- Lionel Shriver wrote the novel/movie We Need To Talk About Kevin
- 59-year-old has been vocal about her desire not to have children
- Said her mother’s outlook and experience of family life had deterred her
- NHS must shrink to its core purpose to curing ‘disease, not dissatisfaction’
Anna Hodgekiss for MailOnline
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Author Lionel Shriver said she had known since the mere age of eight that she didn’t want children
The NHS should not fund fertility treatment because parenthood is not a human right, a leading author has claimed.
Lionel Shriver wrote the novel We Need To Talk About Kevin – where a woman’s son becomes a mass murderer – and which was later turned into a film.
Ms Shriver has been vocal about her desire not to have children, saying she had known from the age of eight – not least because of the detrimental effect it had on her own mother.
Speaking at the Hay literary festival, she told the Daily Telegraph: ‘I have advocated for a long time that I think in order for the NHS to survive, it has to shrink its core purpose down to the curing of disease and not the curing of dissatisfaction.
‘That means parenthood is not a right, and it’s an economic issue.’
She added: ‘It’s not because I hate children. It’s a powerful human drive which I seem to have been deprived of and I am sympathetic to it.’
The author, who was born in North Carolina, was publicising her new book, The Mandibles – a story of a future America and its economic downfall.
The 59-year-old said watching her mother’s life made her realise having children made life far from glamourous – and gave a young woman little time to experience the fun – or indeed finer – things in life.
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Ms Shiver explained her mother had been furious to discover she was pregnant just weeks after marrying in the 1950s.
She told The Guardian earlier this year: ‘After one of those rare 1950s weddings between bona fide virgins, she had barely sampled the pleasures that legitimacy afforded, and three was a crowd.
‘Her spitting indignation at the doctor’s office became the stuff of family myth.’
Yet rather than be horrified, Ms Shriver almost applauds her mother’s honesty.
‘Nowadays, for a mother to openly allow that her offspring was an unwanted intrusion into her marriage would probably be considered child abuse… you are expected to bury your real feelings.
Ms Shriver wrote the novel We Need To Talk About Kevin – where a woman’s son becomes a mass murderer – and which was later turned into a film starring Tilda Swinton and Jasper Newell
‘Indeed, one of the things that has put me off having children is motherhood’s unwritten gag law.
‘While we may have taken the lid off sex, it is still out of bounds to say that you do not like your own kids, that the sacrifices they have demanded are unbearable, or that, perish the thought, you wish you had never had them.’
Speaking earlier this year, she said: ‘Given my mother’s – let’s use a gentle word – ambivalence over her own first pregnancy, it is little wonder that she took me aside when I was in my mid-30s, and had just fallen in love.
‘She warned me that if we decided to have a child, motherhood would “completely transform” my relationship. Though she did not spell it out, there was no question that she meant for the worse. ‘
Indeed, her memories of her mother trudging around the supermarket and the drudgery of being a housewife remain firmly etched in her mind.
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