December 2002
Jessa Crispin
nonfiction
The Childless Revolution by Madelyn Cain
Motherhood
is the new divisive issue amongst feminists and women. While some
argue that motherhood should be subsidized by the government, others
believe raising children is the silliest notion imaginable. Those who
choose motherhood and those who choose childlessness are on opposite sides.
Once you've chosen, you are alien to the other group. They may think you
foolish, that you just don't understand. The more you try to explain your
position the more head shaking and sighing there will be.
Which is why I could tell Madelyn Cain's The Childless Revolution
would be a mess by one simple sentence: "Cain lives in Los Angeles with
her husband and daughter." She is a mother writing about "what it means
to be childless today." Cain knows she should not be writing this book,
and she attempts to justify it all throughout the introduction and the
conclusion, and frequently in the body. She is certain she can relate
because she had trouble conceiving, because she has childless friends,
because she was not a mother until nearly 40. Yet on page six she writes,
"The years between my twenties and when I finally had my child were permeated
with an intense, unrelenting desire to mother." She has chosen her side
while pretending to occupy middle ground.
Cain means to examine three types of childless women: the childless by
choice, the childless by chance, and the childless by happenstance. "Choice"
covers women who decided not to have children because they didn't want
them, because of concerns about overpopulation, or for religious reasons.
"Chance" dealt mainly with infertile women, and "Happenstance" included
women whose jobs took priority over family, married men who already had
children, and had bad childhoods that made them skittish about starting
their own families.
The title would lead you to believe that the book would be primarily about
women who choose childlessness, but that is not the case. In fact, the
"childfree" as she calls them receive the least attention. It's obvious
where Cain's sympathies lie with just a quick glimpse through the book.
"Chance" is longer than "Choice" by about a third and even longer than
that if you omit the women who chose not to be mothers because the cult
they were in forbade it. Once you take into consideration that "Happenstance"
is full of women who did not actively choose childlessness but now have
regrets about missing their opportunity, this isn't really a book about
being childless. This is a book about women who wanted children but didn't
get them, which is exactly the person Madelyn Cain was for the first 38
years of her life.
Beyond the obvious prejudices, The Childless Revolution is a poorly
written book. It is only 173 pages long, and that is including an Author's
Note, acknowledgements, an introduction, and "Personally Speaking," her
conclusion. In such a short amount of space, Cain claims to cover a wide
berth of women who do not have children for myriad reasons, but of course
she can't. Important issues are merely glossed over and points are barely
made before moving on to another. Nothing is examined thoroughly and no
conclusions are raised. It is clear by her indifference that this is not
the book she wanted to write. She really just wanted to tell the story
of her "childlessness" and subsequent motherhood. She inappropriately
inserts her own experiences throughout the book, talking about her daughter
in the chapter about infertility while still trying to convince the reader
she is truly, deep down, childless in spirit. The "Personally Speaking"
chapter is somewhat of a joke as she's been speaking personally the entire
time. As for the women's stories she's supposed to be telling, she couldn't
care less. Each woman is given one paragraph, her entire tale reduced
to three or four sentences. One story runs into another with no transition,
making it nearly impossible to tell one woman from the next. The only
thing we know for sure at the end of this book is that Cain thinks motherhood
is the greatest thing ever, even if she does envy the free time of the
childfree.
Childlessness has been largely unexamined in today's culture in spite
of a growing number of childfree women, men, and couples. There are many
issues that deserve to be discussed - inequalities with housing, with
taxes, and at the workplace - but we'll have to keep waiting for someone
else to examine them. If Madelyn Cain truly believes she documented the
"childless revolution," she's sadly mistaken. Hopefully whoever makes
the next attempt won't be staring at the childless from the other side.
The Childless Revolution by Madelyn Cain
Perseus Publishing
ISBN: 0738204609
208 pages
