet who is willing to point out that parenting is generally not enjoyable, and is also heavily overrated. She blasts the micro-manager mommies out there who flounder to dote upon their children 24/7 without giving the kids a breather or taking any time for themselves. She is all for women working, and she's even more in favor of women and couples who choose not to procreate, because she realizes that it's a very personal decision and also that child-free adults are generally much happier and satisfied with their lives than parents are.
The book also takes on society's view of parenthood and points out that women are basically doomed to fail miserably at motherhood if they attempt to adhere to everything our culture tells us that parents should and should not do. The United States basically does everything it can to make things harder for parents, which is ridiculous. But, in addition to clamoring for reform when it comes to things like maternity leave, etc., Valenti's message also seems to be telling parents, especially mothers, to chill out a little. Nobody is perfect, and nobody will be a perfect parent, and parenthood should never define a woman's entire life.
I wish more people would realize that parenting is a choice, not something all people are somehow obligated to do. I also wish more parents would quit pretending that their jobs are the most challenging and rewarding ones in the whole world and that people without children don't know what it's like, blah blah blah blah blah. I don't have a child, but I have many friends and family members who are raising children. I don't pretend to know how hard it actually is, and I can tell that it's a huge pain in the you-know what (which is one of the reasons I choose not to embark down that road myself). But you know what? Women who don't have kids work hard, too. We have lives, we have responsibilities, and we are probably more fulfilled than a lot of parents out there. Having kids is great, if that's what you want to do. But not having children is pretty freakin' fantastic as well, let me tell you...so stop ragging on all us child-free people and read this book, already.
306 of 357 people found the following review helpful.
Do we really need this book?
By Zinnia
Between the title and the blurb, I was hopeful that this book would break some new ground in the ongoing debates around motherhood and child-rearing in America. That perhaps it would break up the tedium of the endless "mommy wars" by discussing some of the less-explored facets of the topic, or taking a unique perspective that had not been already heard in hundreds of variations, from the New York Times to parenting forums to the playground, in the last 15 years or so. In the past few years, especially, the flow of controversial books on the role of mothers and "parenting" has seemed relentless. Yet for all the creative ways publishers have found to market these books (You're Doing Parenting Wrong: Feminist Edition; You're Doing Parenting Wrong: How the French are Better than you; You're Doing Parenting Wrong: Fear the Chinese Mothers!) they all boil down to the same several arguments rehashed again and again. Did Valenti, best known as founder of the "third wave" feminist blog Feministing, find a new facet to explore, or best of all, a bold and better alternative path?
Sadly, the answer is no. Rather, this book reads as a kind of summary of all the ground that has been covered exhaustively by others. It is a brief, shallow book, with a timid thesis and many half-hearted supporting anecdotes. There is, of course, the usual belching up of statistics that one expects from any nonfiction book of this type anymore. But they do not fold into the body of the book in a meaningful way, but rather wash over the reader in a bland way like the reading of a stock report on NPR. The whole book seems rushed and tentative, and reads like an overly long blog post rather than a finished opus. The anecdotes are not written up in a way to hook the reader in. Many conclusions are reached by way of contested or unsupported "facts" and assumptions, Valenti does not "show her work" as you would expect in a typical nonfiction work. The whole thing is neither a sold well-researched work of nonfiction argumentation, nor a personal opinion or account that coheres as a story for its own sake. I was left wondering why she wrote the book, as she does not seem particularly informed nor particularly passionate about the topic. A curious fact is mentioned in one anecdote, that she had an editor for this book on motherhood while she was still pregnant with her first child. The book is then, perhaps a contractual obligation and material opportunity more than a labor of love or political conviction.
I should have known I was in for a disappointment even in the preface, as only a page or two into the book comes the first "Mad Men" reference, tossed out casually and offhand, a kind of dogwhistle letting us know that this book is by and for a very specific demographic. This is yet another volume about the neuroses of the chattering classes, dressed up as a work of general interest. This is a book calculated to sell itself, and then self-destruct in admitted irrelevance. Valenti got to write this book because she's Valenti, she was known to a publisher and an audience, and it was thought that a book on motherhood by her would be marketable to that niche. But the truth of the matter is, we did not need her book. What we need is a book by someone else--lots of someone elses, really--who is not part of this upper crust coastal elite set, mostly based in Manhattan, who dominate the discourse on parenthood and everything else in this country. I will give Valenti credit, at least, for nodding here and there in the book to the fact that the "debate" she is entering into is a rarefied and elitist one, that all too often columnists from the Times or the Post sit down to hash out "what's wrong with parenting" and "what should mothers do" and really they are only talking about the parenting of the economic top 10% and the mothers who are elite professionals with many options available to them. But we don't need or want to hear wealthy white women concede, with liberal guilt, that the discourse leaves out the rest of us, or to allow for our existence with a token nod and a bone thrown out in a passing paragraph or anecdote. We need to be included in the conversation, for the good of all. They can wring their hands that we need more daycare options, or work flexibility, or parental leave, they are very good at such hand-wringing. But has it ever yet changed a thing for the practical conditions of actual mothers outside their elite social circles?
In fact it comes across as condescending and a bit frustrating when Valenti nods at us, saying that the debate about staying at home versus working is different for women whose jobs are low-paying and not particularly "intellectually stimulating," and then proceeds to continue right on into that same hackneyed old "debate" and take a hackneyed side in it. Women should work, she says, as it's not good to be economically dependent on another. What of the fact that work at a living wage is increasingly not available? That student debt chokes the aspirations of the middle class? That working class women may have to leave their children not in a posh Mandarin immersion preschool, and not a not-optimal daycare, but one that is actually miserable and insufficient? All in order to work a miserable job that barely pays for daycare and electricity, as if to add insult to injury. She wrings her hands--the specialty of the chattering classes--about what would happen if "more and more" women became stay-at-home-moms, and how that would sabotage the plight of "women" (professional women) as a class. But there is no in-depth examination of this thought, and there is no in-depth exploration of alternatives. She tosses out some thoughts, and then sort of shrugs, and the book ends.
The only chapter that really brought anything new and of interest to the table was the one about imprisoning bad mothers. The anecdotes were interesting, and here Valenti may have actually found something to discuss that has not been beaten to death already. But alas it is like all the chapters in the work, a slim and fleeting blog post, and it is over before she has a chance to really look at any of the ideas in depth.
You will miss nothing important, no new contribution to the already nauseating and tiresome referendums on "how mothering should be done, seen, and felt about" if you skip this book. Which is really too bad.
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