World Childless Week is a time of focus for those who are childless not by choice. People who experience childlessness often face distressing comments, triggers, disenfranchised grief, and even discrimination, through pro-natal workplace cultures. Such practices are often so implicit they go unrecognised, and childless employees can feel isolated and powerless to create change.
As a training consultant, my work is primarily with organisations,helping them to better support childless employees, and those experiencing related reproductive issues - including pregnancy loss and infertility. The work builds structures to support affected employees through research, training, policy writing and policy reviewing.
Alas, not all organisations are forward-thinking, or might not even be aware of the issues, and so often affected employees must take the first step in their workplaces to raise awareness of childlessness, including its significant impact and workplace practices which exacerbate and intensify the experience. Positively, there are many things that you can do.
This article hopes to provide assistance to those struggling with balancing the grief of childlessness whilst working in, what is often, an uninformed, unsupportive, and even, hostile, environment to those who are involuntarily childless. Advice on how to approach your organisation about the issues you face at work, who you can speak to, changes you could suggest to them, and what to do if you receive a negative response is included.
Creating change
In an ideal world, childlessness would already be a recognised and widely supported issue by all workplaces, but alas it is not.With this in mind, I am aware that advising employees undoubtedly places onus on individuals, as opposed to employers. I am also mindful that challenging from this perspective is difficult to bring about change in light of the hard-wired nature of pro-natal workplaces, and indeed wider cultures.
Creating change in this area can feel like an overwhelming and exhausting task, however, I include ideas which you can consider, plan for and complete in stages. Some allow opportunities for peer and wider support; some can be done alone, and others require formal avenues.
The initial step is a tough one. So, where to begin…?
It depends on whether or not you feel comfortable and ready to expose your own experience. Feelings of vulnerability are not uncommon,and opening up the wound in a professional, and often unaware, environment is difficult. It could of course leave you open to insensitive comments and reactions (although you are likely used to those already).
However, opening up and expressing your lived experiences and feelings can be the start of a positive change which leads to you feeling more integrated within work and also make the experience of others in a similar situation better.
Irrespective of whether you disclose or not, the positive news is that you always have options for creating change.
Who should you turn to?
Line managers
If you feel comfortable to share your experience, your first port of call (depending on your relationship) is usually your line manager. It is daunting starting up the initial conversation, and so it is advisable to formally schedule some time with them to underline the importance of the issue. It could also be easier to write as the subject is close to your heart, and so an email could be an effective way to start the conversation.
If approaching with an email, use a tone which you usually would, and say that you would like to schedule a meeting to discuss an issue related to equality, diversity and inclusion. This way you have broken down some of the taboo already, and good managers take matters of equality seriously.
The professional role of your line manager is to support you, and so you should be able to discuss unfair workplace practices, and how these are affecting you. Allow yourself time to think about your examples (I provide a list below which you could use). Write them down prior to the meeting if you can, this will really highlight the impact it has on you, and likely others. Furthermore, you can talk about how childlessness affects you if you feel comfortable to. It is a good idea to ask for a follow-up meeting to talk about the matter again, and any progress/challenges.
If you feel you cannot speak to your line manager, or feel as though your line manager is not providing adequate support, your HR team should be a sympathetic and supportive function and your next port of call.
Human Resources
Even if you do feel comfortable speaking to your line manager, I also advise speaking to HR in the second instance - as HR are able to make wider changes. Again, I recommend scheduling a formal appointment by email, stating that it is to discuss an equality, diversity and inclusion issue.
My business partner is a senior HR manager and often reminds me that to help HR to ‘get on board’ with the importance of an issue - show them the stats.
Visual and digestible statistics on the prevalence of the issue of childlessness is a good starting point (i.e., that one in five women over 45 do not have children). It is also a good idea to discuss how childlessness is increasing. It is key to note that statistics for men are difficult to locate due to the lack of research in this area. However, it is estimated that male childlessness is even more common. To support you in providing data and research, I would look to the work of Dr Robin Hadley and Jody Day, who provide excellent resources on prevalence, and you can also obtain graphs/statistics from ONS or news articles.
As with line managers, it is important to show the impact of childlessness, and indeed the implications of pro-natal practices, on affected employees. You can show how workplaces who ignore the issue will likely witness higher rates of absenteeism, reduced productivity, and crucially, will lose talent and observe increased turnovers.
Prior to meeting, I recommend that you list changes with potential solutions you want to see at work, and ask for a date when you can meet again to discuss the progress.
Examples of changes:
Reviewing flexible working policies and practices to ensure that non-parents are given equal opportunities to parents to work flexibly. Work-life balance is important for all employees and must not be based on parenthood status.
Revising rotas to ensure that evening/weekend shifts are not forced upon non-parents.
Implement organisation-wide policies and guidance on pro-natal triggers, for example protocol for managing pregnancy announcements, bringing babies into work (in-person and virtually), baby showers etc.
Ensure that annual leave is granted fairly and that certain time periods are not prioritised solely for parents.
Similarly, if meetings are usually scheduled around school hours for parents, non-parents should also be entitled to the same courtesy for their needs.
Challenge assumptions that ‘family-friendly’ means ‘female-friendly’.
Fair distribution of workloads - childless employees commonly take on additional tasks because it is assumed that they have more free time.
Signpost your HR manager to an external training service, for example, MIST Workshops, to ensure that all managers and colleagues are made aware of childlessness and pro-natal practices.
Eradicate parental privileges at work, e.g., managers being more forgiving to parents for lateness, parents being allowed extensions more frequently etc.
Stereotypes should be challenged, for example, if you have children you are more empathetic etc.
If the organisation permits parents to take leave (in additional to their annual leave entitlement) for their child’s first day of school, Christmas play etc., non-parents should also be granted equivalent leave.
What if you don’t receive the right response?
Insensitive responses regarding childlessness are unfortunately all too common. They can be extremely triggering and can make you feel like you are back to square one (if not square minus one). Indeed, I have met countless childless individuals who have sought support from their managers and HR, and they have been told:“Conversations about children cannot be stopped”, “Don’t worry, your time will come”, and one particular shocker - “You’re making everyone in the office feel uncomfortable by crying all the time”.
OK, so where can you go from here?
Ask to speak to another senior manager or another member of HR.
Ask to meet with the HR team, take a representative (a personal one or from your Union if you are a member).
Share exemplars of good practice e.g., The University of Bristol’s Childless Staff Network.
Share the website for external support with HR (e.g., MIST Workshops). You could encourage them to ask for externally conducted research in the organisation to observe the extent of the issue.
Encourage management and HR training on the topic (e.g., MIST Workshops).
Other solutions:
You could encourage your organisation to recognise World Childless Week, and other related awareness raising events, such as Baby Loss Awareness Week and National Fertility Awareness Week. A relatively quick and simple way to do this is to ask HR if these important events can be included within staff newsletters, on staff pages, on website banners etc. Formal recognition of such events can encourage conversations, challenging the taboo, and in turn, creating a more open culture. During these events you could encourage daily themes and ask HR to distribute case studies for awareness raising (i.e., a thought piece).
Organise charity events to raise awareness of childlessness and related issues, and/or ask for relevant charities to be selected when your workplace runs their own events. For example, Gateway Women, World Childless Week and The Full Stop Podcast (more on these invaluable platforms later!), pregnancy loss charities (such as Sands, The Miscarriage Association and Petals), and fertility charities (Fertility Network UK, The Fertility Foundation UK etc.).
Set up a workplace support group. While it can be daunting to put yourself ‘out there’ as a childless person, support groups can provide a safe space for peer support. These support groups can be informal or formal, and they could be hosted online and in-person for accessibility. If you want to remain anonymous as the organiser, you could ask HR to circulate the invitation on your behalf. The Universityof Bristol have set up a Childless Staff Network, and they are a growing group of people experiencing similar issues at work. As a group, they have challenged the disparities between parents and non-parents at work, and provide a platform to speak openly.
Sometimes workplaces require research before they can see a problem. MIST Workshops provide this service, predominantly through surveys and interviews. An outsourced company are more likely to obtain the ‘true picture’ and can present the findings to HR and managers on problematic practice for childless staff. We recently worked with a large university to conduct similar research, producing a report to showcase the current issues with statistics, graphs and quotations. It forced the organisation to see a real need for urgent change, and it also informed the training and policy implementation.
Workplaces often like to acknowledge new topics and be the first to implement new practices and policies. Sometimes it is necessary to frame addressing childlessness in this way. For example, Transgender policies and policies on menopause are finally gaining traction in workplaces. These could be appropriate examples to use when trying to get HR (and managers) on board, especially considering that childless employees make up 20-30% of the workforce, in comparison to LGBTQIA+ employees who make up 10% of the population. Further, the topics link in that LGBTQIA+ individuals are often affected by childlessness, and menopause is recognised to be a particularly triggering time for those who are childless.
If you have not yet engaged with counselling and are experiencing grief and/or poor mental health from your experiences – ask your line manager or HR what is available through your work. Childlessness is a legitimate grief. You could also ask to be put in touch with Occupational Health.
Consider sharing your story with trusted colleagues. It may help to explain what you find triggering at work and how your journey has affected you. Peer support can be invaluable.
You could also practise responses to receiving insensitive, distressing and/or unsupportive reactions. In doing so, you could feel more mentally prepared to face them when they catch you off guard.
Join wider communities to connect with similar minded people, and to seek support. For women, I highly recommend joining Lighthouse Women (previously Gateway Women) set up by Jody Day who is a pioneering voice in this field. I would also recommend reading her book ‘Living the Life Unexpected’ and watching her TedTalks. The ‘Clan of Brothers’ is a closed Facebook group, providing support for childless men. Listen to relevant podcasts, such as The Full Stop Podcast. Read the ground-breaking work by Dr Robin Hadley on male childlessness and Professor Gayle Letherby’s revolutionary work on female childlessness. Jessica Hepburn’s The Pursuit of Motherhood book, and her Fertility Fest arts festival are also invaluable sources of information and support.
Katy Schnitzler