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Wanting a Child

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Jill Bialosky & Helen Schulman, editors
Wanting a Child

(New York: Farrar, Straus, & Giroux, 1998) 274 pages
(ISBN: 0-374-28634-5; hardback)
(Library of Congress call number: HQ755.8.W367 1998)

This book is worth reading for the sheer beauty of the writing.
This collection consists of several first-person accounts
of the experiences that emerged from wanting a child.
The two editors both had several miscarriages
before they finally achieved motherhood.
Here are some of the stories, summarized in one line each:
Lesbian parenthood by donated sperm.
Parenthood by donated egg.
Several stories of adoption, foreign and domestic.
Stories of how a child with very serious health problems
make happy parents miserable.
Buying a baby from a pregnant teen-ager.
Connecting with a child given up for adoption years before.
Deciding about a Downs syndrome fetus.
Two gay men have children by a surrogate mother.
Divorced mother happy to have her only child.
Two gay men adopt a baby.
Stories of still-born babies.

Once again, you will appreciate reading these stories
not because of their content (which is often very dramatic)
but because of the high quality of the writing.
Whatever we think about the events described,
this book is a delight to read.

However, not one of the persons represented in this book
ever wonders why people have children.
Wanting a child is assumed to be a valid desire,
which needs no justification at all.

After reading this book, you may conclude
that adoption is the most reasonable parental behavior.
Millions of babies are born by accident
to teen-age mothers all around the world.
When accidental mothers cannot raise their children,
these babies should be adopted by adults
who can give the children a good life.
Usually these babies are physically healthy,
but because of the social conditions into which they are born,
they will have miserable lives unless they are adopted.

Several stories in this collection tell of the lengths
some people pursued in order to adopt their children.
We need better ways to bring together
the needy children of the world
with the adults who can be good parents for them.

I happened to come across this book after the loss of a pregnancy, and it was deeply moving. Through the authors' own stories, I was able to process my own and to truly heal. I have given it to friends coping with the longing for a child amidst difficulties, as it provides a beautiful, sincere lens with which to help make sense of the often difficult and emotional path to a child.

If you are a birth mother stay away from this book. It will make you feel guilty for not procreating so you can give away your child to another woman who has more--more money, and a pony in the backyard. One writer--one of the editors, Jill Bialosky, can not even bring herself to call the natural mother of her child a mother; instead she calls her "the woman who labored him." Gag. Yes, that woman is her "definition of a Messiah." Given the rest of the essay, and yes, Bialosky did go through hell trying to conceive and have a living child, but please--birth mothers do not have babies to supply women who can't. Better to read The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood.