Author Zadie Smith and Jane Smiley criticized writer Lauren Sandler who claimed that people with larger families were inclined to limit their writing career.

Authors Zadie Smith and Jane Smiley criticized journalist-author, Lauren Sandler for stating that more than one child can limit a woman's career and having a small family can help authors have a more successful stint at writing.

According to the Guardian, writing in the Atlantic, journalist and author Lauren Sandler pointed out "how many of the writers I revere" were the mothers of one child: Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, Mary McCarthy, Elizabeth Hardwick, Margaret Atwood and Ellen Willis.

"The grey-streaked eminence of Sontag aside, how do the rest of us mortals negotiate the balance between selfhood and motherhood? Is stopping at one child the answer, or at least the beginning of one?" she said, in a piece called "The secret to being both a successful writer and a mother: have just one kid".

Smith, who has two children didn't take lightly to the writings and said that "the idea that motherhood is inherently somehow a threat to creativity is just absurd."

She went on to state the examples of Dickens who had ten children and Tolstoy who also had more than one child. Smith said no one ever questioned whether they were becoming too "fatherish" to be writers. Smith added that the real threat "to all women's freedom is the issue of time, which is the same problem whether you are a writer, factory worker or nurse".

Author Jane Smiley who also has three children echoed Smith's thoughts and called the article "particularly upsetting", saying that "it seems to insinuate that a writer needs only one child to experience all that motherhood has to offer, and anything more risks becoming more mother than writer".

Sanders responded to the comments saying that the tiff had ignited after the Atlantic "stuck a bogus headline on a heartfelt essay about how I found inspiration in four female writers", suggesting that "the secret is better policy". It's "crucial to have an equal partner but it gets us only part way there," she told Waldman. "Mine is, and it's still hard with one."