Voicing Voluntary Childlessness: Voices of Non-Mothering in French by Natalie Edwards (review)

What defines a woman? In today’s post-feminist world (a world in which women have fought and won many battles), maternity—as well as the lack thereof—is somehow still an unavoidable consideration when trying to answer this question. The growing number of childless women over the last 60 years has led a handful of sociologists and psychologists to study the reasons why women choose to be or not to be a mother. While praising these studies, Natalie Edwards recognizes and condemns the stigma still associated with “voluntary childlessness” that she finds to be worse in France than elsewhere in the Western world, hence her study of French language narrative on that subject. Edwards also expresses surprise at the fact that literary writers have only just begun talking about it in the last century, so many years after the legalization of contraception and abortion. In Voicing Voluntary Childlessness: Narratives of Non-Mothering in French, Edwards identifies four authors who “call for new approaches to female identity beyond maternity” (3) by refusing to succumb to society’s expectations and pressures.

Voicing Voluntary Childlessness is divided into two parts, the first, “Perspectives on Voluntary Childlessness,” delineates the theoretical, psychological, and sociological approaches to motherhood, omitting none of the influential names such as Freud or Badinter. The second part analyzes four first-person accounts of childlessness written in French to “proclaim a female identity that does not depend on reproduction.” Edward’s study interestingly and effectively connects the content of these texts to their unique, innovative form. In her own words, “[. . .] the authors each manipulate a specific sub-genre of autobiography to create a new form for their female identity beyond reproduction” (13).

In her epistolary text featured in chapter three, A l’enfant que je n’aurai pas (2011), Franco-Vietnamese author Linda Lê offers an “intimate, confessional” (100) yet “brutally direct” (93) admission that she is not good at mothering (85), hence her sensible refusal to have children. More importantly, “[. . .] this letter reject[s] a female destiny tied to motherhood” (94).

In the fourth chapter of Voicing Voluntary Childlessness, Edwards describes Jane Sautière’s cathartic present-tense narrative Nullipare (2008) as “a provocative experiment with the sub-genre of autofiction” that succeeds in representing voluntary childlessness in a most innovative and intimate way (108), fluidly incorporating fact and fiction with no distinct boundaries. Yet while offering an original narrative and rejecting the stereotype of the unfulfilled woman, Sautière joins the majority of childless women in her inability to escape the obligatory expectation to explain the decision not to have children. The taboo still associated with making such a choice is expressed, in form, through gaps and fragmented sentences in Sautière’s vignettes.

Chapter five dives into Quebecois author Lucie Joubert’s autocritography L’Envers du landau (2010) which daringly mixes her academic research and her personal story, at the risk of being labeled narcissistic by those in academia who reject personal criticism as a valid form of scholastic research. Edwards notes that “[. . .] the place of mothering and non-mothering within feminist theory is one of the most provocative parts of Joubert’s work” (148) and that Joubert contributes to the establishment of a female identity outside of the realm of procreation.

Chapter six is dedicated to Chapsal, a free spirit with a desire for liberty, who uses short chapters and an intimate tone to recount specific memories in La Femme sans (2001) written at the age of 76, offering a glimpse into the aging motherless woman and a lifetime of reflections. While having felt excluded and rejected by family members, potential life partners, and jealous women alike because of her decision to remain childless, she never regrets her choice.

Together, these women aspire to reinforce the fact that voluntary childlessness is a painful and “persistent source of stigmatization” (188). To frequently...