WHAT ARE CHILDREN FOR?
On Ambivalence and Choice

A modern argument, grounded in philosophy and cultural criticism, about childbearing ambivalence and how to overcome it


St. Martin’s Press | June 11, 2024
336 pages | $27.00
978-1250276131

Becoming a parent, once the expected outcome of adulthood, is increasingly viewed as a potential threat to the most basic goals and aspirations of modern life. We seek self-fulfillment; we want to liberate women to find meaning and self-worth outside the household; we wish to protect the planet from the ravages of human-caused climate change; we must do what we can to protect others from senseless suffering. Weighing the pros and cons of having children, young people today are finding it increasingly hard to judge in its favor.  Exploring the nuances of our collective contemporary anxiety about having children, the book offers those struggling with the decision themselves the philosophical guidance necessary to move beyond their uncertainty.

Peeling back the layers of resistance, What Are Children For? argues that when we make the individual decision whether or not to have children we confront a profound philosophical question—that of the goodness of our very form life. How can we justify perpetuating human life given the catastrophic harm and suffering of which we are always at once both victims and perpetrators? If we wish to meet this challenge without succumbing to naïveté about our predicament, we must, the book argues, uncover a capacity to grasp the fundamental goodness of human life—not only theoretically but practically, in the actual lives we lead today.

Read some preliminary reviews in the New Yorker, Christianity Today, Publisher’s Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and Library Journal.

For US press inquiries, contact Rebecca Lang at St. Martin’s Press at rebecca.lang@stmartins.com.

For UK press inquiries, contact Margot Weale at Oneworld Publications at mweale@oneworld-publications.com.

Reviews & Endorsements

  • “[A]n engaging, literary investigation ... a book for lovers of sound reasoning. A corrective to liberal neuroses about having kids, one that feels necessary at a time when the right wants to dictate the terms of the family.”

    —JAY CASPIAN KANG, NEW YORKER

  • “Resisting easy answers … [Berg and Wiseman] ... offer scrupulous analysis enriched by vivid personal meditations … It's an incisive look at a monumental life choice”

    —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

  • “This is a brave, lucid book, and Berg and Wiseman deserve great credit for their readiness to ask tough questions.”

    —KIRKUS REVIEWS

  • “Aptly highlights the paradoxes of parenting and gives readers grappling with the question of whether or not to have children an honest and balanced perspective that will help them decide what’s right for them.”

    —LIBRARY JOURNAL

  • “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 For? models the curiosity and the skepticism we need to imagine a collective future in dark times.”

    —MERVE EMRE

  • “By far the most honest, unsentimental, unpredictable, and rigorously thoughtful exploration of parenting that I have ever read. Berg and Wiseman’s debut is a much-needed and impressively original inquiry into a topic that is almost always treated in deadeningly stale terms.”

    —BECCA ROTHFELD

  • “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 that’s 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