BARREN: a new book by me!

Wait hang on, this isn’t Monday, what am I doing in your inbox? And more to the point: where was I yesterday?

Well GFPs, I am delighted to be able to tell you that I have a genuinely excellent reason for appearing in your inbox on a Tuesday and that is that today, this Tuesday, the 3rd November 2026 is the day that I can finally tell you ALL ABOUT THE NEW BOOK I HAVE WRITTEN!

It’s called BARREN: what we get wrong when we talk about the fertility crisis and you can pre-order a SIGNED COPY NOW! These are limited to one per person, so if you want one, get to it! And even if you don’t care about a signed copy, please do get your pre-orders in, as these days they are absolutely vital to the success of a book.

So, what is this new book from me about? Well, it kind of does what it says on the tin: it is an analysis from me about what’s really behind declining birth rates — and why governments and talking heads are getting it all wrong (not least when it comes to the increasingly popular solution of rolling back women’s reproductive rights). It’s about why women have been framed (and I use that word very deliberately) as uniquely to blame for declining birth rates — and why we really need to be talking about men (you know, the other half population that is in fact equally responsible for producing the next generation of humans). OMG, GFPs: I found a default female in the wild! Stands to reason it’s one that can be used to kick us with 🫠

But BARREN isn’t just a political story — it’s also an intensely personal one. I have lived this book, myself navigating a fertility landscape of punishing and bewildering contradictions, where women are chastised for failing to procreate while poor maternity care, inflexible workplaces, inaccessible fertility treatment and incoherent policies make motherhood harder than ever.

And while you obviously couldn’t know it, this is a story that you were in on from (almost) the very start, because it’s a story that begins with the moment I met my very own AB (OG GFPs will remember what that stands for!), my Southern charmer hailing all the way from Mississippi — we met just a few months after Invisible Women was first published and a few months before I started writing this newsletter!

This is a screengrab of the instagram story he posted the first night we met (please enjoy Poppy sneaking a cheeky lick of his arm 😅):

(Reader, obviously I married him.)

You were there for the second major beat in the story, when I had my first miscarriage, during the pandemic, when so many of you wrote to me with such kindness and love — and also told me about your own experiences with miscarriage (non)care, sowing some of the early seeds of this book in the process.

You were there for the moment Roe v Wade was overturned, even though you couldn’t possibly know why I took that ruling (which originated in a court case in Mississippi) so personally. You didn’t know that I was still trying to get pregnant, and how much I feared miscarrying in that state.

Those italics were there in the original post, and I meant that emphasis with every fibre of my being. And that moment, too, has shaped this book, leading me as it did to spend so much time trying to understand the history and the religious culture of the state my husband comes from — a state which has become such an important part of my life, and of this story.

You were also there when, just two weeks after the Dobbs ruling, I got the diagnosis that made my fear of miscarrying in Mississippi feel like the most absurd hubris imaginable. As I wrote to you at the time:

This devastating, life-upending news that I received at the age of thirty-eight, was that I was going into early menopause — and although even I didn’t know it at the time, the “probably…inevitable” writing I mentioned in that post was what was to became BARREN.

When I got the diagnosis I was devastated not only because of the inevitable impact on my fertility, but also because of what (thanks to an increasingly terrifying and growing stack of books and media coverage) I feared the menopause meant for my mind, my body and my future. And so as well as investigating the fertility crisis in this book (and what it means for our bodies and futures), I have also investigated the menopause and tried to clarify whether the disaster narrative surrounding it is entirely accurate. And in the process I’ve thought a lot about the way we talk about this inevitable life change — and what that tells us about the purpose we think women serve (broadly, to be young, hot and fertile).

I never expected to write a book about fertility. In a world where women are too often reduced to our reproductive function, I have always wanted my writing to show that women are so much more than our wombs. But then life happened to me in a way I also never expected. I never expected to fall in love with a man from Mississippi, and for the US abortion debate to become so intensely personal. I never expected to receive a diagnosis of early menopause. And I never expected to find myself dealing with my own personal fertility crisis at the same time as the world was becoming increasingly preoccupied with a global one - and increasingly convinced that rolling back women’s rights was the best way to handle it.

This is the most personal book I’ve ever written; it was born out of my own personal heartache. But the personal, as they say, is political, and the fertility crisis, and the way politicians have chosen to respond to it, is a global story that affects every woman, whether or not she wants children, because at heart this is a story about what we think women are for — a question to which the answer increasingly seems to be “to reproduce their countries out of economic stagnation”.

This is not a narrative any of us can opt out of — which is not the same as saying we can’t try to change it. We can make different choices about how we structure our societies and about what we value. We can choose to stop blaming women for everything and instead start listening to the evidence. And, ultimately, we can choose to create a better future for everyone.

GFPs, this is what I’ve spent the last few years living, breathing, thinking and writing about — and I’m so excited that I can finally talk to you all about it!

That’s it! Until next time, my dear GFPs…xoxoxo