Maurice Sendak and Other Childless Writers of Children's Fiction

Yesterday on Fresh Air Terry Gross played her recent telephone interview with Maurice Sendak, now age 83, on the occasion of the publication of his new book, Bumble-Ardy, the story of an orphaned nine-year-old pig who has never had a birthday party.  Terry asked Sendak if he had ever wanted children, and he said no, that he felt that the incredibly hard work of taking care of children would have interfered with his deep creative process and alone time for introspection and reading.  He told Terry in the interview that he would feel the same way even in today's more liberal climate where gay parents with children is more acceptable than when he was young.  He added, though, that he has always had a fantasy daughter, a helpful person in her late 30s or early 40s who would take care of her Dad in his old age, and he emphasized to Terry that he was always very clear that this was a fantasy.  

Sendak is not unusual as a childless author of children’s literature.  Nor is he alone in having a fantasy child.  Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss) and his wife Helen, who was infertile due to surgical removal of both ovaries early in their marriage, had a fantasy daughter they named “Chrysanthemum-Pearl.”  According to Geisel’s biographers, Judith and Neil Morgan, when friends bragged about their children, Geisel would recount whatever the amazingly clever and precocious Chrysanthemum-Pearl had just accomplished.

Hans and Margaret Rey, the husband-and-wife authors of the Curious George books, were also childless, and in the absence of children, Curious George began to acquire more and more reality in the authors’ lives.  Their friend Annemarie Roeper, giftedness educator, told us that they became increasingly distressed when they were working on their last book, Curious George Goes to the Hospital (1966).  The idea that George might actually be ill enough to require hospitalization led them to revise the manuscript multiple times, ultimately having him swallow a puzzle piece rather than suffer from a serious injury or illness.

Some writers of children’s books never married and were childless by situation, including Louisa May Alcott, Lewis Carroll, Hans Christian Andersen, and J.M. Barrie, and some, like Beatrix Potter, the author of Peter Rabbit, married beyond the average childbearing age.  Eleanor Porter, who wrote Pollyanna, and Kate Wiggin, author of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, were infertile, and each wrote about childless women and orphaned or abandoned children, and  Pollyanna and Rebecca, in fact, are both adopted.

Some of the greatest writers of children’s fiction, including Maurice Sendak, were childless, and their creativity and generativity allowed them to leave gifts like Where the Wild Things Are to the next generation, and the next, and the next. . . .

Being An Aunt

In our book, Infertility and the Creative Spirit, we wrote about the importance of being an aunt to many infertile women.  As an example, we discussed the twentieth-century American writer, Katherine Anne Porter, author of Ship of Fools.  Porter’s nephew, Paul Porter, who eventually became a writer himself, described what an attentive and powerful influence his aunt was on his intellectual development.  From lists of books to read and music to listen to and boxes of books arriving by parcel post, he wrote, “A whole new world was illumined and revealed.  It was my by-then-favorite aunt who did that for me, and I have never forgotten it.”   

A wonderful article in yesterday’s New York Times, “Let’s Hear It for Aunthood,” by Kate Bolick, childless aunt herself, reports that today nearly 1 in 5 American women in her early 40s has never had a child, according to the Pew Research Center, compared with 1 in 10 in the 1970s.  Echoing the sentiments of Paul Porter about his aunt Katherine, Bolick writes, “The aunt exists outside the immediate family unit, ambassador to a universe of other options, as well as—crucially—a grown-up who isn’t an authority figure or disciplinarian.”  Bolick also reports on a research-based study of aunts and uncles by sociologist Robert M. Milardo, The Forgotten Kin: Aunts and Uncles.  Among other topics, Milardo explores how generativity is expressed in the relationships of aunts and uncles to their nieces and nephews and how direct mentoring, “a cornerstone of generative action,” occurs in these relationships. 

Among the seven women that we profiled in our book, there were several very important aunt relationships.  When Juliette Low founded the Girl Scouts of America, she enrolled her niece, Daisy Gordon Lawrence, as the first registered Girl Scout.  Frida Kahlo was very close with the children of her sister Cristina, and Emma Goldman’s deepest family bond was with her niece Stella Comminsky.  Goldman’s fugitive status gave Stella new freedom, and Stella was there at the important junctures in her aunt’s life.

As an infertile and childless woman, my relationships with my nieces and nephew have been profoundly important to me.  Apparently I am among what Melanie Notkin, author of Savvy Auntie, calls PANKs, “Professional Aunts No Kids!”