New works by Caroline Magennis and Nicole Louie feature interviews with many childfree women and add more voices to what is often a very narrow and judgmental conversation
Harpy: A Manifesto for Childfree Women; Others Like Me: The Lives of Women Without Children - listening to a wider narrative
Her tone remains light and accessible throughout. Harpy begins with the author confessing that at dinner parties she finds herself looking for “the women with a hint of devilment”. Magennis becomes that woman for the reader, her tone mimicking that of a well-informed friend moving from personal anecdote to cultural analysis to a collective call to action, as she describes how childfree women are constantly forced to navigate the expectations of everyone around them.
Magennis deconstructs the constant social messaging that portrays mothers as paragons of moral virtue and childfree women as lacking in social responsibility, observing how politicians present themselves as compassionate leaders by deploying the phrase “As a mother” – the implication being “that people without children are somehow not interested in the common good when we also live in the world, care about people and want a fair deal for them”.
She does, importantly, combat ideas of exceptionalism, observing that childfree women are expected to be exceptionally ambitious, career-focused or successful, to compensate for their childlessness. Highlighting the right for childfree women to live quiet, ordinary lives is a refreshing break from the individualistic, neoliberal, girl-boss rhetoric that often swirls around childfree women.
The structure of Irish-based Brazilian writer Nicole Louie’s book Others Like Me makes more space for the gamut of childfree women’s emotions and experiences. While Magennis uses quotations from her anonymous interviewees to expand upon the specific themes and ideas of each chapter, Louie presents her 14 interviews as long, uninterrupted, first-person sections that weave through the author’s personal experience.
Cecilie’s ability to combine exasperation and boredom with warmth, wit and a genuine commitment to maintaining her friendships feels like a fully-rounded portrait of a childfree woman. Louie’s interviews address many other forms of specificity.
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