BABY PROOF by Emily Giffin: a Critique (ATTN: SPOILERS)

Baby Proof is a fake childfree book written by a parent trying to impersonate the childfree voice, and she gets it all wrong.

**SPOILERS AHEAD**

Claudia, the main character, is like a background player in her own novel. I kept wondering why, in a book about a nominally childfree-by-choice woman, so much time was given to X, Y, or Z mommy or mommy-wannabe of the protagonist's acquaintance.

Claudia had no interests of her own besides her job; most of the time it felt like she was sitting around waiting for the phone to ring so she could listen to the mommies go on and on about themselves. All Claudia ever did was work, and serve as a sounding board, babysitter, and supporter for the mommies she knew. When she finally hooks up with the hot childfree guy, Richard, and goes on a fantastic vacation with him, she can't enjoy it because "something is missing." Gee, could the missing thing be… a baby?!1?! Subtle, Giffin is not.

And Ben, Claudia's husband, comes off as so shallow, naive, and selfish that I couldn't stand him. He goes to one dinner party and holds one infant for less than an hour, and suddenly he changes his mind on his long established decision to remain childfree so fast that you practically get whiplash. After such a profound betrayal, I couldn’t comprehend why Claudia wanted him back. When she left him, I thought Good riddance! He came off like a whiny, pouting, manipulative child himself that I couldn't imagine how any woman would want him around, let alone want to have his child.

Then towards the end, Claudia finally gets lonely and beaten down enough to try to get back together with her husband by offering to have his baby, and at that point I wanted to throw the book across the room. It stopped being chick lit and became, for me, a very subtle horror story about how loneliness and relentless, soul-deadening social pressure force unmaternal women into having unwanted children just to get along in a world that treats non-mothers like second-class citizens.

Yet Giffin depicts this slow erosion of her protagonist's true self as progress. Gee, glad to know that even women who are 100% sure they don't want children really-truly always want one deep down. Biology always IS destiny then, no matter what that woman's pesky conscious mind wants. Good to know.

This is a very insidious book. Perhaps for an encore, Giffin can write a novel about a gay woman who gets pressured into a heterosexual marriage because everyone in her life wants to pretend she's straight. Or maybe, she can give us the story of Ben and Claudia's 16-year-old daughter, who grows up knowing that her mother Claudia never really wanted her and only had her because her father Ben demanded it. The most likely scenario that would happen if Claudia had a child just to keep her husband happy, would be if they ended up divorced anyway, leaving Claudia raising a child she never wanted, alone.

But on a brighter note, the above nightmare outcome would be unlikely to happen in real life. What would really happen is that Claudia would leave Ben, marry the very attractive and equally childfree Richard, and live a happy and contented life with him. Then when Claudia and Richard passed on, they would leave their assets to their beloved nieces and nephews, and/or to a favorite charity.

Because that is a truly childfree woman’s happily ever after.