Childless & Childfree Role Models Archives

Free World Childless Week webinar with the NomoCrones: ‘Worthy at Every Age.’ Sat 19 September, 8pm BST UK. Live & Recorded.

September 1, 2026 Jody Day 0

Saturday 19th September at 8pm-9pm UK/IE BST (12pm PDT; 2pm CDT: 3pm EDT; 9pm Europe CEST); Sunday 20th September, 5am Australia AEST. Find your timezone here. Register for this webinar here When we were born, we were each childless and worthy; our childlessness cannot take that away, although during the hard yards of making our peace with childlessness, it can feel out of reach. As we move into elderhood without motherhood, we are faced by the trifecta of ageism, pronatalism and sexism and, depending on our individual experiences, probably a few other isms too, such as racism, ablesim and homophobia. […]

[WATCH/READ] Jody and Katy talk Mother’s Day and More

March 15, 2026 Jody Day 0

RECORDED LIVE IN MAY 2025 / FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW If you are reading this on Sunday 15th March 2026, do access/join the Childless Collective today, where it’s running an all-day rolling text-only chat, hosted by volunteer members. It’s a great way to both get support, take a break from the whole thing and get to know other childless women! (And you don’t have to be experiencing Mother’s Day where you are – the chat will be about all kinds of things!) Click here to access/join the community Mother’s Day takes place in March as ‘Mothering Sunday’ for the UK and […]

[WATCH NOW] ‘Celebrating OUR Light!’ with the NomoCrones. [Recorded 13 December 2025]

December 13, 2025 Jody Day 0

Watch as Jody Day, founder of Gateway Women & Gateway Elderwomen, and her #NomoCrones guests, ‘Celebrate our Light!’ With Christmas, Yule, Hanukkah, Diwali, Kwanzaa, and other December festivals of light occupying social and cultural space at this time of year, it can often lead to those of us without children, and many without partners too, feeling left out. This year, maybe it’s time to celebrate OUR light? The light of our essential worthiness as women, as human beings. The light of our courage to continue participating in a world that so often doesn’t participate in ours. The light of our […]

[WATCH NOW] World Childless Week webinar: ‘Childless, Old & Worthy!’ with the NomoCrones

September 20, 2025 Jody Day 0

A FREE WEBINAR HOSTED FOR WORLD CHILDLESS WEEK 2025. Watch all the webinars for WCW25 here. Sign up for the WCW newsletter here Sign up for Decemeber’s session – Celebrating Our Light In the English language, the only term of respect for a woman over sixty is ‘grandmother’ – all the other descriptions are insults. So it seems that, as we age as childless women, added to the already challenging judgements of pronatalism and sexism, comes ageism. However, beliefs are not like the laws of gravity; we don’t have to obey them. And learning to identify and push back against […]

[WATCH NOW] ‘Life After Menopause. Yes, it exists!’ – Fireside Wisdom with Childless Elderwomen, Sat 28 June 2025

June 1, 2025 Jody Day 0

For the last few years, menopause has been having a moment. Thank goodness. A flush of books, TV programs, magazine articles and podcasts, as well as governmental and organisational initiatives, are making secrecy around the ‘M Word’ a thing of the past. However, surprise, surprise, the menopause narrative tends to ignore the experience of women without children, with the notable exceptions of: Hagitude by Dr Sharon Blackie; Still Hot! by Kaye Adams & Vicky Allen, and Cracking The Menopause by Mariella Frostrup & Alice Smellie—all books that include interviews (or snippets) from me. I’ve also discussed it on podcasts such as The Hagitute Sessions and the Red School’s Menstruality Podcast. […]

[READ/WATCH] Mother’s Day Guest Post: ‘Holding Both’, by Carrie Hauskins

May 10, 2025 Jody Day 1

It’s the second Sunday of May in the US, the flowers are blooming, and the call to be in nature is strong. It’s also the day we honor and celebrate the mothers in our lives. But what if the day comes with grief? As an infertile woman, that’s precisely what comes: the grief of the life I never got. It’s something I thought I’d “get over.” Years later, I realized this might not be something I ever get over. With that simple acknowledgment, I allowed myself to feel the grief. This doesn’t mean it feels good. To be clear, it […]

[WATCH NOW] Gateway Women Masterclass: Navigating Mother’s Day as a Childless Woman, with Katy Seppi and Jody Day

April 28, 2025 Jody Day 0

RECORDED LIVE ON 10 MAY 2025 Katy Seppi and Jody Day talk Mother’s Day and More Mother’s Day takes place in May for most of the world, earlier in the year for the UK & Ireland. But whenever it lands for you, it’s rarely inconsequential for those of us who are childless not by choice. The day can be tricky for many intertwined reasons on top of our own thwarted motherhood, including mourning our own mothers and/or managing our challenging relationships with them; insensitive family members, colleagues and the wider culture; the exaggerated visibility of our difference on Mother’s Day […]

[WATCH NOW] GATEWAY WOMEN MASTERCLASS WEBINAR: AN AUTHOR INTERVIEW AND BOOK GIVEAWAY WITH LANA MANIKOWSKI

March 30, 2025 Jody Day 0

In this conversation, recorded on 12 April 2025, Jody Day, the founder of Gateway Women, speaks with Lana Manikowski, life coach and author of So Now What? Create a Life Your Love Without the Children You Always Dreamed Of, published in the US by LM Publishing on April 2nd, 2025, and which debuted at #1 in the ‘New Releases’ section of ‘Fertility & Infertility’ on Amazon.com. Lana shared with us all the various elements that inspired the cover design, did a short reading from her book, and we then discussed some of the questions sent in by the audience, including: […]

[WATCH NOW] ‘FRIENDSHIPS ACROSS LIFE’, A WORLD CHILDLESS WEEK SESSION OF FIRESIDE WISDOM WITH CHILDLESS ELDERWOMEN

August 26, 2024 Jody Day 0

Recorded live on Thursday 19th September for World Childless Week 2024 Issues with female friendships (particularly with those who become mothers when we do not) are such a common part of the childless experience that I termed it ‘the friendship apocalypse’ of childlessness. And although I wouldn’t wish this painful experience on anyone else, it did come as a huge relief to me when I discovered that it’s something many of us can identify with – I thought I just must be a rubbish friend! The friendship issues that get stirred up can take us into deep waters that can […]

[Father’s Day Guest Blog] ‘Time for Men to Speak Up’ by Robert Nurden

June 13, 2024 Jody Day 0

A guest blog for Father’s Day 2024 by Robert Nurden, author of I Always Wanted to Be a Dad: Men without Children I was recently interviewed by BBC Radio 5 about my book I Always Wanted To Be A Dad: Men without Children and what it was like being a childless man. It went quite well and afterwards, I posted a short message about it on Facebook. I chose three childless Facebook groups – Childless not by Choice, Childless over 50 and Ageing without Children (AWOC). I received great support – a total of 198 likes and lots of lovely […]

[WATCH NOW] Fireside Wisdom with Childless Elderwomen on ‘Courageous Conversations’ (Recorded 19 June 2024)

June 3, 2024 Jody Day 0

For the June 2024 Solstice, Jody Day, founder of Gateway Women brought together a panel of #NomoCrones (nomo=not-mother + crone is not an insult!) to explore the topic of ‘Courageous Conversations’. As all women grow up (and exist within) a patriarchal culture that valorizes female silence and compliance, this is no small task. Although some of us may have grown up in families and cultures that role-modelled and supported some freedom around speaking up for your needs, correcting misunderstandings and seeking to redress injustices, we are often encouraged by the overculture to become more compliant as move through puberty and […]

[WATCH/READ] Fireside Wisdom with Childless Elderwomen: Caring for the Caregiver (March 2024)

March 17, 2024 Jody Day 0

SCROLL TO BOTTOM FOR FULL TRANSCRIPT For the March 2024 Equinox session of ‘Fireside Wisdom with Childless Elderwomen,’ we focused on the topic of caregiving; both the care we give to others, and thinking too about the care we might need ourselves as we age without children… It’s often the case that childless women are expected to be the ‘natural’ caregivers for vulnerable family members, although our own potential care needs for the future are often hard to talk about or plan for. This is a topic I explored in some depth in my Substack essay ‘It’s not like she’s […]

[WATCH NOW] ‘The Power of Elderwomen Role Models’ – Recorded December 2023

November 2, 2023 Jody Day 0

NEXT SESSION – WEDNESDAY 20TH MARCH 2024, 8PM GMT. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER AND ALSO SUGGEST OUR TOPIC! For December 2023’s Solstice session, we gathered around the Zoom Fire to unpack ‘The Power of the Role Model’ for those of us ageing without children. Who are they? Where the heck are they? How do we find them? How do we become them? And why is all this so important?! As well as discussing our role models, I shared the results of the poll of YOUR role models (for those who chose to answer that question on the registration form). You […]

[WATCH NOW] Gateway Women Masterclass: ‘Reclaiming Your Childless Festive Season!’

October 27, 2023 Jody Day 0

To watch previous GW Masterclasses click here. To sign up to future free GW Masterclasses, click here. Christmas and the December holiday season can be some of the most challenging times of the year for those of us who are childless-not-by-choice. It can made even harder as our consumer society uses images and ideas of ‘togetherness’ and ‘happy families’ as relentless marketing tools to sell us a fantasy life that we are excluded from. From Halloween through to New Year’s Eve, there seem to be so many different days in the holiday calendar, whatever your faith (or not), and whether […]

[Watch now] ‘Challenging the Lazy Stereotypes of Childless Women in Fiction and Films’. A free World Childless Week webinar: Thursday 14 September 2023, 7pm BST

August 14, 2023 Jody Day 1

This special World Childless Week webinar, ‘Challenging the Lazy Stereotypes of Childless Women in Fiction and Film’ was filmed live on Thursday 14th September as part of the ‘Childless in the Media’ themed day of World Childless Week 2023. From fairy tales through to modern fiction, childless women are often portrayed as damaged, deranged and deviant. Whether it’s Snow White’s evil stepmother, the psychopathic puppy-killer Cruella de Vil, Glenn Close’s bunny boiler in ‘Fatal Attraction’ or the unreliable and half-cut narrator of ‘Girl on a Train’, we never seem to come out well! Unconsciously, it seems writers default to using women […]

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