Childfree by Choice

Excellent Premise. Good yet flawed effort. As an introduction to the childfree movement and its history, this book serves as a solid primer for anyone who does not know either or both of these topics. As someone who is childfree and is active in various levels of working within the childfree community, I had very high hopes for this book. Unfortunately this book just had too many flaws to rate it any higher than the three stars I decided to give it. For one, it makes scientific claims using only sociological evidence. Which is perhaps allowed in the author's own background in the humanities and specifically sociology, but this reader is a trained scientist with a math and computer background. The book also tries to back up many of its claims with studies that often have only a couple of dozen participants or less - again, perhaps a valid tactic in sociological research circles, but in the statistical analysis world more familiar to this reader would be laughed out of even a bachelor's level statistics class. Also, while the book is titled referring to the entire childfree movement, its arguments and discussions are almost entirely from the female perspective, and even when the male perspective is included it is more often denigrated as too small to study or present. Finally, all of these combine to leave the severe impression of a major case of confirmation bias on the part of the author - even from someone predisposed to trying to see this book in the best possible light and wanting it to succeed in order to help bring light to an aspect of his own life.

Overall a solid yet flawed effort, and highly recommended despite the flaws - the conversation it presents is truly that critical, and the book does a genuinely adequate job of at least opening that conversation.