The Dying and Rising Art of Motherhood

Of the American trinity of baseball, mom, and apple pie, only the last seems to be doing well. Baseball’s popularity among both viewers and players has been dragging for decades. And motherhood represents a dying vocation if the demographers are correct. Much of this is due to the failure of women to find men willing to marry them or even make love to them. But much too has to do with an attitude observed in an interview with the prize-winning author Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto and, recently, a book of essays. “Don’t ever have children,” she recounts her stepfather telling her, noting that he described this as the “biggest mistake I ever made in my life.” According to the interviewer, an essay in the book explains that she did not make the same “mistake.” “She did not need the advice,” the interviewer relays, for “[s]he knew at a young age that she did not have the energy for both children and writing, so she picked the latter.”