The World Deserves My Children

Actress and stand-up comedian Leggero (Netflix’s The Honeymoon Stand-Up Special) never wanted kids. But she still decided to freeze her eggs in case she changed her mind. That day came at age 42. After several unsuccessful rounds of IVF, Leggero used her precious, stored eggs to start her “geriatric” pregnancy. She depicts how her life has drastically changed since her daughter was born. In a series of essays, she covers her life before children, the drastically different parenting styles between her husband and her, her Judaism conversion, a newfound fear of everything, nannies, and her love for another human that’s greater than self-love. Her dry, sarcastic wit comes through as she describes how her childhood and other experiences shaped her views of motherhood and child-rearing. Although the book is sequenced for each essay to build on the previous one, the collection makes for repetitive reading at times. Leggero captures the thoughts and fears of many new parents, but details about full-time nannies, hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on fertility doctors, and private preschools makes her first-time parent experience very different from most.