Pronatalism Archives - Page 2 of 3

Jody Day interviewed by Dr Karin on her ‘Love and Life’ Podcast: ‘When You’re Not a Mother, But Wanted to Be’ [Audio & Full Transcript]

September 16, 2021 Jody Day 1

[September 2021] Jody Day, the founder of Gateway Women is here interviewed by Dr. Karin Anderson Abrell for her ‘Love & Life’ Podcast. Karin is the author of ‘Single is the New Black: Don’t Wear White ‘Till It’s Right‘ and her work mainly focuses on the experience of women who are single not by choice. Karin herself is a childless stepmother. In this conversation, as well as discussing World Childless Week 2021, we explore how one of the unintended consequences of second-wave feminism has been an increase in circumstantial childlessness and my frustration that involuntary childlessness is a topic absent […]

Jody interviewed on ‘That Grief Relief Podcast’ with Katie Overy on friendships, dealing with awkward questions, grandchildren-grief, the fetishization of motherhood, holding ourselves back in life whilst ‘waiting’ for motherhood, the unrecognized, unsupported and unspoken nature of ‘disenfranchised grief’ and more…

September 10, 2021 Jody Day 1

September 2021: Jody Day interviewed by Katie Overy for her ‘The Grief Relief Podcast’. The clip above is about how Jody answers intrusive questions about whether she has children. You can listen to the full episode here in which Katie (who is childfree by choice) and I discuss my story, about the experience of the disenfranchised grief of childlessness, about the bingos that childfree women experience as well as childless women, about my new ‘conscious childless elderwomen’ project, about the shifting nature of friendships when you’re childless and your friends all have kids and how this can shift again when […]

If you’ve ever wanted to have a productive conversation about childlessness with your friend, colleague or HR Director and found it too hard, listen to this brilliant interview by Doryn Wallach @It’s Not a Crisis Podcast – and maybe even share it with them? This is bridge-building in action.

July 26, 2021 Jody Day 4

You can listen to the clips above by clicking on them and find the full interview here or by searching ‘It’s Not a Crisis podcast’ wherever you get your podcasts. The full transcript is below. In this interview with Doryn Wallach, who is a mother in her 40s (as are most of her audience) we talk about the challenges of being childless in a world full of parents, how pronatalism operates, about how the whole ‘As a Mother’ thing works against childless/free women, about the difference between childless & childfree, about the complexity of childlessness after abortion, about what NOT […]

The next time someone suggests to you, ‘Why not have a baby on your own?’, like it’s an easy option, ask them to read ‘The Mother of All Dilemmas’ by Kathleen Guthrie Woods

July 23, 2021 Jody Day 6

When you’re a single and childless-by-circumstance woman approaching the event horizon of your fertility, still hopeful that somehow partnership and children might happen for you, one of the most common pieces of ‘helpful advice’ (and I use those quotes advisedly!) you might hear is, ‘Why don’t you just have one on your own?!’ It can also be phrased in the past tense, once you’re a little older, accompanied by that pitying head-tilt… These enquires are usually delivered as if this were (a) something that hadn’t ever occurred to you and (b) slam-dunk easy. When Guthrie Woods found herself in exactly […]

About normalizing how hard it can be for parents and non-parents to have the ‘hard conversations’; the deep unconscious roots of society’s discomfort with childless women; the gifts of grief and what envy can teach us… Jody interviewed on the Sara Avant Stover podcast, June 2021

June 21, 2021 Jody Day 6

You can listen to the full interview by following the links here, or search ‘Sara Avant Stover’ wherever you get your podcasts. The full transcript is below. In this interview with author, yogi and feminine spirituality teacher, Sara Avant Stover, we go deep into the experience of involuntary childlessness – both my story and, at a much deeper level, the archetypal ‘stories’ that attach to childless women and perhaps lead to much of some people’s evident (and mostly unconscious) discomfort with us. I also talk about what it will take for us to begin to ‘normalize’ that having honest conversations […]

The fetishization of the baby bump, the rise in childless and childfree women amongst the Millenial generation and so much more! Jody Day interviewed on the Virgin.Beauty.B!tch Podcast (May 2021)

May 25, 2021 Jody Day 4

In this interview with Christopher and Heather on their ‘Virgin.Beauty.B!tch’ podcast, we go deep into some of the societal and structural issues around both voluntary and involuntary childlessness that I’m absolutely passionate about, but which rarely get discussed. About how pronatalism + consumerism have fetishized and commodified motherhood and how this oppresses all women, whether they are mothers or not. And how it all started with that Demi Moore pregnancy bump shot on the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991 (which doesn’t look quite how I remembered it; my memory has actually merged together 3 separate Vanity Fair covers!). The clip […]

Why do the issues of motherhood get so much more attention than those of childless women? Jody Day interviewed by Helen Russell for her ‘How to be Sad’ Podcast (May 2021)

May 24, 2021 Jody Day 0

Listen to a short clip of Jody Day’s interview with Helen Russell for her How to Be Sad’ podcast above or click here to listen to the whole interview (56-minutes). Read the full transcript below. Helen Russell’s interview with me for her ‘How to be Sad’ podcast interview covers so much ground that I hardly know where to start! We go fearlessly into places that normally childless women don’t discuss publicly including some things I’ve never discussed before: My journey from childhood and young adulthood where I didn’t think I wanted children, to becoming an involuntarily childless woman experiencing unexplained […]

Celebrating the highs and the lows of 10 years of Gateway Women with The Full Stop Podcast [April 2021]

April 10, 2021 Jody Day 0

For Gateway Women’s 10th Anniversary in April 2021, I was thrilled to be interviewed by Berenice, Sarah and Michael of The Full Stop Podcast on what those ten years have been like, what has changed for me, and for the childless community in that time, and what my hopes and dreams are for the next decade. This is a very honest episode in which I reflect on some of the behind-the-scenes challenges of creating Gateway Women, and why turning it into a financially and culturally sustainable organisation that will outlast me is so important to me. You can find the […]

Jody’s lecture on disenfranchised grief for York University’s ‘Grief: A Study of Human Emotional Experience” Project

March 14, 2021 Jody Day 8

The disenfranchised grief of involuntary childlessness: A living loss that society dismisses: a talk by Jody Day, psychotherapist, author and founder of ‘Gateway Women’ Delivered 4th March 2021 for York University’s ‘Grief: A Human Emotional Experience’ – a 4-year AHRC-funded project for the Department of Philosophy, University of York, UK. The overarching aim of ‘Grief: A Study of Human Emotional Experience’ is to develop a detailed, wide-ranging, and integrated account of what it is to experience grief, focusing on aspects of grief that are of considerable theoretical and practical importance but remain poorly understood. For more about the project go […]

Jody Day interviewed by Ben A. Eisner of ‘The Knitted Heart’ Podcast: February 2021

February 25, 2021 Jody Day 1

Above is a short clip from the interview. You can listen to the full interview on the Knitted Heart website here and read the full transcript below. And please, please do leave a review on Apple Podcasts – it’s hugely helpful for podcast creators who put so much love, work and expenses into creating podcasts! I absolutely loved being interviewed by Ben A. Eisner for his ‘Knitted Heart‘ podcast in February 2021. Ben describes Knitted Heart as being about “the inter-connectivity of everyone and everything, and our collective responsibility to heal, restore, and unify the world we share. Knitted Heart […]

What advice would you give to your younger childless self? And other brilliant questions from Helen Gallagher on episode 1 of her ‘Happy and Childless Podcast’ (December 2020)

December 8, 2020 Jody Day 0

In this interview from Decemember 2020 with British podcaster, Helen Gallagher, for her brand new ‘Happy and Childless’ podcast, we discussed what it takes to be ‘happy’ with your life when childlessness wasn’t the plan. Helen is 43 and near the beginning of her journey of acceptance, which made for some poignant discussions and reflections back to that time in my life too. You can listen to the full interview (43-mins) by searching ‘Happy and Childless’ on Apple Podcasts and/or read the full transcript below. In our interview, we discuss how I couldn’t find support when I was looking for […]

What does it take to get through childlessness? Guts, hearts, head, new friends, community, connection and a BIG sense of humour! Jody Day interviewed by Australia’s [un]Ripe Podcast (November 2020)

November 14, 2020 Jody Day 2

In this interview from November 2020, Jody Day (founder of Gateway Women) joins Penny and Jo in an episode for the Australian childless/childfree podcast (un)Ripe. You can listen to the full episode here (transcript below). As well as talking about the early days of Gateway Women and how it grew from a blog to the global organization it’s become, Jody also shares what goes on behind the doors of the amazing Gateway Women private online community, and the massive diversity of its 35+ subgroups covering everything from being a Childless Stepmother or Childless & Single to a group which is […]

Never married, over sixty and childless: Donna Ward on living and writing an invisible story.

August 5, 2020 Jody Day 51

Full Transcript Below Donna Ward is an Australian writer, publisher and editor, living in Melbourne. Her 2020 book She I Dare Not Name: A Spinster’s Meditations on Life energised me in a way that few books still have the capacity to do, so eloquently and accurately does it portray not only ‘the life unexpected’ (to paraphrase my own book’s title!) but also, the life ‘invisible’ which is that of the unpartnered, childless woman in our society. In a world focused and built on the needs, attitudes, prejudices and ‘stories’ of those who couple and have children, to be a […]

“We are Warriors”: a Father’s Day Message to Childless Men from Michael Hughes

June 19, 2020 Jody Day 2

BELOW IS A TRANSCRIPT OF MICHAEL’S WORDS. MORE RESOURCES BOTTOM OF PAGE. “That was a bit dramatic, wasn’t it? But hopefully, it’ll all make sense by the time I’m finished.” “My name is Michael Hughes and I’m one-half of a childless couple and one-third of a podcast supporting the Childless Not By Choice (CNBC) community with Berenice Smith from Walk In Our Shoes and Sarah Lawrence from After The Storm. And it’s called TheFullStopPod.com Look out for us. We’re quite proud of what we’ve achieved.” “When Jody asked me if I would like to contribute to Father’s Day this year […]

“Single & Childless in a Pandemic” on The Full Stop Podcast

May 17, 2020 Jody Day 0

I was very happy to be interviewed as part of this special lockdown episode of the Full Stop Podcast on the experience of being single and childless during this pandemic. Although I’m now in a relationship, I was single for much of my forties as I went through the heartbreak and painful life-transformation of involuntary childlessness. And being both single and childless is something I write about in my book, as well as the experience of grieving childlessness whilst single, which has its own flavour compared to the challenges of grieving as a couple. Many members of the Gateway Women […]

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