For reasons personal and political, I am not a good person to turn to when talking about families. I am in a long-term, extraordinarily happy relationship. We are childless by choice; "barren," some might say-evoking a bleakness I simply do not recognize. According to received wisdom, we are not a proper family; not quite complete somehow. This is made all too apparent when, as often happens, people ask: 'And do you have children?" My answer is met with eyes that betray a mixture of embarrassment ("Oh, maybe they are infertile."), pity ("Their lives must have such a void."), or something approaching scorn ("They must be so selfish."). Such perceptions are reinforced in the self-deprecating title of a recent collection of essays by childless or, rather, intentionally child-free writers, titled Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed.
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