In an interview in the New York Times today, the photographer Lillian Bassman makes an interesting, politically-incorrect admission. When Bassman was young and newly married, she did not want children. Her husband did. So Bassman went to a psychotherapist. Within six weeks, her desire for children was awakened. She had a son and daughter.

An unmarried woman who chooses another life is not necessarily unhealthy if she does not want children. But, a married woman who lacks all interest in reproducing is psychologically abnormal. Unfortunately, in our world, this lack of interest is considered perfectly healthy, an assumption that keeps women from seeking help. Maternal desire is not always innate – and there is nothing shameful about it not being innate. But, it can be acquired.

Bassman became famous for her artsy erotic images of women in lingerie ads. Gina Bellafonte, the reporter, says Bassman was “advantaged” in her work with women because they felt more comfortable with a female photographer.

Kristor writes:

I’m not sure it really is abnormal for a woman to feel no desire for children. My experience is that women who had difficult childhoods themselves are often reluctant, or fearful, at the idea of children. Difficult childhoods are pretty common; they may even be the norm. And, after all, children are a major commitment, so it is only prudent that we should be so designed as to feel equivocal about them, and thus cautious in our procreation – and, therefore, also in our mate selection. Sexual and romantic love are the engines that pull young women over the hump of fear that would otherwise prevent many of them from reproducing. Most women who don’t want children are converted to passionate advocacy of motherhood by the first encounter with their firstborn.

What puzzles and disturbs me are the women who have children and feel nothing for them; who let them run wild or go to bed hungry, and that sort of thing.  

Laura writes:

I think today it is much more common for women to feel no desire for children (until it is too late.) But, I don’t think this is normal. I think wariness and fear are normal, but not an absence of desire altogether, particularly once a woman gets into her mid-twenties and early thirties. I know women who have been so distracted and consumed that the desire is simply buried. (I was one of them.) It’s there, but not acknowledged. A desire for children is a subtle impulse, not part of one’s rational urges. It is easily lost in a mind consumed with higher-level tasks of education and professional work. Often it’s not the feeling of wanting children so much as a vague emptiness that can’t be filled by anything else. You cannot discover the emptiness if you are busy. The relative idleness of young women in former eras wasn’t idleness. It was filled with inner preparation.

There are now so few children that many young women have very little contact with them. And, the whole thing can seem very unappealing in a world where parents spend their every waking hour driving their children to some event or activity and when many are left with so little community or extended family to help. In any event, I think most women feel strong desires – and it is normal and healthy to feel them – when they meet a man they love. It’s not the urge to have children necessarily, it’s more an overflowing of good will and affirmation. Love is energizing. Most people – both men and women – want to take it somewhere and have only the vaguest idea of what children will mean to their lives. When there isn’t this sense of wanting to move forward, a woman may be suffering from some unacknowledged psychological problem. There’s nothing shameful about that, as you say many people have had troubled childhoods, but it’s important that a woman recognize it as a problem and try to resolve it. She may only experience greater unhappiness later if she does not.

It’s interesting that most, or at least many, little girls are acutely conscious of maternal desires. They have such a clear sense of what will be most important to them. In the plastic and indented faces of their dolls, they spy the mystery and majesty of the human soul. They know this is what they want to tend. The drive is lost – especially in a world that so trivializes and even despises motherhood.

Kristor writes:

Only thing I would add on the flipside is that I have known lots of professional women who are in their late 20s and early 30s, unmarried, no good prospect of a decent husband in view, and they are desperately worried about finding one soon enough to have children.

And, with respect to that emptiness of never having had children, I would add that I have known a number of women like that. As they age, they become more and more thin and brittle, emotionally. They flatten out. Whereas women who have had children tend as they age to be cheerier, more relaxed and flexible, somehow more spherical. I don’t mean their shapes, I mean their minds. The same goes for men, but it is less noticeable.

Laura replies:

It makes no sense, crowding a woman’s life in her twenties so she ends up in that desperate situation.
 
Brittleness is a good word for it, but it’s almost too sad to talk about. I feel so much compassion for those women. Most have been doing exactly what their peers, family and employers have been encouraging them to do. Besides once you get into a career, it’s natural to want to do well at it. Women face these two opposing drives: the drive to do something well once it’s begun and the drive to have children. It’s cruel for society to so actively encourage this conflict. Given the declining birth rate, it’s suicidal.

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