Inconceivable

In Inconceivable: The Impossibility of Family in an Age of Uncertainty, journalist, cultural critic, and 2022 New America Fellow Anna Louie Sussman explores what is keeping us from having the families we desire. Spurred by the unexpected obstacles she encountered in her own quest to become a parent, she asks, in this era of extraordinary opportunity for women, soaring income inequality, and incalculable environmental change, who gets to have children, and why?

Through intimate portraits of individuals and couples who find their parenthood project stymied by barriers their own parents could never have imagined, Sussman shows how decades of policy choices that elevated profits over people and individualism over community have left young people increasingly unable to envision a future in which they and their would-be children might thrive.

She introduces us to an American nurse whose student loans keep him and his wife from trying for the family they’ve always wanted, a Polish lawyer barred from receiving IVF as a single woman, and young South Koreans whose disgust with a hypercompetitive education system and job market has helped bring the country’s fertility rate to the lowest in the world.

Join the New America Fellows Program and the Better Life Lab for a conversation about Inconceivable.

Copies of Inconceivable are available for purchase here.

Editorial disclosure: The views expressed in this book and event are solely those of the author and speakers. They do not reflect the views of New America, its staff, fellows, funders, or board of directors.