Others Like Me: The Lives of Women Without Children

Essayist Louie debuts with an introspective memoir exploring her decision not to have children and recapping the stories of other women who made the same choice. Louie presents brief, stylized first-person vignettes drawn from interviews with 14 other childless women, who offer up an intriguing range of rationales—among them a lack of maternal urge, a passion for other experiences, asexuality, their own difficult upbringings, and medical conditions—as well as sharp insights into both childlessness and parenthood (“There is of course more freedom without children, but being single takes a lot of time in other ways. Everything is done by one person, there is no sharing of responsibilities... I sometimes wonder if those who are parents are truly selfless”; “I do wonder how this is going to affect me in the future... I try to save money. For better or for worse, we live in a capitalist society, so a part of me thinks, Well, if I have money, I’ll probably be all right”). However, the lion’s share of the book is devoted to Louie’s own experiences—including the dissolution of her marriage, partly due to conflict over having a child—which are narrated in a far more sprawling and less refined way, making for a jarring contrast that is also short on insight. Readers will be left unsatisfied. (Nov.)