Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age

Cultural critic Hess’s fierce and funny debut memoir is an astute document of pregnancy and parenting in the internet era. At the start of her pregnancy in 2020, Hess was wryly amused by the way targeted ads clumsily urged her to buy maternity clothes and quackish health supplements. Then a prenatal test informed her that her baby had Beckwith-Weidemann Syndrome, a growth disorder that increases risks of childhood cancers. Suddenly, her relationship to the internet shifted, her phone “feed[ing] me from its bank of dark materials” as she tried to search her way to safety. Overwhelmed by a plethora of “experts,” from free birthers to “medical mom” influencers who display their disabled children’s vulnerable bodies online, Hess gradually came to agree with child psychologist Alison Gopnik: no number of parenting “hacks” can sculpt the perfect child nor substitute for a healthy society. Bringing journalistic scruples to her explorations of eugenics, disability advocacy, and the algorithmic churn of life in the 2020s, Hess balances her own story with a broader portrait of the anxious buzz of the modern world. Parents will feel especially seen by this incisive and refreshing account. Agent: Jin Auh, Wylie Agency. (May)