What Are Children For: On Ambivalence and Choice

(Hardback)

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Across the developed world, fewer and fewer people are becoming parents, and many see themselves as never doing so. In waiting for the right partner, the right job, the right house the right circumstances we close off the possibility altogether. And whats more, were told that maybe we shouldnt have children. Faced with climate collapse and political crisis, perhaps our childrens lives wont be worth living. Anastasia Berg and Rachel Wiseman find a way out of our inertia, building an optimistic case for human life. A life worth living is any life, as a parent or not, where we make and live for our genuine commitments. What Are Children For is a call to take the decision of parenthood seriously, and take it into our own hands.

Reviews

'A lucid and sophisticated treatment of a question we all share a stake in: Ought there be future generations Carving out a conversation about parenthood and the future thats undisturbed by the warping effects of the culture wars, the book ably addresses contemporary challenges to parenthood both practical and political while developing its own optimistic case for human life.'Elizabeth Bruenig,The Atlantic

'In their widely researched and patiently argued book, Berg and Wiseman show how competing ideas about freedom, happiness, love, dignity, and justice attach to the increasingly ambivalent acts of having and raising children.What Are Children Formodels the curiosity and the scepticism we need to imagine a collective future in dark times.'Merve Emre,The New Yorker

'A book not merely about parents and their choices, but aboutthefull meaning of adulthood today. Berg and Wiseman address, with triumphant patience, rigour and generosity, this subject which we are constantly warned cant be contained by a book.'Lillian Fishman, author ofActs of Service

'By far the most honest, unsentimental, unpredictable, and rigorously thoughtful exploration of parenting that I have ever read. Berg and Wisemans debut is a much-needed and impressively original inquiry into a topic that is almost always treated in deadeningly stale terms.'Becca Rothfeld,The Washington Post

'An incisive look at a monumental life choice.'Publishers Weekly

Author Bio

Anastasia Berg is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She is an editor of The Point, and her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Atlantic, TLS, Los Angeles Review of Books, and Chronicle of Higher Education Review. Rachel Wiseman is the managing editor of The Point. Her writing has appeared in the Atlantic, The Point, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.