16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
Many women ‘just don't want to' have kids. These books don't blame them.
When the writer Shirley Jackson went to the hospital to give birth to her youngest son in 1951, a clerk at the front desk asked for her personal information. 'Age?' the clerk chirped. 'Sex? Occupation?' 'Writer,' Jackson replied. 'Housewife,' the clerk countered. 'Writer,' Jackson insisted. 'I'll just put down housewife,' the woman told her. That Jackson's best fiction is about the debasements of domesticity is a cruel irony, one the dismissive hospital clerk no doubt failed to appreciate.
