Do you remember the glass slipper and the poisoned apple, the damsel with hair dangling from a tower window and the whole castle fast asleep? The Age of the Fairy Tale is past, dear reader. Today, we only have tales of self-fulfillment, of the social atom seeking fusion. Here is a perfect example.  In a new book, three women describe their quest for motherhood. Complete with donated sperm, abortion, miscarriage, and marriage at the last minute, it’s an anti-morality play that ends in motherhood for all. The New York Times writes:

Three would-be mothers, some “lucky” sperm and — voilà! — three happy families, with all of the pregnancies happening the old-fashioned way.

At the end of the plot, the sperm of a tall blond man with high SAT scores goes to waste, but not for trying. We’ve gone from princes and magic spells to vials of sperm transported in cryogenic trucks. When a middle-aged feminist wants to become a mother, nothing stands in her way. She’ll resort to casual genetic engineering if she must. The title of this book is Three Wishes: A True Story of Good Friends, Crushing Heartbreak, and Astonishing Luck on Our Way to Love and Motherhood.  Some definitions:

Good Friends – Aquaintainces who encourage you to do something remarkably evil, like conceive a child artificially with a man whom the child will never know.

Crushing Heartbreak – The heart that crushes others, an excuse for terminating the life of an unborn child with “chromosomal abnormalities.”

Astonishing Luck  – The miracle of pregnancy after decades of casual sex.

Love  – The feeling one has toward an innocent child not necessarily toward a grown-up man who might be their father.

Motherhood – A beautiful hobby to pursue in middle age.

By the way, you may notice the unusual, Dickensian names of the members of one of these families. The father is Sprax Lines, which sounds like a bus company or a business selling geriatric orthopedic devices. The mother is Carey Goldberg and the children are Liliana and Tulliver. Whether it is Liliana Lines and Tulliver Lines, or Liliana Goldberg-Lines and Tulliver Goldberg-Lines, is not clear. If a woman is willing to conceive her children by artificial insemination but settles for doing it with a man to whom she is not married, in middle age, naming conventions probably are not something she considers important.

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