FREEDOM IS NOT A WORTHWHILE VALUE:

As I thought, a story broke. The United States' fertility rate was declining. But this wasn't actually news, the reporters informed us. The birth rate had been down for several years, which was good, and also bad. Fewer births meant fewer teen pregnancies and more accessible contraception. The planet couldn't support more people anyway, some pundits said.

At the same time, many women who wanted to have children had been delayed, even deterred. They had student debt. The rents were too high. Childcare was unaffordable, but a one-income household wasn't feasible. These problems could be helped, other pundits argued, by universal preschool, paid parental leave, remote work and the child-tax credit. As I read, I found myself in agreement. Children shouldn't be a luxury good.

Still, I felt that something was missing from the arguments about funding and flexibility. An uncomfortable acknowledgment had to be made: motherhood would always cost something. There was no getting around this, no matter how much support you had. Take my friend, for example. Her husband also took care of the baby. Her extended family was happy to help. She was able to work on a flexible schedule. Her writing could be done from home. All of these things were true for me, too.

And yet, her life had irrevocably changed. Like anyone, there were only so many hours in her days, only so much space in her mind. Now some of those hours were spent changing diapers, and some of the space was taken up by thoughts of a new person. She was less available. Did that mean she was also less free?

In her new book On Freedom, poet and essayist Maggie Nelson begins by asking, "Can you think of a more depleted, imprecise, or weaponized word?" She then sets out to examine its contradictions. She draws on others' work about drug addiction and climate change, sexual liberation and art, in order to think through how each of us can be free to make our own choices while also caring for the needs of others.

Freedom, Nelson argues, is never absolute. It's always "knotted up" with "so-called unfreedom, producing marbled experiences of compulsion, discipline, possibility, and surrender." We can choose to be obligated, or dependent. We can choose to be restricted or distracted. All this to say, we are free to make choices--to get married, adopt a dog, move an aging parent into our home, convert to a religion--that make us less able to do whatever we want. That's what my friend had done in having her baby. She's made a choice, willingly and joyfully. Neither the will nor the joy is negated by new limits on her schedule and resources.

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