Debate at book club on Thursday night, for once, raged fast and furious. Normally, we gather, drink wine, eat chocolates, and talk about the book for 20 minutes before falling back into complaining about the Dutch. (I'd love to hear what the cloggies say about us at their book clubs!) However, "We Need To Talk About Kevin" dominated the entire evening -- or rather the themes raised in the book did. Can you get a bad seed or do you create them? Does lack of breast-feeding mean that you're going to raise a crossbow-weilding serial killer? Just what is mastitis? (Thanks for the explanation, complete with demo, Beth!) Is baby poo as bad as it sounds? Should you have children if you aren't going to take care of them fully? Should you have children if you aren't completely sure? When should you have kids -- before or after you've experienced "life"? When did the notion of the sanctity of the child -- and by extension the foetus -- appear? Has feminism liberated women or put additional pressures on them? What are the responsibilities of each member of a couple in a relationship? If you're not working, should you do the household chores? Does not having kids make you selfish (disappearance of the human race) or generous (too many people as it is)?
While infuriating at times -- I'm always right and it can be irritating to hear people disagree (badly) -- this was exactly the sort of engagement I'd hoped to experience. The somewhat challenging and divisive nature of the book and the fact that we were all 30-something women, either with children, thinking about having children, or (in my case) firmly decided about not having them helped enormously. And hopefully this debate will continue with our next choice: The Beauty Myth, by Naomi Wolf. And it will allow me to display my staggering knowledge of celebrity plastic surgery, which has to be a good thing!
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