“The essays not only reflect the Canadian mosaic; they are the Canadian mosaic—they are that 8 percent to 20 percent of the population worth listening to on this subject—and their opinions and stories are long overdue.”¯Molly Peacock, Literary Review of Canada

 “There are a lot of things I feel I am grasping at last: being comfortable in my own skin, beginning to feel oddly sexy at a time when Germaine Greer says women become invisible to society. I am excited about what the next act will bring. There's some mystery to it. But one thing I know for sure: it will not bring children I bear myself. And finally, I am happy with that."¯From the foreword by Shelagh Rogers

Nobody's Mothers Are Indeed Somebodies

Today’s young women are better educated and more independent than they have ever been; yet many of them still grapple with questions about society and their role within it. They wonder how best to combine their careers with satisfactory private lives. They are skeptical about feminism and unsure about their futures. Popular media has inundated them with a conflicting miscellany of terms: the Glass Ceiling; the Mommy Track; Double Income No Kids (DINK); and perhaps most unnerving of all, the Yummy Mummy.

In Nobody's Mother: Life Without Kids, editor Lynne Van Luven brings together a thoughtful group of 21 women of various ages and backgrounds whose frank essays about being childless are probing, provocative and entertaining. Some of the essayists are child-free intentionally, some by circumstance, some by a simple twist of fate. But all the contributors to this lively anthology have one thing in common: they are content with their lives and do not view themselves as freaks or failures because they have not had children.

With a foreword by broadcaster Shelagh Rogers, Nobody's Mother is a wonderful resource for women's studies programs across North America and an illuminating look at a choice that, according to some statistics, one in 10 women is making.