Who Gets to Have Kids?

Reveals the deep roots of the parenthood gap. Vivid and persuasive’ Professor Sarah Franklin
One of the biggest questions facing modern civilization: whether and how its next generation will come to be Christine Emba
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For generations, starting a family was an ordinary part of life. But today, there’s a marked gap between how many children people want to have and how many they actually will. In this era of unprecedented opportunity for women, soaring inequality and a changing climate, who gets to have kids, and why?

Spurred by the unexpected obstacles she encountered in her own quest to become a parent, journalist Anna Louie Sussman explores what is keeping us from having the families we desire, as birth rates plummet around the world. As she probes everything from dating to housing, the climate crisis to the nature of work, Sussman shows how decades of policy choices that elevated profits over people and individualism over interdependence have left people increasingly unable to envision a future in which they have children. Reporting from South Korea, Scandinavia, North America, Poland and beyond, Sussman unearths intimate stories that illustrate the deep personal and collective cost when such a fundamental human experience falls so far out of reach.
A singular and timely investigation into how parenthood has been altered by a capitalist system run wild, this is a must-read for anyone seeking to understand the universal challenges and triumphs of becoming a parent in our uncertain age.