
By Jessica Valenti
ISBN-10: 0547892616
ISBN-13: 9780547892610
If parenting is making americans unsatisfied, if it’s very unlikely to “have it all,” if humans don’t have the industrial, social, or political buildings had to help baby rearing, then why do it? And why are fearful new mom and dad flocking to each Tiger mom and Bébé-raiser for suggestion on the right way to elevate kids?
In Why Have Kids?, Valenti explores those arguable questions via on-the-ground reporting, startling new study, and her personal certain studies as a mother. She strikes past the black and white “mommy wars” over common parenting, self-discipline, and work-life stability to discover a extra nuanced truth: one choked with ambivalence, pleasure, guilt, and exhaustion.
Would-be mom and dad needs to navigate the choice to have kids amidst a frightening mixture of cultural expectancies and difficult proof. And new mom and dad locate themselves suffering to reconcile their elation with the customarily hard, complicated, and costly enterprise of kid care. whilst researchers for a 2010 Pew learn requested mom and dad why they made up our minds to have their first baby, approximately ninety percentage responded, for “the pleasure of getting children.” but approximately each learn within the final ten years exhibits a marked decline within the lifestyles pride of these with youngsters. Valenti explores this disconnect among parents’ hopes and the day by day truth of elevating children—revealing all of the methods mother and father are quietly suffering. A must-read for fogeys in addition to these contemplating beginning a family members, Why Have Kids? is an explosive addition to the dialog approximately sleek parenthood.