Ignored, forgotten or dismissed: Why can’t we shake the stigma around childless women?

There is an ever-growing number of women in this country for whom having a family was just not to be. A new radio documentary highlights the subject that still very much feels like a taboo, writes Jennifer Stevens

There is a topic that is rarely discussed, often seen as taboo, and yet experienced by one in five women in Ireland.

Being childless is the reality for many women in this country, and the figure is expected to reach one in four in the coming years, but it is something still not spoken about, and brushed over by many.

In a new documentary airing on Newstalk tonight, broadcaster Hilary Fennell examines childlessness in Ireland and speaks to six women about their experiences.

Just 10% of childless women in Ireland are so by choice, Hilary’s documentary focuses on the other 90%, the women that often feel ignored by society, forgotten, or dismissed as ‘career women’.

When Jody Day first wrote about her experience of childlessness, using her real name and photograph seemed like a radical thing to do. She went on to found Gateway Women, the global friendship, support, and advocacy network for childless women, that now has a social reach of around two million.

Jody, who lives in Clonakilty, spent about 15 years trying to conceive, and her marriage eventually broke down under the strain. A former tech PR, she retained as a psychotherapist and wrote Living the Life Unexpected: How to Find Hope, Meaning and a Fulfilling Future Without Children about her experience.

Jody says that there’s still a lot of shame around childlessness, which is why some women are reluctant to speak about it.

“I’m afraid it’s coming from society, and then we internalise it,” she says. “Shame is the most powerful tool of social control. The shame is deep in our evolutionary past. I believe it comes from the very earliest days of our species when we lived in tribes. The only way that a tribe could be successful and could grow would be by women having children.

“A very fertile woman that was able to survive birth, and do it again, was worshipped and revered. The woman who couldn’t have children was shamed, and she was exiled. This is where the archetype of the witch begins, which really connects with childless women.

“All evil women or deviant women, by the way, in fairy stories or in popular culture, are without children. Think about it — the evil witch in Snow White, Hansel and Gretel — all of them are childless women.

Jody Day is the founder of Gateway Women

“The shame is even harder for women who are also single and childless, because then there is the sexist patriarchal shame that says: ‘You weren’t chosen to be someone’s mother’. Next to infertility, which is only 10%, I’d say that not having a willing or suitable partner during your fertile years is probably the second biggest reason why women who wanted to be mothers don’t get to become mothers.”

Roisin, who is in her 40s and from Belfast, understands the silence around childlessness. She struggled with the decision to appear in the documentary because she hadn’t told a lot of people in her life about the extent of her grief around not having a family.

“I realised after I spoke to Hillary how much I haven’t actually talked about my journey with childlessness with most of my friends. They knew that there were issues, but I really didn’t talk very openly. Since talking with Hillary, I have started to talk a bit more openly with my friends.”

Roisin says that the world can be very exclusionary for women without children.

“It has been lonely, especially in the workplace. Colleagues are having babies and raising babies, and you’re very excluded from an awful lot of the social norms of the workplace. Sitting in offices, you listen to conversations about having babies, getting pregnant, labour, breastfeeding, nappy changes, going to schools, toddler stuff, everything. So much of our social conversation is around raising children, which is right in its own way, I don’t want to take that away, but you’re very excluded from that whole way of life.

You get comments like: ‘Oh sure. You’re a career woman’. I know they don’t mean anything by it, but you want to say: ‘Yes, I’ve a career, but I’m trying to be a mummy too’.

Amanda, who lives near Jody in West Cork and works in the pharmaceutical industry, hopes the documentary will make people kinder. Her friends and family were great, but she says it’s not an experience shared by everyone.

“I was lucky. But I hear from a lot of people about how they feel left out. They go out for dinner with old friends, and all they speak about is their children. They are literally speaking across the person sitting there who they know wanted children and couldn’t have them, it’s so common. Frankly, my message now would be to get different friends. If somebody was sitting there talking about fishing all night, you’d be pretty bored if you’re not into it.”

Jody, Amanda, and Roisin all speak to me about the problems around IVF. It’s often seen as a safety net and something that can be relied upon whether you have a partner or not, but the truth about assisted reproduction is that the success rates are quite low, about 30%, and that isn’t discussed.

“We only ever hear about successful IVF but you don’t hear about the times that it doesn’t work. People always think they have this in their back pocket because the failures are not spoken about. I know people who’ve had 15 rounds of IVF and still have no baby,” says Amanda.

Jody speaks about ‘bingo moments’ — those times when people find out that a woman is childless so they offer a ‘solution’. It could be supplements, diet, adoption, IVF, or going it alone...

In fact, not having a baby alone is a new way to shame women.

“Not all women can afford to go and try and have a baby on their own. It’s a huge thing to do to bring up a child on your own and earn a living to support that child. A lot of women don’t feel financially or sometimes even morally that they should do it.

“There’s like: ‘Shame on you for not doing it on your own, so shame on you for being childless, shame on you for not adopting, shame on you for not having one on your own’.”

‘We only ever hear about successful IVF,’ Amanda Tobin says, ‘but you don’t hear about the times that it doesn’t work.’

The one thing all three agree on is the grief you feel when your dreams of being a mother don’t come true. Amanda and Jody both call it disenfranchised grief — desperately missing something that you didn’t get to have and coming to terms with a life that looks different to the one you imagined.

Amanda says that it hits hard when you realise that your time to have a child may be up: “There’s a moment when you’re 43 or 44 where it really hits you that this is now not going to happen. When you realise that, your whole world falls apart, because you have to have a whole new identity. Who am I going to be now? I think nobody gets that, and people find it very hard to be there for you at that point. People say really stupid things like: ‘At least you get to lie in’. I think we need to talk more about childlessness so that society realises what it’s like.

“No woman forgets to have children; if they want them, no matter how big a career they have. They don’t forget it.”

Roisin says you are reminded of that grief every day: “I find childlessness really difficult at holiday times. I have lots of friends, an absolute abundance of them, but they’re all with their families over Christmas and Easter, and during summer holidays. It’s a grief that doesn’t really go away, and you’re also looking into your older age with the prospect of no children, and that brings worries around it as well. I think that you just become used to living with the grief and that, for me, anyway, it never goes away.”

Jody says it’s time we look at women who are without children differently. If we’re all looking for a village to help raise our families, we’re excluding a large cohort of potential helpers: “I think we need to really look at what’s going on in our societies, because if it takes a village to raise a child, we are that village. We are all around families and children. We are doctors and teachers and gynaecologists. We are aunts, sisters, and daughters. We’re everywhere, and we would love to be more included in the life of families and in the life of communities.”

“Ireland has this mixture of an extraordinary tradition of community and the younger generation are some of the most progressive and radical in Europe. I think if a society has got the energy to make those changes, I think it could be Ireland.”

• Childless is on Newstalk at 8pm on Saturday, January 29