Download or read book Selfish Shallow and Self Absorbed written by Meghan Daum and published by Picador. This book was released on 2015-03-31 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SIXTEEN LITERARY LUMINARIES ON THE CONTROVERSIAL SUBJECT OF BEING CHILDLESS BY CHOICE, COLLECTED IN ONE FASCINATING ANTHOLOGY One of the main topics of cultural conversation during the last decade was the supposed "fertility crisis," and whether modern women could figure out a way to have it all-a successful, demanding career and the required 2.3 children-before their biological clock stopped ticking. Now, however, conversation has turned to whether it's necessary to have it all (see Anne-Marie Slaughter) or, perhaps more controversial, whether children are really a requirement for a fulfilling life. The idea that some women and men prefer not to have children is often met with sharp criticism and incredulity by the public and mainstream media. In this provocative and controversial collection of essays, curated by writer Meghan Daum, sixteen acclaimed writers explain why they have chosen to eschew parenthood. Contributors include Lionel Shriver, Sigrid Nunez, Kate Christiensen, Elliott Holt, Geoff Dyer, and Tim Kreider, among others, who will give a unique perspective on the overwhelming cultural pressure of parenthood. Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed makes a thoughtful and passionate case for why parenthood is not the only path in life, taking our parent-centric, kid-fixated, baby-bump-patrolling culture to task in the process. What emerges is a more nuanced, diverse view of what it means to live a full, satisfying life.
Download or read book Selfish Shallow and Self Absorbed written by Meghan Daum and published by Picador. This book was released on 2016-04-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sixteen literary luminaries on the controversial subject of being childless by choice, in this critically acclaimed, bestselling anthology One of the most provocative and talked-about books of the year, Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed is the stunning collection exploring one of society’s most vexing taboos. One of the main topics of cultural conversation during the last decade was the supposed “fertility crisis,” and whether modern women could figure out a way to have it all—a successful career and the required 2.3 children—before their biological clocks stopped ticking. Now, however, the conversation has turned to whether it’s necessary to have it all (see Anne-Marie Slaughter) or, perhaps more controversial, whether children are really a requirement for a fulfilling life. In this exciting and controversial collection of essays, curated by writer Meghan Daum, thirteen acclaimed female writers explain why they have chosen to eschew motherhood. Contributors include Lionel Shriver, Sigrid Nunez, Kate Christensen, Elliott Holt, Geoff Dyer, and Tim Kreider, among others, who will give a unique perspective on the overwhelming cultural pressure of parenthood. This collection makes a smart and passionate case for why parenthood is not the only path to a happy, productive life, and takes our parent-centric, kid-fixated, baby-bump-patrolling culture to task in the process. In this book, that shadowy faction known as the childless-by-choice comes out into the light.
Download or read book Beyond Motherhood written by Jeanne Safer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1996-02 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Women from all over the country share their experiences and offer insights into what it is like not having children, and describe what factors helped shape their decision to remain childless.
Download or read book The Problem with Everything written by Meghan Daum and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-10-22 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “[A]ffectingly personal, achingly earnest, and something close to necessary.” —Vogue “Personal, convincing, unflinching.” —Tablet From an author who’s been called “one of the most emotionally exacting, mercilessly candid, deeply funny, and intellectually rigorous writers of our time” (Cheryl Strayed, #1 New York Times bestselling author) comes a seminal book that reaches surprising truths about feminism, the Trump era, and the Resistance movement. You won’t be able to stop thinking and talking about it. In this gripping work, Meghan Daum examines our country’s most intractable problems with clear-eyed honesty instead of exaggerated outrage. With passion, humor, and personal reflection, she tries to make sense of the current landscape—from Donald Trump’s presidency to the #MeToo movement and beyond. In the process, she wades into the waters of identity politics and intersectionality, thinks deeply about campus politics and notions of personal resilience, and tests a theory about the divide between Gen Xers and millennials. This signature work may well be the first book to capture the essence of this era in all its nuances and contradictions. No matter where you stand on its issues, this book will strike a chord.
Download or read book Complete Without Kids written by Ellen L. Walker and published by Greenleaf Book Group. This book was released on 2011 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines the rewards and challenges childfree adults face living in a world that celebrates traditional families, offering advice on how to cope with the pressure of friends and family to have children, taking advantage of leisure time, and financial considerations.
Download or read book No Kids written by Corinne Maier and published by Emblem Editions. This book was released on 2009-08-04 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The shocking treatise that was a bestselling international media sensation upon its 2007 publication in France now makes its eagerly anticipated English-language debut. A mother of two herself, Maier makes her deadly serious, if at times laugh-out-loud-funny, argument with all the unbridled force of her famously wicked intellect. In forty to-the-point, impressively erudite chapters drawing on the realms of history, child psychology, politics, and the environment, Maier effortlessly skewers the idealized notion of parenthood as a natural and beautiful endeavour. Enough with this “baby-mania” that is plaguing modern society, says Maier, it’s nothing but brainwashing. Are you prepared to give up your free time, dinners with friends, spontaneous romantic getaways, and even the luxury of uninterrupted thought for the “vicious little dwarves” that will treat you like their servant, cost you hundreds of thousands of dollars, and end up resenting you? Speaking to the still “child-free”, to fellow suffering parents, and to adamant procreationists alike, No Kids is a controversial, thought-provoking, and undeniably entertaining read. Reasons to avoid having kids: •You will lose touch with your friends •Your sex life will be over •Children cost a fortune • Child-rearing is endless drudgery •Vacations will be nightmares •You’ll lose your identity and become just “mom” or “dad” •Your children will become mindless drones of capitalism •The planet’s already overcrowded •Your children will inevitably disappoint you
Download or read book Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids written by Bryan Caplan and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2011-04-12 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We've needlessly turned parenting into an unpleasant chore. Parents invest more time and money in their kids than ever, but the shocking lesson of twin and adoption research is that upbringing is much less important than genetics in the long run. These revelations have surprising implications for how we parent and how we spend time with our kids. The big lesson: Mold your kids less and enjoy your life more. Your kids will still turn out fine. Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids is a book of practical big ideas. How can parents be happier? What can they change -- and what do they need to just accept? Which of their worries can parents safely forget? Above all, what is the right number of kids for you to have? You'll never see kids or parenthood the same way again.
Download or read book Why Have Kids written by Jessica Valenti and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2012 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jessica Valenti explores modern motherhood and the choice to have children.
Download or read book The Unspeakable written by Meghan Daum and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2014-11-18 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Daum is her generation's Joan Didion." —Nylon Nearly fifteen years after her debut collection, My Misspent Youth, captured the ambitions and anxieties of a generation, Meghan Daum returns to the personal essay with The Unspeakable, a masterful collection of ten new works. Her old encounters with overdrawn bank accounts and oversized ambitions in the big city have given way to a new set of challenges. The first essay, "Matricide," opens without flinching: People who weren't there like to say that my mother died at home surrounded by loving family. This is technically true, though it was just my brother and me and he was looking at Facebook and I was reading a profile of Hillary Clinton in the December 2009 issue of Vogue. Elsewhere, she carefully weighs the decision to have children—"I simply felt no calling to be a parent. As a role, as my role, it felt inauthentic and inorganic"—and finds a more fulfilling path as a court-appointed advocate for foster children. In other essays, she skewers the marriage-industrial complex and recounts a harrowing near-death experience following a sudden illness. Throughout, Daum pushes back against the false sentimentality and shrink-wrapped platitudes that surround so much of contemporary American experience and considers the unspeakable thoughts many of us harbor—that we might not love our parents enough, that "life's pleasures" sometimes feel more like chores, that life's ultimate lesson may be that we often learn nothing. But Daum also operates in a comic register. With perfect precision, she reveals the absurdities of the New Age search for the "Best Possible Experience," champions the merits of cream-of mushroom-soup casserole, and gleefully recounts a quintessential "only-in-L.A." story of playing charades at a famous person's home. Combining the piercing insight of Joan Didion with humor reminiscent of Nora Ephron's, Daum dissects our culture's most dangerous illusions, blind spots, and sentimentalities while retaining her own joy and compassion. Through it all, she dramatizes the search for an authentic self in a world where achieving an identity is never simple and never complete.
Download or read book My Misspent Youth written by Meghan Daum and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first collection from an acclaimed young essayist in the tradition of Joan Didion delves into the center of things while closely examining the detritus that spills out along the way. Daum speaks to questions at the root of the contemporary experience, from the search for authenticity and interpersonal connection in a society defined by consumerism and media to the disenchantment of working in a "glamour profession".
Download or read book Childfree by Choice written by Dr. Amy Blackstone and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From Dr. Amy Blackstone, childfree woman, co-creator of the blog we're {not} having a baby, and nationally recognized expert on the childfree choice, comes a definitive investigation into the history and current growing movement of adults choosing to forgo parenthood: what it means for our society, economy, environment, perceived gender roles, and legacies, and how understanding and supporting all types of families can lead to positive outcomes for parents, non-parents, and children alike. As a childfree woman, Dr. Amy Blackstone is no stranger to a wide range of negative responses when she informs people she doesn't have--nor does she want--kids: confused looks, patronizing quips, thinly veiled pity, even outright scorn and condemnation. But she is not alone in opting out when it comes to children. More people than ever are choosing to forgo parenthood, and openly discussing a choice that's still often perceived as taboo. Yet this choice, and its effects personally and culturally, are still often misunderstood. Amy Blackstone, a professor of sociology, has been studying the childfree choice since 2008, a choice she and her husband had already confidently and happily made. Using her own and others' research as well as her personal experience, Blackstone delves into the childfree movement from its conception to today, exploring gender, race, sexual orientation, politics, environmentalism, and feminism, as she strips away the misconceptions surrounding non-parents and reveals the still radical notion that support of the childfree can lead to better lives and societies for all.
Download or read book Childless by Marriage written by Sue Fagalde Lick and published by . This book was released on 2021-06 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First you marry a man who does not want children. He cheats and you divorce him. Then you marry the love of your life and find out he does not want to have children with you either. The three he has are more than enough. Although you always wanted to be a mother, you decide he is worth the sacrifice, expecting to have a long happy life together. But that's not what happens. This is the story of how a woman becomes childless by marriage and how it affects every aspect of her life. This is the book of my heart, the one I had to write. Ever since I realized I was not going to have children, I have felt recurring grief and an emptiness in my heart. I am different from most women, but I have found that I am not alone. There are many of us childless women, and I think it's important to share our stories about what it's like when you don't have children in a world where most girls grow up to become mothers. I hope this book offers comfort to those who are childless and understanding to those who are not. If it makes you smile here and there, even better.
Download or read book No Kidding written by Henriette Mantel and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2013-04-16 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In No Kidding, comedy writer Henriette Mantel tackles the topic of actually not having kids. This fascinating collection features a star-studded group of contributors—including Margaret Cho, Wendy Liebman, Laurie Graff, and other accomplished, funny women—writing about why they opted out of motherhood. Whether their reasons have to do with courage, apathy, monetary considerations, health issues, or something else entirely, the essays featured in the pages of No Kidding honestly (and humorously) delve into the minds of women who have chosen what they would call a more sane path. Hilarious, compelling, and inspiring, No Kidding reveals a perspective that has too long been hidden, shamed, and silenced—and celebrates an entire population of women who have decided that kids are just not right for them. Additional contributors include Janette Barber, Cheryl Bricker, Valri Bromfield, Cindy Caponera, Bonnie Datt, Jeanne Dorsey, Nora Dunn, Jane Gennaro, Julie Halston, Debbie Kasper, Sue Kolinsky, Maureen Langan, Beth Lapides, Bernadette Luckett, Merrill Markoe, Andrea Carla Michaels, Vanda Mikoloski, Judy Morgan, Judy Nielsen, Susan Norfleet, Suzanne O’Neil, Jennifer Prediger, Kathryn Rossetter, Betsy Salkind, Patricia Scanlon, Jeanette Schwaba Vigne, Nancy Shayne, Carol Siskind, Ann Slichter, Tracy Smith, Suzy Soro, Amy Stiller, and Nancy Van Iderstine.
Download or read book The Quality of Life Report written by Meghan Daum and published by University of Texas Press. This book was released on 2017-04-11 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New York Times Notable Book: A Manhattanite seeks Midwestern bliss and finds something else in this “funny, literate [and] often touching story” (People). Television correspondent Lucinda Trout is unhappy about the superficiality and shallowness of her life in New York, not to mention the latest stratospheric rent hike. Seeking an escape, she proposes a new project: She’ll move far, far away, to the wholesome, most-livable-list town of Prairie City, and send “Quality of Life Report” segments back to the network. But her mental image of the nation’s heartland doesn’t quite match up to the reality she finds. Prairie City may not be Manhattan, but it isn’t Mayberry either—and while housing may be cheaper here, life and love are just as complicated. Now Lucinda has to confront the challenge of truly finding her own place in the world, in the wildly acclaimed first novel by the New York Times-bestselling and PEN Award-winning author of The Problem with Everything. “Daum brings a crisp, wisecracking voice to her novel . . . An admirably nuanced view of the American heartland.” —The New Yorker “Daum’s enormous comic gift—and her ability to use it in the service of fundamentally serious issues—is an unexpected delight.” —The New York Times Book Review “A confident first novel, full of wit and deft social criticism, often very funny and frequently wise.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review “With a keen eye and trenchant wit, Meghan Daum skewers the obsessive narcissism and sense of entitlement that passes for real values in our media-driven culture. Always funny, often painfully so, The Quality of Life Report is more than simply satirical. It is an intelligent and heartfelt tale of a young woman, making radical choices and waking up to her life.” —Ruth Ozeki, author of The Book of Form and Emptiness
Download or read book Selfishness and Self Absorption written by Ted Dawson and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2015-05-11 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Selfishness and Self Absorption: How to Stop It from Ruining Your Relationships We all want our relationships to be successful. A great relationship is unlike anything else in life, and can contribute a lot to our wellbeing and happiness. Sadly, many of us struggle in maintaining healthy relationships. Very often, our own selfish patterns and behaviors are at the root of our inability to really reach our romantic potential. In this book, we will talk about how to overcome selfishness and realize more fulfilling relationships. We will talk about the root causes of selfish behavior, so we can better understand ourselves and so better ourselves. The three main causes of self-absorption that we will look at are: - Biological: evolutionary causes, from Darwin's Origin of Species to Dawkin's Selfish Gene - Psychological: how we think. Selfish, egotistical reasoning versus principled, ethical reasoning. We'll look at Kohlberg's moral development theory, and how you can use it to overcome your unconscious selfish instincts. - Social: we'll take a look at how contemporary culture puts pressure on us to behave selfishly, and how we can change this and live more for others. We will go over specific techniques and practices that you can easily adopt into you every day life to overcome selfishness and learn how to love unselfishly and unconditionally. We'll talk about: - How to develop mutually supportive relationships as partnerships. - How to monitor yourself and check your selfish impulses to avoid unnecessary confrontation. - How to learn how much space you take up, and strategies for stepping up or stepping back to create more equality and fairness in our relationships. - The importance of giving without receiving. With these tools in hand, you will be well on your way to developing more loving relationships that will allow you to achieve more and be a happier, more compassionate lover and individual.
Download or read book Maybe Baby written by Lori Leibovich and published by Harper Collins. This book was released on 2009-03-17 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To breed or not to breed? That is the question twenty-eight accomplished writers ponder in this collection of provocative, honest, soul-searching essays. Based on a popular series at Salon.com, Maybe Baby offers both frank and nuanced opinions from a wide range of viewpoints on parenting choices, both alternative and traditional. Yes: "I've been granted access to a new plane of existence, one I could not have imagined, and would not now live without."—Peter Nichols No: "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."—Michelle Goldberg Maybe: "As we both slip into our mid-thirties, my own personal daddy dilemma has quietly taken on an urgency that I frankly didn't expect."—Larry Smith From infertility to adoption, from ambivalence to baby lust, Maybe Baby brings together the full force of opinions about this national, but also intensely personal, debate.
Download or read book Real Life Real Love written by DJ Envy and published by Abrams. This book was released on 2022-04-19 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Advice on how to have healthy, dynamic relationships from RaaShaun (DJ Envy) and Gia Casey, revealing their secrets to navigating marriage, family, and faith—now in paperback! USA Today National Bestseller Publisher’s Weekly National Bestseller Gia and RaaShaun Casey met when they were two teenagers living around the corner from each other in Queens. They have been together for an astounding 25 years and have remained together through RaaShaun’s growing fame, a devastating (and very public) cheating scandal, and the births of five children. Now, a quarter of a century into their relationship, they are stronger and more committed to each other than they’ve ever been, and their fans are clamoring to know how they did it. In Real Life, Real Love, Gia and RaaShaun explore the entire chronology of their love story with remarkable vulnerability, searing honesty, and a lot of humor. It’s a riveting narrative about how to grow together, an aspirational guidebook for people who seek the same unconditional love in their relationships, and an in-depth look at how to remain equals after being thrust into the public eye.
