I was willing to contemplate kids, though if I’m being honest, among the factors militating against it was my profound dread of being conscripted into the community of other mothers—the sociality of the playground and day-care center, and at the endless activities and lessons that are de rigueur in today’s codes of upper-middle-class parenting. It terrified me. For one thing, I’ve never been good at small talk, or female conventionality. Also, the mothers I met struck me as a strange and unenviable breed: harried, hampered, resentful. I didn’t want to accidentally become one of them.