Sheila Heti

A provocative novel about the desire and duty to procreate, from the author of the critically acclaimed How Should A Person Be? Motherhood treats one of the most consequential decisions of early adulthood - whether or not to have children - with the intelligence, wit and originality that have won Sheila Heti international acclaim. Having reached an age when most of her peers are asking themselves when they will become mothers, Heti's narrator considers, with the same urgency, whether she will do so at all. Over the course of several years, under the influence of her partner, body, family, friends, mysticism and chance, she struggles to make a moral and meaningful choice. In a compellingly direct mode that straddles the forms of the novel and the essay, Motherhood raises radical and essential questions about womanhood, parenthood, and how - and for whom - to live.

Motherhood

taylor miles hopkins

Whether I want kids is a secret I keep from myself—it is the greatest secret I keep from myself.

When I entered the living room in the morning, half a hot dog was on the table. I called it a banana. Then I knew I was too old for this world, that she had quite naturally surpassed me, and would continue to.

 He said, I don't relate to these values you always come back from New York with. I love him.

This will be a book to prevent future tears to prevent me and my mother from crying. It can be called a success if, after reading it, my mother stops crying for good. I know it's not the job ofa child to stop her mother from crying, but I'm not a child anymore. I'm a writer.

Is attention soul? If I pay attention to my mother's sorrow. does that give it soul? If I pay attention to her unhappiness ifI put it into words, transform it, and make it into something new—

The feeling of not wanting children is the feeling of not wanting to be someone's idea of me. 

I feel so guilty about it sometimes, thinking it’s what I should do, because I always think that animals are happiest when they live out their instincts. Maybe not happiest, but feel most alive. Yet making art makes me feel alive, and taking care of others doesn't make me feel as alive. Maybe I have to think about myself less as a woman with this woman's special task, and more as an individual with her own special tasknot put woman before my individuality. Is that right? 

Is it that making babies is not a woman’s special task?

She said it wasn't a matter of choosing one life over another, but being sensitive to the life that wants to be lived through you. You need tension in order to create something—

If a decision in the mind doesnt make balbies, why do I spend so much time thinking about it? We are judged by what happens to us as though our deciding made it happen. A lot of time is wasted in thinking about whether to have a child, when the thinking is such a small part of it…

What Ineed is so small: to eradicate any sentimentality from my feelings and to look at what is. Today, I defined sentimental to myself as a feeling about the idea of a feeling. And it seemed to me that my inclinations towards motherhood had a lot to with the idea of a feeling about motherhood.

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