wee babbies

Babies. What could be better?

• Babies, with their promise of future consumerism and their power to inspire current consumers to defy credit card limits, good taste, and sanity in the pursuit of giggle-inducing mega gifts!
• Babies, with nothing but love on their tiny minds and all the time in the world to bring intelligent adults to their knees praying for one full night of rest!
• Babies, the spitting and shrieking emblems of our significance when we've given up hope of our original dreams coming true!

Ah, babies! What are they good for? According to French author Corinne Maier: not much. The mother of two recently followed up her successful book Bonjour Laziness: Why Hard Work Doesn't Pay with an equally humorous look at the perils of motherhood. The new book is No Kid: Forty Reasons For Not Having Children. In a recent profile, Ms. Maier explains why she wrote it.

Just as amusing, if more brutal in style and global in scope, is Joy Williams' essay from the 1990s, The Case Against Babies. The essay was published in Granta several years ago, but its ideas are still frighteningly apt.

Like most childless women, I spent the years between 18 and 35 constantly deflecting the baby question. One co-worker asked me so many times, I finally told her a huge, detailed lie about being scarred by an incestuous teen pregnancy so that my womb had to be removed...

Feel free to use that story yourself.