The age of the anti-natalists

As of 2023, the novel for which I may still be best known will have been out for 20 years. We Need to Talk About Kevin clearly reached the bestseller list because it hit a zeitgeisty nerve. The story of a high-school mass murder (after Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook and Uvalde, the one aspect of the book that has dated is Kevin’s pitiful body-count of nine) is told from the perspective of the killer’s mother, who’s anguished about whether her dislike of her own son from day one made the atrocity her fault. Proliferating the now commonplace expression ‘maternal ambivalence’, Kevin kicked off a larger discussion about the downsides of parenthood and the merits of giving children a miss. Interviews with me were subsequently anthologised in the likes of Childfree and Loving It! I was uneasy with my role as the anti-kid at the time, and now that uneasiness has given way to full-blown queasiness.