IN a video celebrating Mother’s Day, Hallmark filmed unsuspecting candidates being interviewed for a fake job position the greeting cards company had previously created. The job the candidates were interviewing for was not just tough; it was, as the hashtag with which Hallmark later shared the video went, “the world’s toughest job”. Interviewees looked incredulous as they were told that they would be expected to exhibit a wide range of skills, spend most of the day up and about, bending, stretching or standing, take no breaks whatsoever, eat only after their ‘associate’ had eaten. What would the position pay? “Nothing” came the answer: the meaningful connection forged with the ‘associate’ was remuneration enough. Hallmark was, of course, talking about mothers. As revelation broke on the candidates, the shock and outrage gave way to sentimentality and saccharine declarations of indebtedness.

If you were one of those who, overcome by the nobility of what mothers do, shed a tear or two while watching this video, Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed may be something of a revelation to you. But if that schmaltzy montage, rather than stirring your feelings, excited your scorn at society’s failure to sufficiently value a task it makes such a show of applauding, then Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed will likely yield many moments of satisfaction. Because strip away the nonsensical sentimentality of the Hallmark ad and you have the bare bones of the argument at the heart of this book.

A collection of essays that parse 16 writers’ wilful decision not to have children, this anthology by turn enthrals and amuses. Whatever the traits distinguishing parents from non-parents may be, an appreciation of heartfelt writing, thankfully, is not the exclusive domain of one group or the other. And since those who have chosen not to have children have, by default, spent a lot of time thinking deeply about them, the parent as well as the non-parent will find that the prose on offer is powerful, dredging painful memories and poignant revelations. Many here have forgone children because they refuse to become martyrs, to give up social pleasures, other work and, most importantly, their writerly calling, in order to take on the grossly undervalued task of parenting — or, since there are merely three male writers here — mothering. The life of the Hallmark ad is exactly what Lionel Shriver calls “the prison of child-rearing”. And in her illuminating and sympathetic essay, ‘The Most Important Thing’, Sigrid Nunez quotes Doris Lessing: “There is nothing more boring for an intelligent woman than to spend endless amounts of time with small children”.

Pam Houston illustrates the difficulties of modern-day feminism in her oblique but scathing critique of mothers who blog about baking organic cookies with their children, which alone would have made this book a worthwhile read. But her voice is one amongst many thought-provoking ones calling our attention to the crippling expectations heaped on mothers to maintain an impeccable exterior. I myself have heard well-educated, working women seriously declare “I want to be a yummy mummy” and while that aspiration has always struck me as regressive, the heightened expectations to maintain outward appearances can make motherhood abhorrent enough for some women to opt out of baby-making altogether.

In her full-on tirade against nature and “maternal instincts” — so extravagantly venomous as to be wholly offensive — Laura Kipnis calls out maternal instinct for what it is: a historical artefact rather than a biological condition. She reminds women that technology is their friend while nature — which blogs and magazines aimed at a largely female readership seem to be so enamoured of — kills large numbers of women in childbirth. “No one who faces up to the real harshness of nature can feel very benignly about its tyranny. Sure, we like nature when it’s a beautiful day on the beach; less so when a tidal wave kills your family or a shark bites off your arm.”

On a more serious note, Kipnis rightly traces the “romance of the child” — and, very importantly, the very invention of childhood — with the declining economic value of children at the start of the Industrial Revolution. Emphasising the very low social returns mothers receive for their pains, she tears down sentimentalised notions of motherly fulfilment, calling on women to ask for more than just lip service. But it is not just a paternalistic society that glorifies motherhood. A toxic brew of culture and commercialism keeps women ensnared, widening the disparity between the actual and professed esteem for mothers. Nunez recalls “Thank you, Mom” commercials aired by Procter and Gamble that imbue motherhood with a saintly power. One of these, interestingly, ended with the tag line “The hardest job in the world is the best job in the world.” The italics are mine, and the irony, of course, is that motherhood is not a job at all insofar as you do not get a pay cheque for it. In a culture that places a monetary value on everything, the lack of that pay cheque tells you everything you need to know about the ‘importance’ of mothers.

The impact of commercialism and corporations on their would-be offspring is a serious consideration for some of the writers here, a concern many parents can easily relate to. Both Anna Holmes and Geoff Dyer (whose acerbic essay jeers at parenthood as the perfect excuse for evading what you claim you would rather be doing) when dissecting their reasons for foregoing parenthood reflect on the “creeping commodification of childhood” and the horror of continuing the march of privilege and power by producing private school-attending children.

A common thread in these essays is the desire to live an “authentic life”; an idealistic notion that is echoed time and again. Most of the writers here view child-making and rearing as bourgeois enterprises, not worthy of the capabilities of these individuals who must discover and actualise their authentic self by immersing themselves in writing, travel, social pleasures, and cultural activities. I expect parents all over the world to experience vicarious thrills while reading these parts in this book; I certainly did.

Tantalising and titillating — for many admit us into their personal and sexual lives — as these essays are, here is the thing: after a certain point, the pugnacity of Kipnis, the tearful musings of Jeanne Safer, the self-mockery of Dyer — all become one voice: the voice of the rational, economic agent maximising utility. Despite their terror of commercialism, these writers are consummate consumers, ‘shopping’ not for mere goods, but for the experiences — travel, society, parenting or not-parenting — that will maximise their utility. Shriver admits this in an essay planted firmly in the modern liberal paradigm. ‘Be Here Now Means Be Gone Later’ is a somewhat wistful tract lamenting the future dying out of the European race since its women refuse to breed. “I’m arrogant enough to actually think that the world will be a poorer place without my genes in it. But the fact is that I don’t care enough to do anything about it,” says a woman in her piece.

But in a world where the excellence of a gene pool is measured almost solely by its ability to propagate itself, it’s Shriver’s wistfulness that feels out of place. More to the point is her recognition that “we pledge allegiance to lower-case gods of our private devising. We are concerned with leading less a good life than the good life … we are apt to look back on our pasts and question not did I serve family, God and country?, but did I ever go to Cuba, or run a marathon? Did I take up landscape painting? Was I fat? We will assess the success of our lives in accordance … with whether they were interesting and fun.”

A book about non-parenting is still very much about parenting, which makes Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed a deliciously perverse enterprise. It has tapped into our endless fascination for all things related to parenting by now including the obverse — people who have chosen not to be parents — in the realm of the latest celebrity baby bump photos and the newest parenting manifesto. It is this juxtaposition, more so than all the intelligent and incisive voices it conveys, that makes it such a compelling read.

Selfish, Shallow and Self-Absorbed

(ANTHOLOGY)

Edited by Meghan Daum

Picador, UK

ISBN 978-1250052933

288pp.