One in five British women born in the 60s doesn’t have children – and the grief many of them feel has rarely been acknowledged. But now they, and men in the same position, are organising with others around the world to gain recognition and comfort
Jody Day is giving a TED talk to a room full of people against a backdrop of signposts she has chosen for the occasion: “Crazy cat woman”, “Witch”, “Hag”, “Spinster”, “Career woman”. “What comes to mind when you see those words?” she asks the audience. They shift uneasily. Gently, she answers her own question: “All of them are terms used for childless women … I’m a childless woman. And I’m here to tell you about my tribe – those one in five women without children hidden in plain sight all around you.”
Day is involuntarily childless. She remembers the moment she realised she was definitely never going to be a mother. It was February 2009 and, at 44-and-a-half, she had left a bad long-term relationship and moved into a grotty London flat. “I was standing by the window, watching the rain make dusty tracks down the glass, when the traffic in the street below seemed to go silent, as if I’d put it on ‘mute’. In that moment, I became acutely aware of myself, almost as if I were an observer of the scene from outside my body. And then it came to me: it’s over. I’m never going to have a baby.”
I withdrew from all my relationships. I saw doctors, therapists – nobody knew what the matter with me was
When you don’t have the happy ending, you need to know someone’s there with you in feeling that pain
Related: I imagined myself pregnant, felt tiny fingers in mine, I dreamed about babies | Sally-Ann Rowland
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