If you watch TV dramas or movies, read fiction, follow celebrity gossip, read women’s magazines, or pay attention to how products aimed at women are marketed, you wouldn’t think there was a woman alive who wasn’t dating, trying to conceive, pregnant, married, a mother or a grandmother!

Dear Media, We humans need to see ourselves reflected in other people. It’s how we build a sense of belonging.

Childlessness in the media. Where to start?! Well, I love a glossy magazine, so I’ll start there.

“There's something Aunty Brandy wants more than anything... but she can't have it, and there's not really anything anyone can do.” I cried.

Up until a few years ago, most films, most books, most TV showed a childless person as emotionally damaged, as envious, as searching for something to make up for being childless, as leading a poor and lonely life.

I used to love Rom-Coms. Now I can only watch them alone when I'm ready for a good cry and well enough to not seep into a depressive episode. 

Hollywood - have you heard? There’s a new leading lady on the scene! ‘Spoiler alert’, she’s living a fulfilling, meaningful life - and she’s childless.

In the 1980s, when I was just starting to make my way in the world, there was a real freedom for young women. Our lives did not have to be defined by our biology.

I’m so happy that this is one of the World Childless Week themes for 2023. It’s a topic that I have often felt is extremely under-represented or worse yet, completely incorrectly depicted.

‘In the absence of something that never was’ is an ongoing project investigating the spiritual and philosophical aspects of what it is to be a woman who is not a mother and the experience of an absence around something imagined.

A woman stands at her kitchen island, deep in thought. Her partner walks in and places his arms comfortingly around her waist. Soon after, three children enter the room.

This piece makes the point that the way the media portray childless individuals matters beyond the screen, to the way we live our lives.

At this time of year it can be hard to escape media articles about the “Empty Nest” that are designed to help prepare parents for the impact of their teenagers heading off to university or elsewhere to start a new stage in their life after leaving school.

Walking down the supermarket aisle my eye caught a cover line on a well-known magazine – “3 women share their emotional stories of their infertility journeys”.

Watching television when you're childless, not by choice, might seem like a great idea. Much like reading, it's a pastime where we can forget about the world. Yes? No, not always.

I wanted to write because I was tired of coming across pregnancy tropes in nearly every book I read.