(updated November 2024)
Welcome to my 2024 book recommendations page, which I update all year with new books in a range of topics related to childfree vs. parenthood decision-making. My latest fiction and nonfiction picks delve into topics as diverse as parenthood environmental considerations, adoption, parenting, childfree role models, and better communication.
Please note: I do not receive any incentives or commissions for recommending and linking to books. The links below are provided only for your convenience. Happy reading!
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Autumn 2024 picks
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Fledging
by Rose Diell
Renard Press, 2024
Riddle: How did the novelist tell a dead serious story and make her readers laugh?
Answer: By having her human heroine lay an egg while she is trying to decide between parenting and being childfree.
With an original braiding of fantasy, whimsy, tortured dark nights of the soul, and slapstick chick-hiding in a basket, Lia wrestles with the tumultuous baby decision. Diell is especially good at conveying Lia’s loneliness: her partner is on a different continent, her friends are all getting pregnant, and she can’t bring herself to tell a doctor about her egg/hatched chick or her own body’s role in its creation.
Paradoxically, Diell overcomes readers’ loneliness by drawing them into her worldwide circle of sister readers.
While some of Fledging’s language is appropriately quick and clipped, other writing is lyrical: Diell calls trouble sleeping “indecision insomnia.” Here’s her comment on the egg that has just come out of her bleeding body: “a white moon blinks back at me from a sea of red.” Her relief when she comes to a decision is a “great exhalation dispersing like dandelion seeds on the breeze.”
I imagine that Jennifer Flynn’s Wild Egg, Emma Gannon’s Olive, and Sheila Heti’s Motherhood make room on my bookshelf to welcome Rose Diell’s superb Fledging. I imagine the four authors, with their four heroines, laughing and telling stories after readers have gone to bed.
You can learn more about Rose Diell on her website, and order the book via the publisher, or via Goodreads.
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Others Like Me: The Lives of Women Without Children
by Nicole Louie
Dialogue Books, 2024
Nicole Louie, a Brazilian living in Dublin, interweaves her personal journey to a childfree decision with intimate interviews with fourteen women who arrived at their childfree choice from many different paths. I love how diverse this book is, with people from all walks of life, from Thailand to Iceland to Ghana.
While all the featured women share the commonalities of courage, authenticity. and risk-taking en route to their decision, there are intriguing, unique experiences such as infertility, ambivalence, and some openness to parenthood in the future. Some, like Louie herself, are fiercely committed to social advocacy for childfree women.
Louie counts herself among the writers and social justice advocates who are urged to write the non-existent, but desperately needed book that she herself wants to read. Discouraged by negative stereotypes of childfree women and childfree lives, Louie asks herself, “what had made me believe a life without children of my own would be a horrible one?”
She realized the answer was a lack of role models: “Not just in my family or circle of friends, but anywhere.”
She goes on to say, “That’s because a woman’s life without children is rarely told in literature cinema or media.” And when these stories are told they are often negative stereotypes rather than healthy happy women, leading a constructive life of their own choosing.
Others Like Me is a brilliant answer to Louie’s own question, and a compendium of inspiring stories of women you will wish you could meet in person. But you’ll know that this book is another great way to meet them.
How does this apply to your decision-making? If you’re leaning toward being childfree, but not sure yet, the book will give you a bouquet of possibilities to consider your own path. If you are up in the air, it will feed you enough knowledge about childfree living to make an informed choice.
Order the book via the publisher, or on Amazon.
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Summer 2024 picks
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Begetting: What Does It Mean to Create a Child?
by Mara van der Lugt
Princeton University Press, 2024
Mara van der Lugt, a history of philosophy expert at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, goes deep into our motivation to have children as well as our moral obligations to the earth and to future children. This is such a complex book that I struggled to summarize it here. So instead, I’d like to quote from a review by sociologist Orna Donath, whom you may recognize as the author of Regretting Motherhood:
“[Mara van der Lugt] dares to deal with the left-aside and unwelcomed fundamental, philosophical, moral, ethical, and existential questions of procreation and ‘coming into existence.'”
Although this is a scholarly work, you’ll find its style accessible and its ideas provocative. This book will enliven your decision-related conversations with your partner, loved ones, coach or psychotherapist.
Enjoy samples and order the book via the publisher or on Amazon.
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Family Family
by Lori Frankel
Henry Holt & Co. (Macmillan, US), 2024
This funny, compassionate, easy-to-read novel challenges our assumptions about who and what is a family and whether a two-time birth mother, a feminist rising star actor can actually enjoy her pregnancies and the relinquishment process. Later, she becomes a single adoptive mother herself. Thanks to an action by her teenage (adopted) daughter, she has surprise encounters her teen birth children.
The book also grapples with ethical issues in adoption. Whether or not adoption might be in your future, your widened sense of the different forms of family will help you think creatively about your own version of family.
Enjoy samples and order the book on the author’s website, or via the publisher, or on Amazon.
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The Truth About Ben and June
by Alex Kiester
Harper Collins, 2022
Ben, a new father, wakes up one morning to find his hungry son screaming and June, his wife and the baby’s mother, nowhere to be found. Although it’s not a mystery novel, per se, the disappearance of an unhappy new mother confronts Ben with just how unbearable June’s life has been taking care of a baby while being disconnected from him, and from her former life as a dancer.
While this book is dead serious about the miseries endured by new mothers and fathers, it also has plenty of warmth and humor. Ben means well, but has been clueless, so June finds a way to get his attention. This book will spark great book group discussions and couple conversations about sharing the emotional load.
Enjoy samples and order the book on the author’s website, or via the publisher, or on Amazon.
Spring 2024 picks
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This past winter, I struggled with writing two chapters of my upcoming book Baby or Childfree?, due out in 2025. One chapter is about villages and communities; the other is about climate change. These topics challenge me because my expertise is individuals and families—not macro social and environmental issues. Thankfully, I found a treasure trove of great ideas in several new books below. They have helped my writing, and I think they’ll inspire you, too:
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Fight Right
by Julie Schwartz Gottman and John Gottman
Penguin Random House, 2024
Are you disagreeing about whether or not to have a child? Don’t panic! Constructive conflict can lead to a good decision and a closer relationship. May you find comfort in this insightful quote from Fight Right by psychologists and spouses Julie Schwartz Gottman, PhD and John Gottman, PhD:
“Conflict is connection. It’s how we figure out who we are, what we want, who our partners are and who they are becoming, and what they want. It’s how we bridge our differences and find our similarities—our points of connection.”
The Gottmans have been researching how couples fight for years. If you want to learn how to achieve constructive conflict with your partner, I encourage you to read this book. It’s filled with techniques you can use to better express yourself during fights and understand your partner’s perspective. The Gottmans sometimes use examples from their own life. By doing this, they bring warmth and humor to this difficult subject.
Enjoy samples and order the book from the authors, or via the publisher, or on Amazon.
And listen to the Gottmans discuss many of their ideas, in this recent interview with Liz Moody.
The Other Significant Others: Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center
by Rhaina Cohen
St. Martin’s Press, 2024
While this book features many people for whom a non-romantic close relationship is their primary relationship, it is a gift to anyone who wants to expand or fortify a “village” of people who can support you. There are two chapters in the book that are especially relevant to your own village-building. (I’ll talk more about this at the end of this article.)
This quote from Cohen’s introductory chapter states the book’s theme, but even more important, it will spark your own creative contemplation:
“This is a book about friends who have become a we despite having no scripts, no ceremonies, and precious few models to guide them towards long-term platonic commitment. These are friends who have moved together across states and continents. They’ve been their friend’s primary caregiver through organ transplants and chemotherapy. They’re co-parents, co-homeowners and executives of each other’s wills. They belong to a club that has no name or membership form, often unaware that there are others like them. They fall under the umbrella of what Eli Finkel, a psychology professor at Northwestern University, calls ‘other significant others.’ Having eschewed a more typical life setup, these friends confront hazards and make discoveries they wouldn’t have otherwise.” (pp.6-7)
Chapter 5, “Functional Families: From Friends to Co-Parents,” is an exciting read for anyone who has considered co-parenting with someone other than a romantic partner. Two friends commit to living together during one’s pregnancy, planning for the friend to be there as a birth coach. The non-mother essentially became a mother, falling in love with the child. Not only have they stayed together to raise the child, but with difficulty they were able to legally declare the so-called non-mother an official parent.
Regarding this kind of arrangement, Cohen quotes a survey in which nearly 60% of unmarried mothers said they would consider raising children with someone other than a romantic partner. Nicole Sussner Rodgers, Executive Director of the think tank that ran the survey, told the author that “our limited cultural imagination curbs the options that we as individuals, contemplate for our lives.”
This is a theme of the book: we need role models. Rodgers asserts that “You need to see somebody doing the thing that you might want to do and doing it successfully.”
The next chapter, Chapter 6, “The Long Haul: Aging and Adaptation,” offers role models of living with a close friend or a group of friends in old age, an alternative to loneliness not only for single or widowed people, but also to couples wanting wider social connections and support.
This book will be a great inspiration as you work on creating or expanding your village. The village you create might even become a role model inviting others to invent something new!
Enjoy samples and order the book via the publisher or on Amazon.
The Conceivable Future: Planning Families and Taking Action in the Age of Climate Change
by Meghan Elizabeth Kallman and Josephine Ferorelli
Rowman & Littlefield, 2024
Baby or Childfree will also include a chapter on climate change. That chapter has been challenging to write, because we don’t know what the future holds for our planet. We do know that there is so much more need for social support than our society is currently providing, and it is hard to find solutions and resources.
With that in mind, here’s a wonderful new book about considering parenthood in light of the environment.
Ten years ago, the authors founded a nonprofit organization that now shares the title of their new book. Both women longed to be mothers, but resisted their desires because of their concerns about the environment. Since then, they have been holding gatherings in people’s living rooms around the country to talk about climate change—how to deal with it and how to consider parenthood in the face of it.
The authors note that telling people not to have children to reduce the carbon footprint ignores the culpability of corporations and governments in the destruction of the environment. The authors support people’s right to have children. They encourage readers to both take action to save the environment and also to take relevant political action regardless of whether they choose to have a child or to remain childfree.
Read samples and get the book via the publisher or on Amazon.
Diverse topics, but similar themes
Even though The Other Significant Others focuses on relationships, and The Conceivable Future focuses on the environment, I am struck by the similarities in these two books.
Both books point out that the nuclear family is less prevalent than it used to be. And that rather than the so-called “good old days” being our primary way of living, it was actually a short experiment in time that failed to provide the broader support for parents and children than multi-family or multi-person households have provided throughout history and throughout the world.
These authors also point to the growing prevalence of multi-generational households, and strong family-like ties among non-blood relatives raising or nurturing children. Regardless of which decision you are leaning towards, these books deliver expert advice on how to create the home and life that is best for you.
To learn about how “village building” can help you in your future planning and decision-making, subscribe to my free, bi-monthly email newsletter for exclusive access to that and more exciting previews from my new book, Baby or Childfree?, due in 2025.
What 2024 childfree vs parenthood decision books do you like?
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Have you read any of these new 2024 books on childfree or parenthood decision-making topics? Or is there a new book that you recommend about childfree living, fertility, pregnancy, surrogacy, adoption, parenthood, single parenting, LGBQTI+ parenting, or related topics? Let me know! Email me anytime via my online contact form.
You can also share your recommendations or ideas in our private Facebook group called “The Decision Café“—or on my Instagram page, which often features new article previews and special content.
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Finally, if you missed my 2023 book recommendations or just want a reminder, you can see my 2023 list here.
Thanks for subscribing and following, and let’s chat soon!
– Merle Bombardieri
