inconceivable!

Why, look. It’s an article about author and feminist Rebecca Walker in the Times Sunday Styles section. Walker has a new book coming out on Thursday called Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood After a Lifetime of Ambivalence. It’s even reviewed, alongside Peggy Orenstein’s similarly mommy-themed book, in this weekend’s Book Review. So what is it about this piece that makes it right for the Styles section? Is it the detailed description of Walker's estrangement from her famous mother, Alice Walker? Maybe. But more importantly, we learn that:

Ms. Walker and her partner, a Buddhist teacher named Glen (whose last name does not appear in the book), have been living in Maui, where [her son] Tenzin plays amid the lush landscape and is pushed about in a Maclaren stroller.

Oooh, I want a Maclaren stroller. And a trip to Hawaii.

In her review, Alexandra Jacobs calls Baby Love “a solipsistic open diary of gestation,” and prefers Orenstein’s account of trying to conceive by any means necessary. “Orenstein’s interrogation of her own profiteering pregnancy retinue comes across as a welcome, even necessary exposé,” Jacobs writes. “Walker’s merely a paean to pampering.” They both sound pretty excruciating to me. Jacobs’ lede is a gem:

One of the pill’s most pernicious side effects is bloat in the publishing industry. For most of history, having a baby — or heck, a dozen — has simply been women’s natural lot, not something they had time or inclination to examine at any length. Now the “journey to motherhood,” as it is often called, is something to be feared, postponed, mulled and eventually exalted in endless memoirs, or “mom-oirs” (though plenty of dads are writing them too).

But what luck! If certain insurance companies have anything to say about it, women will have a hard time getting those birth control pills (while men enjoy coverage for their Viagra). Less birth control and more babies might weaken people's interest in writing about their journeys to parenthood.