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A review by maedo
Bee Season by Myla Goldberg
3.0
Sometimes when a person I've just met or a well-meaning family member talks about my future children, I stop to correct them. "Oh, no, I don't want kids," I say, laughing breezily to lighten this very personal revelation. This answer garners one of two responses, neither of which are very polite. Either my conversation partner will look at me with eyes of wisdom and upraised chin and say, "You're young, you'll change your mind," or they'll screech "WHAT???!!! Yes. You do!"
But I don't want kids and probably never will, and it's not a shoot from the hip folly of youth sort of idea but a decision I've given a lot of thought to. My family history is a potpourri of unpleasant genes that I would hate to pass on to another human being. The world is overpopulated enough as it is. Plus I am almost certain that I would be the Ayelet Waldman mother who resents her kids at least half of the time for taking energy and focus away from her relationship with her husband.
Above all, I have never had that "maternal instinct." It's just not there. In my early teens I was sometimes forced to babysit for my younger cousins with my sister. I would lay on the couch and read and dole out snacks, counting the minutes until my aunt and uncle came home, while my sister picked up the kids and played and changed their diapers and talked so easily in those baby voices that I refused (and still do refuse) to use. Kids can be cute, but I don't want to spend too much time with them.
Some of us are meant to be parents. Some of us are not. And I think it's better for those of us who are not to recognize that before we screw up the next generation.
Bee Season is an entire book about what happens when two people who shouldn't have kids go ahead and have kids. Predictably, the kids are treated as appendages, unconsciously encouraged to compete with each other for their parents' favor (which isn't even favor so much as just attention) while their parents try to make themselves whole. The Naumann household is something of a worst case scenario. But it should be required reading for those You Really Want Children, Yes You Do! people.
Goldberg's depiction of the brother/sister relationship between the Naumann kids, Eliza and Aaron, is perfect. Before they got to the age where they realized they were in competition to be the smartest, most worthy child, they were a team, scheming to get the best pieces of cake in the synagogue. It's heartbreaking (but true) when Aaron starts to ignore Eliza and can't even look at her face over dinner, once she starts winning her spelling bees and winning over their father where their father was previously Aaron's alone. That's exactly what happens in a family where love is based on merit. Resentment for that parent is only a speck of a seed, to bloom sometime in the future when the child is old enough for hindsight.
I also liked Aaron's religious wanderings as a rebellion to his father's Judaism, once his dad stops paying attention to him. There is some interpersonal reason for everything that happens in this book, but the reasoning is never too annoyingly obvious. Goldberg is a smart writer that way.
Bee Season is very well done. But I can't say I loved reading it, because the Naumanns are so much like a real, recognizable family that it's uncomfortable. Who loves reading about parents who shouldn't be parents parenting? I don't. But I do love reading about kids overcoming the issues born of their parents who shouldn't have been parents, and there is enough of that here to make the reading worthwhile. It's more like 3.5 stars.
But I don't want kids and probably never will, and it's not a shoot from the hip folly of youth sort of idea but a decision I've given a lot of thought to. My family history is a potpourri of unpleasant genes that I would hate to pass on to another human being. The world is overpopulated enough as it is. Plus I am almost certain that I would be the Ayelet Waldman mother who resents her kids at least half of the time for taking energy and focus away from her relationship with her husband.
Above all, I have never had that "maternal instinct." It's just not there. In my early teens I was sometimes forced to babysit for my younger cousins with my sister. I would lay on the couch and read and dole out snacks, counting the minutes until my aunt and uncle came home, while my sister picked up the kids and played and changed their diapers and talked so easily in those baby voices that I refused (and still do refuse) to use. Kids can be cute, but I don't want to spend too much time with them.
Some of us are meant to be parents. Some of us are not. And I think it's better for those of us who are not to recognize that before we screw up the next generation.
Bee Season is an entire book about what happens when two people who shouldn't have kids go ahead and have kids. Predictably, the kids are treated as appendages, unconsciously encouraged to compete with each other for their parents' favor (which isn't even favor so much as just attention) while their parents try to make themselves whole. The Naumann household is something of a worst case scenario. But it should be required reading for those You Really Want Children, Yes You Do! people.
Goldberg's depiction of the brother/sister relationship between the Naumann kids, Eliza and Aaron, is perfect. Before they got to the age where they realized they were in competition to be the smartest, most worthy child, they were a team, scheming to get the best pieces of cake in the synagogue. It's heartbreaking (but true) when Aaron starts to ignore Eliza and can't even look at her face over dinner, once she starts winning her spelling bees and winning over their father where their father was previously Aaron's alone. That's exactly what happens in a family where love is based on merit. Resentment for that parent is only a speck of a seed, to bloom sometime in the future when the child is old enough for hindsight.
I also liked Aaron's religious wanderings as a rebellion to his father's Judaism, once his dad stops paying attention to him. There is some interpersonal reason for everything that happens in this book, but the reasoning is never too annoyingly obvious. Goldberg is a smart writer that way.
Bee Season is very well done. But I can't say I loved reading it, because the Naumanns are so much like a real, recognizable family that it's uncomfortable. Who loves reading about parents who shouldn't be parents parenting? I don't. But I do love reading about kids overcoming the issues born of their parents who shouldn't have been parents, and there is enough of that here to make the reading worthwhile. It's more like 3.5 stars.