Cosy Day

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Part of many one-and-done parents' contentment is the impact their decision has on other parts of their lives, such as careers, hobbies and interests. "There's the question of what you want an adulthood to look like," says Sandler. "Like, what does it take to go to the movies? What does it take to go out to dinner? What does it take to have adult friendships where you actually get to have an uninterrupted conversation?"

It is also, of course, potentially easier to maintain one's health. Pregnancy, labour and the postpartum period all carry risks, including for fathers. Particularly for women older than 35, those giving birth to a second or later child, rather than their first, are at increased risk of pregnancy complications like eclampsia, gestational hypertension and preterm labour.

In Mao II, a reclusive novelist, Bill Gray, who has become famous for two books written decades earlier, is struggling with whether to publish his third. He's also aware that writers no longer change things. "The future belongs to crowds." Rather than words, DeLillo argues, we are driven by the power of the image, usually of great and horrifying spectacles: the book is structured around televised images of, among other things, the Hillsborough Stadium disaster and the Ayatollah Khomeini's funeral. Do we share in the grief of those suffering when we witness such events, one character wonders, or are we voyeurs?

DeLillo's vision never flinches, never looks away, which may be why his work can seem cold in its unsentimental approach to human horror. We see it in The Names, filming terrorist murders; in White Noise, separating Hi**er from his actions through the academic fe**sh of Hi**er studies; in Falling Man, where the book is centred on the iconography of one of the men who jumped from the twin towers. His books riff on cults and death and mass murder, which are a part of life. "Life must become more anxious, more surreal, more image-bound," says a character in Mao II; once again, DeLillo saw what was coming.