No Kids is a book designed to cause a stir, and cause a stir it has. Originally published in France (author Corrine Maier lives in Brussels), it skewers “baby mania” and the sentimentalizing of motherhood. I love the fact that Maier is herself the mother of two children.
The book has been known to rub many people the wrong way, but kudos to Maier’s radical honesty in openly expressing regret at her decision to have children, and not choose the childfree life. Maier is unrelenting, describing children as “little savages,” warning women that kids are the death of desire, and relays heaping scorn on all the inane activities she says motherhood requires (such as visiting Disneyland, a “village of animated idiots populated by underpaid people dressed as ducks”). Maier’s fearless book—like the work of incendiary comics like Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor—clears the air by speaking the unspeakable.
