To breed or not to breed? That is the question twenty-eight accomplished writers -- including Anne Lamott, Rick Moody, Kathryn Harrison, and Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez -- ponder in this collection of provocative, honest, and deeply personal essays. Based on a popular series at Salon.com, Maybe Baby features parents and nonparents alike exploring how and why they decided whether to have children.

This powerful collection offers both frank and nuanced looks at those choices, both alternative and traditional, from a wide range of viewpoints. From abortion to adoption, from ambivalence to baby lust, from single parenting to searching for the right partner to have a baby with, Maybe Baby brings together the full force of opinions about this national -- but also intensely personal -- debate.

Michelle Goldberg

To Breed or Not to Breed

When people learn that I'm in my late twenties, happily married, and am not planning to have children, they respond in one of two ways. Most of the time, they smile patronizingly and say, "You'll change your mind." Sometimes they do me the favor of taking me seriously, in which case they warn, "You'll regret it."

I've heard this enough that I've started worrying that they might be right. After all, I'm not completely insensitive to the appeal of motherhood. In fact, I have a name chosen for the daughter I don't plan to have, and sometimes I imagine the life I could give her. Spared my mortifying suburban childhood, she'd be one of those sparkling, precocious New York City kids I've always envied. I'd take her around the world, to study languages in Europe, to see the Potala Palace and the Taj Mahal. She'd have all I wish I'd had.

My husband doesn't particularly want to be a father, but he's said that, should I ever feel the ravenous baby hunger said to descend on women in their thirties, he could be coaxed into parenthood. He's a loving and generous man, and I have no doubt he'd dote on our child if we had one. So would his wonderful family, who live within walking distance of us. They're the reason his sister, a bar owner, has more of a social life than any other young mother I've met. I think of his grandmother and late grandfather, who lived in a rambling house in rural Maine. Three generations of their adoring descendants admired them as few people admire the very old anymore, and seeing that has made me think that family can be the key to the best kind of life.

Still, the vague pleasures I sometimes associate with having children are either distant or abstract. Other women say they feel a yearning for motherhood like a physical ache. I don't know what they're talking about. The daily depredations of child-rearing, though, seem so viscerally real that my stomach tightens when I ponder them. A child, after all, can't be treated as a fantasy projection of my imagined self. He or she would be another person, with needs and desires that I would be tethered to for decades. And everything about meeting those needs fills me with horror. Not just the diapers and the shrieking, the penury and career stagnation, but the parts that maternally minded friends of mine actually look forward to: the wearying grammar-school theatrical performances. Hours spent on the playground when I'd rather be reading books or writing them. Parent-teacher conferences. Birthday parties. Ugly primary-colored plastic toys littering my home.

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. The daily grind of motherhood seems like a prison sentence to me. Though I have nothing but respect for the work of raising children, I don't like being around them. At least, I don't like being around most of them most of the time. Some people say I'll feel different about my own, but I'm not sure I want to take the risk. I think about Martha Gellhorn, the globe-trotting war correspondent who, when she was middle-aged, adopted a little boy in a moment of loneliness and sentimentality. At first, she was in love, like mothers are. Then she grew bored and frustrated. According to a recent biography of her, she was terrible to him, and he was the great failure of her life.

Two years ago, when I wrote a story about all this for Salon, I got dozens of letters in response. Most were empathetic, but a few, mostly from men, were disgusted, calling me a selfish caricature of feminism.

Lori Leibovich is a senior editor at Salon.com. Her writing has appeared in many publications, including the New York Times, the New York Observer, the Washington Post, Elle, Harper's Bazaar, and in the anthologies Mothers Who Think and The Real Las Vegas. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and son.

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