Market metrics subsume social security that naturalizes the exclusion of queer folk.

At its heart, neoliberalism is an economic theory built on the primacy of the market. The reigns of Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Ronald Reagan in the US were iconic for a governing style that rolls back welfare support and invites the individual to succeed in life by navigating the market as an independent consumer. Feminist and queer scholars are highly critical of how neoliberal thought has spread to nearly all aspects of life in the US, UK, and Germany today; how it distracts from systemic oppression by “encourag[ing] people to see themselves as individualized and active subjects responsible for enhancing their own well-being” (Wendy Larner 2000, 13); and how it supposedly empowers individuals to solve nation-wide problems—such as the lack of affordable healthcare in the US or insufficient child-care options in Germany—on their own. They find that neoliberalism disproportionately affects women (Rosalind Gill and Christina Scharff 2011), asking them to think of themselves as the ultimate DIY project and optimize their success in the marketplace and in life (the two of which are grotesquely intertwined). Women are expected to monitor, control, and improve their appearance, health, careers, relationships, marriages, and children. Marketing rhetoric has co-opted feminist messages by emphasizing women’s “empowerment” and “freedom to choose” (how to look, how to live), but social pressures make it clear that there are right and wrong choices. The ideal neoliberal female subject is one who “epitomizes ‘self-responsibility,’ and who no longer demands anything from the state or the government, or even from men as a group [. . .]” (Catherine Rottenberg 2014, 428).6 And this points to a paradox of neoliberalism: it simultaneously seems to offer the opportunity to destabilize gender roles while also reifying those roles (Volker Woltersdorff 2011, 173). In other words, despite being offered an apparent freedom to shape one’s life as one chooses, women are supposed to become the best possible version of themselves, a version that combines “both professional success and personal fulfillment, which almost always translates into motherhood” (Rottenberg 2014, 428). Having children matters in neoliberal society for several reasons. First, children become consumers, and even as babies, they drive the economy by inspiring new purchases (toys, gear, maternity clothes, baby showers, etc.). Second, and most relevant to countries with declining birth rates, future generations will care for the aging, either indirectly (for example, by working and contributing to social security) or quite literally; and this care is more urgently needed as social support for the elderly is reduced and out-of-pocket costs for care increasingly outstrip personal savings. Third, having children is central to neoliberalism’s deep connection to futurity. Neoliberalism is forward thinking, it directs the attention of the subject to an imagined future in which perfection (with regard to appearance, health, self, and lifestyle) can be achieved, one’s financial situation will be improved, and childless women become mothers. The child signifies all of humanity’s promise. Subjects under neoliberalism have value in their productive and consumptive capacities. Women under neoliberalism have value in their reproductive capacities, i.e., their ability to produce new consumers. Returning to the image from Alice in my introduction, Alice alone at the swimming pool is not the model neoliberal citizen. She consumes and acquires few objects (only her towel, newspaper, and sunscreen). She is also neither partnered nor a parent, indicating that she is overlooked in a society that ranks consumption and reproduction so highly. As a non-reproducing subject, Alice is nearly without value. And at the same time, she is precisely the type of woman that German policy would like to see reproduce: white, educated, middle-class. For we must acknowledge that some potentially reproductive women have more value in neoliberal society than others. The two works of literature I discuss here, Wetlands and Alice, frustrate neoliberal expectations of white, potentially child-bearing women. They offer two provocative examples: a protagonist who willfully rejects the prescribed narrative of romance and motherhood—or at least, who thinks she does—and a second protagonist who seems to exist completely outside the normative framework of marriage and family. At the same time that both literary works activate nationalist fear underlying the demography debate, they offer moments of resistance to neoliberal gender expectations.