“Kids are great. It’s a unique process that everyone should experience.”

Except that today, 1 in 20 French people refuse to have children. What are the reasons for this “voluntary infertility?” Do we really know why we have children? Isn’t having children an obstacle to personal and professional development? In an overpopulated and polluted world, isn’t it selfish to take up too much space by having a family? Don’t children cost too much to individuals and to society?

The author investigates with dozens of women and men for whom the “duty to procreate” rings hollow. Among these “non-parents” are exclusive lovers, artists, careerists, religious people, traumatized children, eternal teenagers, environmentalists, convinced Malthusians, as well as feminist activists who have made their refusal to give birth a standard, in order to assert themselves in a society that praises all mothers and family values.

Nathalie Six

has been a journalist for eight years and has written for the magazines Femmes, Nouvel Obs, Figaro and Figaro, L’Orient littéraire, and Livres Hebdo, among others.