childless Archives - Gateway Women

[WATCH NOW] Free Gateway Women Masterclass: ‘Navigating Friendships, Old and New’. (Recorded Feb 2024)

February 3, 2024 Jody Day 0

Childlessness can be experienced as a relational wound and can ask a lot of us and our friendships – Sometimes more than they can bear. As many of our friends move into parenting, coupling and families, we can find ourselves increasingly isolated and feeling like outsiders in family-centred relationships, social spaces and workplaces. Yet childless people have much to give as friends, and we deserve relationships with others who can be authentic, empathetic and available. In this free Gateway Women Masterclass, Sarah Roberts, Judy Graham and myself explored the different types, purpose and contexts of friendships in our lives, and […]

[Audio + Transcript] ‘Why is Policy Engagement Essential for People Without Children?’ Christine Erickson, Founder of the New Legacy Institute in conversation with NLI Advisors Jody Day, Dr Robin Hadley, Therese Shechter and Nandita Bajaj [Recorded Jan 2023]

January 26, 2023 Jody Day 0

Why is Policy Engagement Essential for People Without Children? on New Legacy Radio, a Voice America Show. [Episode recorded 23 January 2023]. Featuring Christine J. Erickson, founder of New Legacy Insititute in conversation with New Legacy Institute Advisors: Jody Day (founder of Gateway Women and author of ‘Living the Life Unexpected’), Dr Robin Hadley (adademic researcher and the author of ‘How Is a Man Supposed to be a Man? Male Childlessness – a Life Course Disrupted’), Therese Shechter (founder of female-led production house Trixie Films and director of ‘My So Called Selfish Life’) and Nandita Bajaj (Lecturer on pronatalism at […]

When the title of your book becomes the same as the news… ‘Living the Life Unexpected’

March 19, 2020 Jody Day 13

Today the 2nd edition of my book, Living the Life Unexpected: How to Find Hope, Meaning and a Fulfilling Future Without Children is published and the incredible global blogtour of my book that’s been going on since March 1st comes to a close. And yet, celebrating that feels like a crass thing to do right now, in the opening stages of a global pandemic that will change all our lives forever… Even though we’re in the run-up to UK Mother’s Day this weekend, normally a very anxiety-provoking time for British childless women, my website and inbox are almost silent on the […]

#LTLU Living the Life Unexpected (2nd Edition): World Blogtour, 1-19th March 2020

March 1, 2020 Jody Day 45

I’m so proud to announce that the fully-revised and updated 2nd edition of my much-loved book, ‘Living the Life Unexpected’ is being published by Bluebird (PanMacmillan) in the UK on 19 March 2020. With fifty (I know, fifty!) prestigious endorsements inside the front and back jacket, a lovely new cover, a new subtitle, How to Find Hope, Meaning and a Fulfilling Future Without Children, and new content, (including a new introduction from me which outlines what’s new), I hope you’ll find it exciting whether you’re a returning reader or a brand new one. 25+ chances to win a personally dedicated […]

Only 88 Days Left to Your Next Childless Christmas!

September 27, 2012 Jody Day 11

A blog from 2012 There’s nothing quite like the nights drawing in as Autumn arrives to remind you that yet another childless Christmas is on its way. And if you combine it with being single, it can be particularly trying. Recently, over at The Bitter Babe (a fantastic US blog that pulls no punches as the author is anonymous), she writes of looking at her “12th holiday season alone.” Unlike the author of The Bitter Babe (tag line: Never Married. Over Forty. Slightly Bitter) I was in a 16-year relationship from my early twenties and married for 12 of them. And […]

Why don’t you just adopt?

September 17, 2012 Jody Day 16

It’s the ‘just’ that gets me every time. Sometimes I wish I had the nerve to face-palm myself and say “Damn! Why didn’t that occur to me!” The bizarre thing about this throwaway line that so many of us childless women have had tossed our way is this: If we were to say casually to the same person that we were thinking of getting a dog, quick as a flash they’d say “But who’s going to look after it in the daytime?” Yet they think adoption’s an option? In the UK, married couples where one partner can afford to stay at home […]

Creating a new life for yourself as a childless woman

August 29, 2012 Jody Day 20

Creativity is one of the words that brings out the ‘woo woo’ faster than almost anything else. It’s as if it’s the one word guaranteed to make our inner bitch jump up and say “no thank you, we don’t do that around here!” before you’ve even had a chance to open your mouth. Why is creativity so scary? I’ve come to believe that creativity is one of the roots of recovery from involuntary childlessness. However, it’s quite easy to become so comfortable with our “poor me I couldn’t have children” persona that we’re actually a bit reluctant to let go of it. I mean, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Light at the end of the tunnel

April 5, 2011 Jody Day 25

There comes a day in many a woman’s life when she wakes up and realises that things haven’t really gone exactly to plan… Where is my husband? My family? she says to herself. What was I thinking: being with him not being with him focusing on my career neglecting my career partying staying home travelling round the world not being all that bothered expecting it all to just somehow happen, organically? (delete as appropriate and tick all that apply). Shit. I’d better get: a wiggle on lose some weight go out more stay in more get married get divorced get […]