All Your Perfects

All Your Perfects confronts the sensitive issue of infertility in marriage. Quinn and Graham are a conventionally attractive and successful couple who are deeply in love. Societal expectations dictate that they should have children; this is something both Quinn and Graham want, but biological and legal obstacles prevent it from happening. Quinn’s inability to conceive makes her feel like she’s failed as a woman: “[I]nside, I am not at all attractive. I am not internally appealing by Mother Nature’s standards, because I do not have a working reproductive system” (32). She describes herself as “the break” in “a beautiful circle” of “birth, life, and death,” saying she’s “standing on the outside of the circle of life, watching the world spin while I am at a standstill” (32). Her shame and guilt spread to the physical and sexual aspects of her marriage: She finds herself unable to separate sex from the purpose of conception, so the repeated disappointment of failing to conceive eats away at her ability to enjoy physical intimacy for its own sake.

The novel highlights the ways in which insensitive people can worsen the experience of infertility through casual, well-intentioned questions. As a young married couple, Quinn and Graham are often asked when they’re going to have children. Quinn notes, “I know people don’t mean to be insensitive but the intention doesn’t make the comments hurt any less” (40). After years of trying to conceive, Quinn says the questions “get harder to answer over and over” (42). She’s also hurt by fake pregnancy announcements on April Fool’s Day and online complaints about children, highlighting casual ways in which those affected by infertility must navigate society’s fixation on the “perfect” family (and perhaps suggests that people shouldn’t take children for granted). Because infertility has so profoundly affected Quinn’s self-image, it affects the way she interacts with others—her romantic partner, her mother and sister, and her friends. She no longer partakes in social media, functionally isolating her in a world where social media is an important part of maintaining friendships. While she doesn’t outright despise her loved ones, Quinn’s internalized shame undercuts her ability to be intimate with Graham and be unapologetically happy for Ava’s pregnancy (as Ava and Avril felt the need to discuss how to avoid upsetting Quinn with the news).

Quinn sees having children as not only essential to her existence as a woman, but also as a part of a happy marriage and family. Toward the end of the novel, Graham tells Quinn that he’s realized he might never “be enough” for her without children (240). Quinn is astonished to hear this, but it helps her reevaluate her worldview: “If on our wedding day, someone had forced me to choose between the possibility of having children or spending a life with Graham, I would have chosen life with him” (240). Once she accepts that their lives can be happy even without children, the couple is able to move forward. Upon reading Graham’s letters, Quinn is reminded of her other goals in life, especially her desire to travel and write a book. These goals are unrelated to conception and parenthood, and ultimately remind her that she is more than a person who cannot have children. This revelation is especially important considering it doesn’t directly tie to Graham or anyone for that matter; part of Quinn’s recovery is her reclaiming her personhood with confidence.

At the end of the novel, instead of feeling ashamed of her infertility, Quinn learns to embrace it: “I’m learning how to wear my struggle as a badge and not be ashamed of it. I’m learning to not be so personally offended by other people’s ignorance in relation to infertility” (298). Hoover’s language frames the struggle with infertility as not only internal, but external in relation to one’s society and community. However, Quinn’s change must ultimately be internal—she must learn to accept her infertility and move forward (despite others’ assumptions about her). Quinn’s humorous reaction to others’ questioning (i.e., she and Graham pretending to have children in the Epilogue) shows that she no longer defines her own self-worth by fertility, and is able to see herself as a complete person even without fulfilling the social expectation to reproduce.