Lionel Shriver Quotes

Telling people not to have children is unthinkable and inhumane.

I think women are afraid to say that they don't want children because they're going to get shunned. But I think that's changing too now. I have more girlfriends who don't have kids than those that do. And honestly? We don't need any more kids. We have plenty of people on this planet.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights describes the family as the natural and fundamental unit of society. It follows that any choice and decision with regard to the size of the family must irrevocably rest with the family itself, and cannot be made by anyone else.

I have four kids. They are two years apart, and contraception has been very, very good to me.

Being a mum is something that's never bothered me too much. I have never felt a strong need to have children, but I am not averse to it either.

We want better reasons for having children than not knowing how to prevent them.

One of the conveniences in life is to have less children.

Freedom to breed Is intolerable…. People vary. Confronted with appeals to limit breeding, some people will undoubtedly respond to the plea more than others. Those who have more children will produce a larger fraction of the next generation than those with more susceptible consciences. The differences will be accentuated, generation by generation.

It's a difficult world, and you shouldn't have kids unless you really want them.

More children from the fit, less from the unfit -- that is the chief aim of birth control.

It remains to be seen which program will cause greater societal damage: China's one-child policy or America's one-parent policy.

My grandparents had 15 children, my parents had 2 children and I won't be having any child.

I knew I always wanted kids someday.

I don't ever want to have kids of my own. But I do want a lot of kids.

The goal was 'every child a wanted child'; it should also have been 'every abortion a wanted abortion', but the two sides of the phony debate were never to meet.

Give up bearing children and bear hope and love and devotion to those already born.

Children are wonderful. It don't take plenty y'know. Just a nice girl who don't take birth control. Sexual intercourse is a lovely thing.

My views on birth control are somewhat distorted by the fact that I was seventh of nine children.

Once it was necessary that the people should multiply and be fruitful if the race was to survive. But now to preserve the race it is necessary that people hold back the power of propagation.

This is exactly why Patrick and I chose not to have children." he muttered. "So we would never have to have conversations like this. Andy yet...here I am?""If you could answer the question," I said as politely as I could, "that would be great. I really don't want to have a freaky demon baby, and I can't imagine John wants one, either

I would rather sit next to a transgender person and discuss why every single one I've met smells like a bar in the daytime than listen to people tell my why I want to have children and that I just don't know it yet. I do know, because I'm me and my feelings are the ones in my head. I don't want to have kids, and it's not a device to get attention or have conversations about it. I simply find children incredibly immature and, more often than not, dumb.

I've travelled extensively in the last 16 years - to slums in Bangladesh, to townships in South Africa, to all kinds of places in India, etc. When I would go and talk to villagers about something like vaccines, if I stayed long enough, the women would bring the conversation around and say: "What about this family planning tool? We can't keep having the number of children we're having."

Given the reality of unintended parenthood and parental unhappiness, one would think that women and men who make the decision not to have children - who are deliberate and thoughtful about the choice to bring another person into the world - would be seen as less selfish than those who unthinkingly have children. Yet the stigma remains.

We should protect life but I'm not interested in anything that restricts birth control. And I'm not interested in anything that restricts in vitro fertilization because I think parents who are struggling to create life, to have a child, that is a wonderful thing.

The only acceptable way to solve ecological problems is if you can persuade people to have fewer children. In the Victorian times, there were families of 15 children. Someone like Edward Lear, he was the last of 21 children. And so what we have to think about is offering people the alternative choice. And in the West, that's what's happening. The birth rate has been dropping steadily and still is. I'm wanting human beings to be better off so they don't view children as an insurance for the future.