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Banksy, Sorry the Lifestyle You Ordered is Currently Out of Stock, 2012

If I’m a childless witch, where’s my broomstick?

June 26, 2012 Jody Day 37

From the archives: First published June 2012 Perhaps one of the most difficult things about being childless by circumstance, and the one that those who are parents or who have chosen to be childfree find hard to grasp, is working out what our life is ‘for’. So much of our hoping, planning, dreaming and fantasising has been in preparation for a life that is not to be. And, much as fertility medicine has brought joy to some, it’s also condemned a lot of other women to extended periods of ‘hoping’ well into their forties, or even longer…. Fertility treatments or […]

The Gateway Women Manifesto: are childless women the new suffragettes?

May 3, 2012 Jody Day 25

If you take a moment to think about it, there have probably never been so many educated, liberated women without children in their 40s and 50s alive at one time before. Let that sink in for a moment… In the past, most of us would have been either bringing up children or already dead from childbirth. And of those women who were childless (mostly by chance but a small percentage by choice) very few of them would have had the social, economic or political power to take advantage of their freedom from child-rearing. 1 in 5 women in the UK and USA […]

Free talk for International Women’s Day (8 March) “Introducing the Nomos”

March 6, 2012 Jody Day 6

Introducing the #Nomos (the not-mothers) Talk + Q&A with Gateway Women Founder, Jody Day Thursday 8th March 2012: 17:00-17:45 HubWestminster, 80 Haymarket, London, SW1Y 4TE Places are free but numbers are limited. For reservations please click here. SPINSTER OLD MAID SELFISH WEIRDO 1 in 5 women are now reaching the menopause without having children – the largest cohort of childless women in the UK since the ‘man drought’ following World War I. Yet our culture’s idea of what these women ‘are for’ is similarly stuck in the past… Whether a woman has chosen to be ‘childfree’ or finds herself […]

Grieving for the Life Unlived

February 24, 2012 Jody Day 36

Perhaps one of the most difficult aspects of dealing with not being a mother when you wanted to be one is the sheer intractability of the issue. After a life of solving problems, making plans and being proactive you find yourself up against something that will-power, a peppy new outfit and a positive attitude just can’t solve. Dammit. Our consumer culture is built on the idea of choice. Of personal freedom. Of planning. Of security. So when all your freedom, planning and choices end up with you as a single childless women, it also comes with a hefty dose of […]

Did your childhood put you off motherhood?

January 19, 2012 Jody Day 15

One of the things about finding yourself somewhere either side of 40 and suprised to find that you’re not a mother, is that you probably spend a fair amount of time wondering how the hell you ended up here. You mentally playback your life from that first boyfriend onwards and reconsider every decision you made, every relationship that didn’t feel right, every opportunity you walked away from, the pregnancies you terminated, the morning-after pills you took – all those those missed opportunities that just ‘didn’t work out’. Seen through this unpleasantly nauseous wrong-end-of-the-telescope viewfinder, you wonder how all of that […]

Truth and Trust

December 15, 2011 Jody Day 5

Having just said goodbye to the pioneering women who took part in the first ever Gateway Women Coaching Group this Autumn, I have been profoundly moved by the power of truth and trust to change our lives. And that got me thinking about the power of truth and trust in my own journey from an unhappily childless woman to a happily childfree one… The opposite of truth is, in some ways, denial. Denial gets a bum rap in self-development and recovery circles sometimes, which is a shame. Because denial is a very powerful and effective psychological defence mechanism that protects our emotional […]

The Power of Testimony

November 10, 2011 Jody Day 10

This is a guest post from the fabulous Katherine Baldwin of From Forty With Love I am forty – forty-and-two-thirds to be precise – and single. I’m childless and/or childfree, however you prefer to look at it. I have a desire to have children of my own. And I’ve just declared a moratorium on dating. I’ve called off the search for a partner… Foolish? Crazy? A little extreme? Well, yes and no. Given that my biological clock must be ticking furiously by now, it might be a little foolhardy. But as regards my long-term sanity, happiness and fulfillment, it makes perfect […]

Forty, single and childless, dammit!

October 25, 2011 Jody Day 45

Have you ever stopped to question why you want (or wanted) a baby so much? Do you find the question shocking? Taboo even? Well, I didn’t question it. And because I avoided this level of deep introspection, I failed to realise that I spent fifteen years of my life chasing a dream based partly on the premise that someone or something would make me feel fulfilled, content, satisfied, real, right, good… I thought a baby, a family, a home, what Zorba the Greek calls ‘the full catastrophe’ – was going to make me feel whole dammit! Yes, I loved my husband insanely-much […]

When the mittens come off: childfree-baiting online

September 30, 2011 Jody Day 11

As a childless-by-circumstance woman of 47 who’s now embraced a ‘childfree’ identity, I’m beginning to wonder why those who choose to be childfree often get so much stick for it… This summer, The Guardian put a ‘celebratory’ childfree piece on the front page of their 6 August 2011 Saturday Family section by author, actor and comedienne Emma Kennedy (pictured left) called: It’s my holiday. No kids allowed – ever! It was a tongue-in-cheek piece about how awful she found childhood camping holidays with her parents, and how happy she is that as a childfree adult she therefore doesn’t have to […]

What Talking Heads has to do with finding your mojo again as a childless woman

September 8, 2011 Jody Day 15

Perhaps one of the most delightful discoveries of coming to terms with not having children has been that my natural joie-de-vivre has returned. In other words, I got my mojo working. Now, this doesn’t mean that I wake up every morning like Mary Poppins, thrilled with the way my life has turned out in every tiny aspect, but neither am I so daft as to believe that: (a) anyone really feels like that every day (with the exception perhaps of the Dalai Lama and I’m sure even he wakes up occasionally with neckache and wishes he could bunk off) or […]

Gateway Woman Role Model: Diane Osgood

August 7, 2011 Jody Day 7

Diane Osgood, PhD (48) is the Founder of Osgood Sustainability Consulting. She advises Fortune 500 companies and is Senior Advisor to the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) and Business for Social Responsibility. Her work involves driving sustainable change projects through international organizations such as the CGI, in order to launch the subject on major global platforms. Passionate about taking forward the ‘girls and women’ agenda globally, Diane’s work involves rolling out tried-and-tested ‘girls and women’ projects as a proven way to create effective and sustainable change. Renowned in her field and widely published in both business and academic journals, Diane earned […]

Behind every woman without children is a story

July 25, 2011 Jody Day 38

One of the missions of Gateway Women is to celebrate the contribution that women without children make to our culture. Not having children, whether by choice or circumstance, creates the possibility of a different kind of life. Too often, women who are childfree-by-circumstance are left with the sense of not having a proper life, but instead of somehow making do with the leftovers… And many women who are childfree by choice find themselves vilified as heartless, selfish types, lacking some ‘vital’ quality that would make them ‘real’ women. But tell me this, what other kind of women are there apart […]

No children? Not welcome.

July 10, 2011 Jody Day 5

In today’s Observer (10 July 2011) buried at the back behind the lengthy reports of what, in time I presume will come to be called Murdoch-gate or some such thing, is an article by Tracy McVeigh called ‘Single, female, 45-plus: life, love and friendship for women of ‘a certain age.’ Now, I’m never entirely sure what this ‘certain age’ is… I’ve always, from a mixture of vanity, denial and naivety presumed it to be ‘a bit older than me’. But, turning 47 in the next few weeks I guess that… Tag! I’m it. On the whole, I’ve never been too […]

Why do they call us selfish?

June 29, 2011 Jody Day 26

There’s a dirty word often thrown about in the ‘childless/childfree’ debate: selfishness. Although you rarely ever hear people saying that men who haven’t had children are selfish… It’s an opinion that people feel free to voice, often unkindly and without a second thought. I recall being at my ex-father in law’s funeral. It was a perversely beautiful hot summer’s day for a funeral and my arms were bare as I stood, numb, with my then husband. I was surprised to feel a sharp pinch near my elbow and looked down into the rheumy eyes of a tiny old lady I’d […]

Hell hath no fury like an empty womb

May 7, 2011 Jody Day 17

Sometimes, just knowing that someone else understands what it’s like to be driven mad by the whole ‘baby’ issue is all it takes for the pressure to ease, just a little. For someone to reach their hand down to you as you sit in a funk in your dank, dark tunnel and let you know that they understand. It’s good to know you’re not alone, but still… You’re so mad you could spit. When the number on your fertility speedometer reads 35, or maybe the needle’s pushing 40, 41, 42… the scream in your head can be so damn loud […]

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