Molly's Reads

Molly's Reads

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DECIDING TO BECOME A PARENT

ANTHOLOGIES/MEMOIRS
  • Pregnant Pause: My Journey through Obnoxious Questions, Baby Lust, Meddling Relatives, and Pre-Partum Depression by Carrie Friedman.

    • Published by Citadel, 2009

    Amazon Link

    I didn’t feel threatened when she told me about her child’s latest milestone or a fun weekend she had with her family, and I didn’t feel the need to justify my existence by comparing my life’s work to hers. So why was it necessary to insult my choices in order to boost her own? Was her sense of self so precarious that she thought anyone who chose differently was in some way an affront to her? Why couldn’t we just appreciate the separate paths we’d taken?

  • Pregnant Pause by Jane Doucet.

    • Published by All My Words Publishing, 2017

    Amazon Link

    Then Alison smiled, and Rose saw a twinkle in her eyes. That’s the part that got her. Because she knew that no matter what kind of grief Alison’s kids gave her, or how much she hated getting up early to cater to their needs, she loved them. And she’d rather have a crazy, sleep-deprived life with them than a calm, restful one without them. Would Rose feel the same way if she were a mother? That was the million-dollar question.

  • The Panic Years: Dates, Doubts, and The Mother of All Decisions by Nell Frizzell.

    • Published by Flatiron Books, 2021

    Amazon Link

    By adjusting women’s bodies with contraception and allowing men to live as eternal teenagers – uncertain jobs, short-term flings, adolescent hobbies – we have placed the burden of whether to try for a baby almost entirely at women’s feet

  • The Year of the Cat by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett.

    • Published by Tinder Press, 2023

    Amazon Link

    Fear is the price we pay for love, my mother says. But what if you have too much fear? What if the fear swallows up the love and becomes a prison for its object? I was well aware of my body’s capacity for fear, how it could become flooded with it until it perceived the world only as a series of traps. I didn’t want to be that kind of cat owner, just as I didn’t want to be that kind of mother.

NOVELS
  • Olive by Emma Gannon.

    • Published by Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2021

    Amazon Link

    My first question when I meet her will be whether she feels any pressure to be seen to be “having it all” in a different way: traveling sex, friendships, hobbies. Having to “make up for” not having kids, in some weird way. Ambition with a capital “A.” I feel like this with my friends sometimes.

  • It’s Complicated by Emma Hughes.

    • Published by Penguin, 2023

    Amazon Link

    Could she imagine herself in the doctor’s shoes, with a family of her own? Imagine suggested a confidence she didn’t have. Maybe hope was a better word: she hoped for one, and she always had.

CHILDFREE

ANTHOLOGIES/MEMOIRS
  • Maybe Baby: 28 Writers Tell the Truth about Skepticism, Infertility, Baby Lust, Childlessness, Ambivalence, and How They Made the Biggest Decision of their Lives Edited by Lori Leibovich. Foreword by Anne Lamott.

    • Published by Harper Perennial, 2007

    Amazon Link

    I can sort of see that it might be nice to have children, but there are a thousand things I’d rather spend my time doing than raise them. [To Breed or Not to Breed by Michelle Goldberg]

  • Confessions of a Childfree Woman: A Life Spent Swimming Against the Mainstream by Marcia Drut-Davis.

    • Published by Marcia Drut-Davis, 2013

    Amazon Link

    We no longer considered ourselves a childless couple. We were a childfree family.

  • Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed: Sixteen Writers on the Decision Not to Have Kids Edited by and with an Introduction by Meghan Daum.

    • Published by Picador, 2016

    Amazon Link

    It’s about time we stop mistaking self-knowledge for self-absorption – and realize that nobody has a monopoly on selfishness.

  • Do You Have Kids?: Life When the Answer is No by Kate Kaufmann.

    • Published by She Writes Press, 2019

    Amazon Link

    Sometimes there’s a kind of selfishness that parents can have about the world, because what matters is what protects their child. But not always poor children or children they don’t know. Just because it took you having a child to give you a heart, it doesn’t mean that’s true of everybody else.

  • Childfree by Choice: The Movement Redefining Family & Creating a New Age of Independence by Dr. Amy Blackstone.

    • Published by Dutton, 2019

    Amazon Link

    We each have the right to make the choice that feels best for our own families and fertility. And we share the responsibility of supporting others in making the choice that’s right for them.

CHILDFREE – INFERTILITY

  • Silent Sorority: A (Barren) Woman Gets Busy, Angry, Lost and Found by Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos.

    • Published by BookSurge Publishing, 2009

    Amazon Link

    Aren’t there just as many advantages to plotting one’s own course outside the beaten path? Yes, but it also meant getting lost more often. For the nearly ten years we tried to conceive I often felt that I was idling in neutral while my fertile friends and colleagues took off, map in hand, on a mostly pleasant ride. Even when things got rough there were plenty of pit stops for a chance to compare notes with fellow parental road warriors

  • I'm Taking My Eggs and Going Home: How One Woman Dared to Say No to Motherhood by Lisa Manterfield.

    • Published by Steel Rose Press, 2011

    Amazon Link

    I’d spent almost 20 years trying not to get pregnant, and had been very successful. I had never thought of getting pregnant as something you tried to do; it was just something that happened when you stopped trying not to.