Claire Martin

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.

How many television dramas or thrillers start in a similar vein?

In contrast, how often is that woman alone and childless? Does her lack of children feature in the narrative and if so, is she subject to a myriad of tired stereotypes? If her childlessness is involuntary, how often do we get to learn of the circumstances that brought her to that place? Are we ever shown how loss permeates every aspect of her life? Rarely.

Why then do these programmes choose to limit the exploration of the lives of those who are childless not through choice? On occasion we might be taken through a childless couples’ struggle with fertility but more often than not they will get their happy ending. What of those who don’t? Where is their representation? It’s a complex question which I can only begin to scratch the surface of here.

The media will encourage us to celebrate a public figure when they make a pregnancy announcement but often fail to acknowledge, much less try to understand, the profound impact of a life of childlessness. If becoming a parent can bring so much joy then why is the grief and pain of remaining childless so rarely discussed?

We see stories of celebrities who have conceived in their late 40’s, because they are supposed to give us hope, but they are the exception and not the norm. Menopause came hurtling towards me like a train with no brakes, earlier and faster than expected, so that will never be my reality nor the reality for many other women.

We are 1 in 5 yet the media continually shys away from telling our stories. Is it because they perceive them to be without hope, therefore unpalatable? Or is it because society places us in one of two camps; either happily child free or trying to conceive, failing to understand that there’s a whole world in between? I suspect it is both.

It would be disingenuous of me to claim that I view the situation completely objectively. I don’t. I view it through the lense of a woman who is childless by circumstance, or rather a series of circumstances that created the perfect childless storm, but I know where my own bias lies and try to understand the lived experience of others. Much of our current crop of politicians appear oblivious to their biases. MPs from both sides of the political divide, when discussing the cost of living crisis, usually only refer to ‘hard working families’ and Rishi Sunak frequently frames issues as being important to him because he is the father of daughters. Would these issues fail to be important to the Prime Minister if he was childless?

Conservative MP Miriam Cates wrote, in an article on her website entitled My Thoughts on Family Policy, ‘There is no legacy without reproduction’ and addressing the National Conservatism Conference in May stated “I’ve heard many people say that having children is a lifestyle choice, but having children is about as much of a lifestyle choice as eating. It’s fundamental to our survival.” It is little wonder that with politicians such as Cates, whose pro natal ideology dismisses the lived experience of people that she has been elected to represent, our reality goes unacknowledged. We have not fulfilled our perceived role therefore it doesn’t matter how our childlessness impacts us because, it seems that, we don’t matter.

Politicians and mainstream media alike often fail to distinguish between those who are happily child free and those who are childless not through choice. Women who are voluntarily childless can face criticism for not conforming to societal norms and those childless not through choice are largely ignored. If the people who run our country and control the media chose not to understand our struggles, then who will?

So is social media any different?

No. It’s complex place. A space where we can find others with shared experiences, our community, but also an emotional minefield, littered with potential landmines that will bring our grief to the surface without warning.

In 2020 during the first lockdown, across social media, there was a marked increase in hostility towards the childless. Memes being exchanged about how those without children were apparently having the time of their lives whilst parents were struggling being with their children 24/7. The phrase ‘as a mother’ permeating both social and mainstream media with disturbing regularity.

Whilst we were being openly maligned, those of us who were childless not through choice were grieving; feeling more alone than we have ever felt in our lives, more misunderstood than ever. How many of us were unintentionally excluded from group chats because 9/10 conversations were about friends’ children? How many of us then stayed silent about our own pain and loneliness because we recognised that it was a difficult time for those friends who we love dearly and didn’t want to deny them their shared reality? How many of us disappeared into the background, crying silent tears over what was never going to be? I know I did.

When you are marginalised by the media, deemed irrelevant by politicians, and have to run the gauntlet of social media, it can be hard to recognise your own worth and not feel stifled by those who seek to silence your inconvenient and uncomfortable truth. There can be no doubt that those who appear to deny our existence are the ones that need to hear us; to understand us and to represent us, so that society as a whole can see us.   

We might carry our grief silently but we are all around you. Your friends, your sisters, your cousins, your neighbours, and we matter. Our stories may not always be easy to hear or understand but they deserve to be told, to have their place in mainstream media, not just for us but so that those who find themselves following a similar path in the future don’t ever have to feel as alone as we have.