Without Children: The Long History of Not Being a Mother

by Peggy O'Donnell Heffington

Overview

A historian explores the complicated relationship between womanhood and motherhood in this “timely, refreshingly open-hearted study of the choices women make and the cards they’re dealt” (Ada Calhoun, author of Why We Can’t Sleep).

In an era of falling births, it’s often said that millennials invented the idea of not having kids. But history is full of women without children: some who chose childless lives, others who wanted children but never had them, and still others—the vast majority, then and now—who fell somewhere in between. Modern women considering how and if children fit into their lives are products of their political, ecological, and cultural moment. But history also tells them that they are not alone. 
  
Drawing on deep research and her own experience as a woman without children, historian Peggy O’Donnell Heffington shows that many of the reasons women are not having children today are ones they share with women in the past: a lack of support, their jobs or finances, environmental concerns, infertility, and the desire to live different kinds of lives. Understanding this history—how normal it has always been to not have children, and how hard society has worked to make it seem abnormal—is key, she writes, to rebuilding kinship between mothers and non-mothers, and to building a better world for us all. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541675575
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	04/18/2023
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	117,442
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Peggy O’Donnell Heffington is an instructional professor of history at the University of Chicago and teaches subjects ranging from feminism to human rights. Her writing can be found in Jezebel,the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Boston Globe, and elsewhere. She received her PhD in history from the University of California, Berkeley. 

Editorial Reviews

01/02/2023

Historian Heffington’s incisive debut examines how society demonizes women without children while increasingly failing to provide the supports that make it possible to raise kids sustainably. Noting that “births were down overall” during the Covid-19 pandemic, except for an uptick among middle- and upper-middle-class white women, Heffington posits that the choice to not have children is more “determined by economic pain, lack of support, and fear about the future” than is generally acknowledged. Discussions of the most frequently cited reasons, including work-life imbalance, infertility, and environmental concerns, feature profiles of Queen Elizabeth I, American ecologist Stephanie Mills, and others who embody each challenge. Throughout, Heffington describes how Western “marriage patterns” and the rise of the nuclear family “made it less likely people would—or could—create those families at all.” Ultimately, she concludes that in a society that doesn’t guarantee maternity leave or health insurance and a world that does not really need more people, giving birth as a default female obligation doesn’t make sense. Though women who make the choice to have children may find Heffington’s approach antagonistic, she effectively blends statistical data and personal histories to counter the notion that the issue is a purely modern one, and to shift the focus from individual preferences and challenges to systemic societal failures. This is a cogent and well-supported polemic. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Without Children is a feat of diligent research and, better yet, blazing argument . . . Each chapter of Without Children is vivid and informative enough to fascinate in its own right.”
 —Becca Rothfeld, Washington Post

“Impeccably researched” —San Francisco Chronicle

“[a] well-researched and compellingly readable history… Without Children will interest readers engaged with intersectional feminist thought and women’s rights in a wide variety of contexts.”—Booklist

“Provocative and well researched… A liberatingly perceptive work of sociology and cultural history.”—Kirkus

"Historian Heffington’s incisive debut examines how society demonizes women without children while increasingly failing to provide the supports that make it possible to raise kids sustainably...A cogent and well-supported polemic.” —Publishers Weekly

“Regardless of our parenting status, Without Children will make each of us more empathetic towards the decisions others make, and hopefully more supportive of and invested in our communities as well.”
 —Gabbi Cisneros, Porchlight Books

"Desire, doubt, destiny—there are many reasons for the shape of a family. With clarity and compassion, historian Peggy O’Donnell Heffington offers a timely, refreshingly open-hearted study of the choices women make and the cards they're dealt."—Ada Calhoun, author of Why We Can't Sleep

“At once bracing and beautiful, Without Children is a timely meditation on all of the reasons why women increasingly can't, don't, or won't have children—along with the social penalties they pay, the freedoms they garner, and the feminist solidarity that we can all build together, whether we have children or not. I was intrigued and carried along for the book's length by O'Donnell Heffington's lyricism, thoughtfulness, humor, and panache.”—Kate Manne, author of Entitled

"I devoured this book. Peggy O’Donnell Heffington is the rare serious historian who writes with verve and humor, bringing to life the big, hard questions of history that illuminate the present. Without Children is a story of women who decided not to have children, but ultimately shows us new things not only about these women, but about family, motherhood, childhood, aspiration, and love in a precarious world. It is a signal contribution to the historical field and a vivid series of stories that are alternately shocking, funny, and inspiring."—Kathleen Belew, author of Bring the War Home

“A woman with children is a mother.  A woman without children has no name. Without Children, written with warmth and insight and layered with deeply personal stories, tells us this woman in fact has many names, faces, and identities—all worth knowing.”—Lara Bazelon, author of Ambitious Like a Mother

“Without Children is the rich, nuanced history of women without children that has been missing from the discourse. Peggy O'Donnell Heffington skillfully avoids the trap of pitting women without children against mothers, while showing how the choice of whether or not to be a mother has historically been dictated by—you guessed it!—the patriarchy. A necessary book, whatever your parental status is.”—Doree Shafrir, author of Thanks for Waiting

From the Publisher

2023-01-31
A history professor explores the many reasons why increasing numbers of women are choosing to be childless.

Millennial women are now at the peak of their childbearing years, but as O’Donnell Heffington observes, their rate of childlessness is almost as high as that of fertile women who lived during the Great Depression. The reasons for this trend go far beyond simplistic explanations that modern women are “too selfish, too greedy, too shortsighted,” and too focused on their careers. “Women are choosing to have no children, in other words, because they want other things—lattes, degrees, careers, vacations, definitely avocado toast—more than they want kids,” writes the author. Challenging economic conditions—brought about first by the Great Recession and then by the Covid-19 pandemic a decade later—have made it extremely difficult for many millennials to create secure home lives for young children. Many young women have found themselves taking on multiple jobs or working their way into better employment opportunities from “the small, unstable dinghies that are early career jobs.” Even those with professional salaries must contend with high cost-of-living expenses for themselves and the reality that the day care for just one child typically equates to “the pretax income of someone working full-time at the federal minimum wage.” That American families in general have become increasingly isolated from each other over the last 200 years has created a situation in which those with children cannot rely on community networks to help sustain them through crises like the recent pandemic. Finally, the looming threat of climate change has caused many young people, especially those between 16 and 25, to reconsider bringing babies into a “carbon-choked world” where resources are dwindling. Provocative and well researched, this book offers compassionate insight into the history and predicaments of women who have embraced the “never...uncommon and [now] increasingly common” childless life.

A liberatingly perceptive work of sociology and cultural history.

Kirkus Reviews