What Are Children For?, Anastasia Berg
What Are Children For?, Anastasia Berg
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What Are Children For?
On Ambivalence and Choice

Author: Anastasia Berg, Rachel Wiseman

Narrator: Jennifer Pickens, Kirsten Potter, Zura Johnson

Unabridged: 9 hr 27 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 06/11/2024


Synopsis

This program features multicast narration.

A modern argument, grounded in philosophy and cultural criticism, about childbearing ambivalence and how to overcome it

Becoming a parent, once the expected outcome of adulthood, is increasingly viewed as a potential threat to the most basic goals and aspirations of modern life. We seek self-fulfillment; we want to liberate women to find meaning and self-worth outside the home; and we wish to protect the planet from the ravages of climate change. Weighing the pros and cons of having children, millennials and zoomers are finding it increasingly difficult to judge in its favor.

With lucid argument and passionate prose, Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman offer the guidance necessary to move beyond uncertainty. The decision whether or not to have children, they argue, is not just a women’s issue but a basic human one. And at a time when climate change worries threaten the very legitimacy of human reproduction, Berg and Wiseman conclude that neither our personal nor collective failures ought to prevent us from embracing the fundamental goodness of human life—not only in the present but, in choosing to have children, in the future.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

About Anastasia Berg

ANASTASIA BERG is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Irvine. She is an editor of The Point, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times​, The Atlantic, The TLS, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

About Rachel Wiseman

RACHEL WISEMAN is the managing editor of The Point. Her writing has appeared in the Atlantic, the Point, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.


Reviews

Goodreads review by jasmine on August 02, 2024

1) I don't think Berg & Wiseman are nearly as "ambivalent" as the title seems. Reading as someone who probably wants children, this book has a pretty transparent tilt—to rebut common arguments against having children. I don't think they're secret pronatalists in disguise, but the book feels driven b......more

Goodreads review by Adam on July 03, 2024

I kept thinking while I read the first few chapters of this book on how ambivalent I felt about this book on ambivalence. As I read on, that ambivalence changed into annoyance and anger. I'll start with the saving grace of that book that keeps it out of my rare club of one-star reviews: the authors......more

Goodreads review by Asiya (lavenderdecaflatte) on July 30, 2024

If the entire book was written like epilogue was, I might’ve liked it more. This is a fantastic idea and much needed work- in theory. In practice it feels like a very white, very eurocentric, soulless imitation of every other creative nonfiction/ literary criticism/ social commentary work/ syllabus.......more

Goodreads review by Shannon on May 13, 2024

I appreciate the book's premise and liked it overall, but it's not the guide it bills itself as. The summary describes 'WHAT ARE CHILDREN FOR?' as an "argument" with "guidance" on how to overcome parenthood ambivalence. However, it's more of a collection of various people's thoughts on having childr......more

Goodreads review by Kelly on January 19, 2025

Hm… this was tough. I really wanted to like this book. Back in October, I had the privilege of hearing both authors speak at a philosophy event and loved their presentation. I thought their research on why people are or aren’t having children was fascinating and also handled with a lot of compassion......more


Quotes

“Resisting easy answers … [Berg and Wiseman] ... offer scrupulous analysis enriched by vivid personal meditations ...It's an incisive look at a monumental life choice”—Publishers Weekly

“This is a brave, lucid book, and Berg and Wiseman deserve great credit for their readiness to ask tough questions.”—Kirkus Reviews

“In their widely researched and patiently argued book, Berg and Wiseman show how competing ideas about freedom, happiness, love, dignity, and justice attach to the increasingly ambivalent acts of having and raising children. What Are Children For? models the curiosity and the skepticism we need to imagine a collective future in dark times.”—Merve Emre, The New Yorker

“By far the most honest, unsentimental, unpredictable, and rigorously thoughtful exploration of parenting that I have ever read. Berg and Wiseman’s debut is a much-needed and impressively original inquiry into a topic that is almost always treated in deadeningly stale terms.”—Becca Rothfeld, The Washington Post

“A lucid and sophisticated treatment of a question we all share a stake in: Ought there be future generations? Carving out a conversation about parenthood and the future that’s undisturbed by the warping effects of the culture wars, the book ably addresses contemporary challenges to parenthood—both practical and political—while developing its own optimistic case for human life.”—Elizabeth Bruenig, The Atlantic