August 21, 2009

Not an alternative

“It is not that I think every person should become a parent, or would claim that childbearing enhances one’s creative capacities (although I do think such an argument could easily be made given that childbirth, perhaps even more than other life-changing experiences, broadens one’s sense of meaning as well as being). It is that being a parent — a mother, especially — should not be narrated as an alternative to having an engaged, creative life, as if one must choose one or the other or be crippled by both.” –Amy Lavender Harris, “Pure Light”