Badinter has referred to herself as a "fanatic of clarity"; and at times her commitment to clarity, her desire to overresolve or over-pin down, can be a bit constricting. (I prefer [...] what Elizabeth Hardwick referred to as Simone de Beauvoir's "brilliant confusion"--that is, the willingness to tolerate enlivening conflicts and complexities.)

Likewise children deliver us from the pressure of our ambitions, the shadows of our failures. I often think of Geoff Dyer's brutal, bravura passage in Out of Sheer Rage. In describing his decision not to have children, he writes, "People need to feel that they have been thwarted by circumstances from pursuing the life which, had they led it, they would not have wanted; whereas the life they really wanted is a compound of all those thwarting circumstances ... That's why children are so convenient: you have children because you are struggling to get by as an artist--which is actually what being an artist means--or failing to get on with your career. Then you can persuade yourself that children had prevented you from having this career that had never looked like working out."