Women Without Kids by Ruby Warrington (Hardcover)

What is "woman" if not "mother"?

Forgoing motherhood has traditionally marked a woman as "other." With no official place setting for her in our society, she has hovered on the sidelines: the quirky girl, the neurotic career obsessive, the "eccentric" aunt. Instead of continuing to paint women without kids as sad, self-obsessed, or somehow dysfunctional, what if we saw them as boldly forging a first-in-a-civilization vision for a fully autonomous womankind? Or as journalist and thought leader Ruby Warrington asks, "What if being a woman without kids were in fact its own kind of legacy?"

Taking in themes from intergenerational healing to feminism to environmentalism, this personal look and anthropological dig into a stubbornly taboo topic is a timely and brave reframing of everything it means not to be a mom. Set against the backdrop of an unprecedented global reproduction slowdown, "the choice of whether or not to have kids is a natural part of women's ongoing fight for gender equality," Warrington writes. "And whether we are childless by design or circumstance, we can live without regret, shame, or compromise."

Bold and tenderhearted, Women Without Kids unites the "unsung sisterhood" of non-mothers - no longer pariahs or misfits, but a vital part of our evolution and collective healing, as women, as humans, and as a global family.