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 be treacherous to navigate. Those who become parents may envy us our ‘freedom’, whilst we may envy their experience of parenthood and the socially acceptable status that goes along with it. And, as their children grow up and we pass through the menopause transition, things may begin to change again; sometimes we get our friends back for a while only to lose them once more to doting grandparenthood, whilst the emotional maturity that we may have developed from integrating the loss of parenthood and living life outside socially accepted norms, changes us too.
But our need for friendship across the life course remains and, as we move into ageing without children, takes on new importance.
As part of 2024’s World Childless Week, the NomoCrones (nomo=not mother + crone is not an insult!) came together around the Zoom fire for the ‘Childless Friend or Foe‘ themed day on Thursday 19th September to discuss ‘Friendships Across Life’.
With panellists from their mid-fifties to their mid-seventies, we unpacked some of the things that can happen to our friendships (old and new) over the life course as childless women, and how we can best navigate those changes, and learn how to keep making new friends too.
The webinar was part of World Childless Week 2024 – I’ve been a World Childless Week Ambassador since it started in 2017 and on this call, we also have two World Childless Week Champions – Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos (2023/2024) and Patricia Faulks (2024/25). To watch the many other webinars that were part of World Childless Week, check out the WCW YouTube Channel here. And to watch previous Fireside Wisdom sessions, click here.
Some recommended resources:
- To make new childless friends, join the Childless Collective online community (formerly the Gateway Women online community) and take part in its many online and in-person activities and gatherings around the world. (And if there isn’t a local gathering near you, it can support you as you create one.)
- To brush up your friendship skills and habits, Jody read ‘Platonic: How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make—and Keep—Friends‘ by Dr. Mariso G. Franco. You can watch a webinar with Marisa and Katy Seppi of the Childless Collective here.
- To join a program to develop your friendship skills, check out ‘The Friendship Lab‘. Created by Sheridan Voysey, a childless author and broadcaster, it’s an online and in-person program that takes a deep dive into your friendships beliefs and habits, and also offers support and encouragement as you take the learnings out into your world. Click here to sign up for more info.
- To read Jody’s essay for World Childless Week ‘The Friendship Apocalypse’ click here, and also a longer version, with hundreds of moving comments here on her Gateway Elderwomen Substack.
- To read the many amazing submissions on ‘Friendships’ sent in by childless people for the ‘Friendship: Friend or Foe’ themed day for 2024’s World Childless Week click here.
Hosted by Jody Day, founder of Gateway Women and her guests:
Find out more about Jody’s Gateway Elderwomen project here. Read Jody’s essays on her ‘Gateway Elderwomen’ Substack, free here. Join Jody’s ‘Childless Elderwomen’ subgroup (hosted by the Childless Collective) here. Join the Gateway Women newsletter so you don’t miss the next Fireside Wisdom call here. Join the World Childless Week newsletter here
