Shelf Life -- Scott Dickensheets: On the defensive: A woman who doesn't want children

Scott Dickensheets' books/magazines column appears Fridays. Reach him at 990-2446 or [email protected].

I'm not exactly up to speed on the state of contemporary American feminism. Are we in a backlash against it at the moment? A backlash against the backlash? A backlash against the backlash backlash? It's like watching tennis. Anyway, I'm too busy bossing my wife around to keep track.

But while I may not know where women currently fall on the bring-home-the-bacon/fry-it-up-in-a-pan spectrum, I had thought the compulsive motherhood issue was pretty much settled. Domesticity -- kids, white picket fence, dinner at 6 -- is now just one option among many available to today's women.

Apparently not.

In a provocative essay that's like a morsel of spongy cake in the 562-page pile of creamy filling that is the September issue of Elle, author Mary Gaitskill defends her choice not to have children.

"I have entertained the idea of being pregnant,' she writes in "A Woman's Prerogative," "but then I feel an urgent balking, a fundamental 'no.' " She's felt that way since age 8; at 44, nothing's changed her mind, although her feelings on the subject are no longer as defiantly unrepentant as they once were.

However, as Gaitskill makes clear, childlessness remains a choice in need of defending, even now, all these permutations of feminism later. "Don't you think that's pretty selfish?" a boyfriend once admonished her (she broke up with him on the spot). "Many people seem to feel resentment, suspicion, even anger toward women who do not want to be mothers." She recalls being interviewed for an article on the subject, only to have her quotes pared down to a shrill anti-maternal screed; she came off as a frigid harpy. All around her, women wax poetic about how "motherhood is the only way a woman can find happiness." It can make a gal a bit defensive.

One gets the idea that Gaitskill's resolve is stiffened by her distaste for America's treacly exaltation of motherhood -- the cult of mom -- which she sees as a response to women's guilt over the loose and sexy '60s (a backlash against the backlash). Instead of being a simple biological imperative, having children is now seen by some as a path to personal improvement.

" 'Having a child has made me so much deeper,' they say, as if they have followed the instructions, done the exercises, and now have the reward of being better, fitter people," Gaitskill writes. Full self-esteem ahead!

Except, she argues, it doesn't always work. She recalls an artist she knows who had a baby to add "more meaning" to her life and thereby make her a better artist. "Neither transformation occurred and now she's got a 4-year-old girl she does not want."

No chance that'll happen to Gaitskill. Early in her life, "the idea of marriage and domesticity was dull, even repugnant ... I wanted adventure and intensity ..." Nowadays, she's a little less radical; having children is an option she opted against.

She is also at pains not to disparage women who choose maternity for sound reasons. To avoid the appearance of hard-shell crabbiness, Gaitskill recounts a personal episode that, she says, gave her insight into the whole maternal thing.

Unable to sleep for several nights, she meditates, somehow conjuring up images of the subconscious turmoil that was keeping her awake: "stalks, roots, pods bursting open, great, abstract surges of movement. Finally, I got two words: to procreate." By gosh, she has a motherhood urge after all! Sublimated into her art, for sure, but there it is! Gaitskill uses this incident throughout the essay to establish her sympathy, if not agreement, with the breeders in the audience.

Come on. I liked it better when she was staking out her turf and putting up her dukes. Maybe it's a guy thing, but such New Agey daydreaming lends her piece some of the same squishiness that makes the gushy cult of mom so worthy of raised eyebrows.

That aside, it's still a thoughtful bit of renegade philosophy with the power to unsettle, at least if its publishing history is any indication.

The essay was originally commissioned by the slim intellectual journal Harper's, but (along with disagreements about the writing), it ran into trouble from editors who have children. They couldn't take Gaitskill at face value, the experience of parenthood having deepened them so. Surely some childhood trauma accounts for her attitude ... something?

Maybe, with this piece, Gaitskill will set off a backlash of her own.

Reading List

Women Outside, Fall 1999: From a nonmother to a real mutha: This estrogeny Outside spinoff weighs in with a profile of Rusty Kanokogi, America's highest-rated female judo master.

Although the writing is so-so, the subject certainly isn't. Kanokogi started out as a girl gang member in New York City, smearing her face with Vaseline in anticipation of that day's fight.

Judo straightened her out, gave her a purpose. She almost single-handedly midwifed competitive women's judo in this country, and, now retired, teaches the sport to troubled kids. And she's got chops in more than just judo; her latest crusade involves raising the reputation of her late aunt, avant-garde painter Lee Krassner.

"Henry of Atlantic City," by Frederick Reuss (MacMurray and Beck, $22): Henry is a 6-year-old with a photographic memory and the certain conviction that he is a Gnostic saint. Having read heavily in Byzantine history (as well as Coptic theology), he fancies Atlantic City as Byzantium and its people citizens of the ancient empire.

Soon, he is spouting deep-sounding theological wisdom at the slightest provocation. Is he, in fact, a saint? Or is he just regurgitating chunks of his offbeat reading? Because Reuss infuses the book with a fable-like quality, Henry's divinity seems plausible.

Although we're privy to Henry's thoughts, Reuss ultimately leaves him too opaque to fully engage my sympathies. But I did enjoy some of the spiritual dialogue between Henry and Sy, a blackjack dealer and horse-track theologian. It's a good thing God doesn't answer prayers, Sy tells Henry. Why? "Because it's how odds came into existence, dummy."

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