Can’t Get No Satisfaction

In a recent entry for Forms of Life, Becca Rothfeld criticizes cultural conservatives—Matthew Schmitz, Pedro Gonzalez and Helen Andrews, by name—for arguing, as she takes it, that women who dedicate their lives to their careers instead of having children are doomed to regret their choices. It’s all too easy, Rothfeld suggests, to claim that women who do not do interesting work, or who work out of necessity, might come to question prioritizing career over motherhood. But this is not the condition of all women, and it is certainly not Rothfeld’s, whose work as a writer and critic is “an exercise of ardor.”