Berenice Howard-Smith
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.
Can I take you back in time to a land of shoulder pads, when Rick Astley was first famous and cargo pants? Computers with monitors and the dawn of the internet and Sky One. When Louise Brown, the first IVF baby, was in her twenties. How did the media tackle infertility back then? Seemingly with punch lines and magic telly dust.
There are two programmes I remember watching in the days when childlessness wasn't in my lexicon. I went back to them when I began writing this piece to remind myself how they tackled infertility.
Friends characters Monica and Chandler just decide to adopt, barely mentioning the heartache around adoption or infertility, with punchlines played for laughs. Jennifer Aniston, of course, was since hounded by the media for being childless in real life when her character was a parent.
The X-Files ran a storyline that robbed the main character, Dana Scully, of her fertility. She tried IVF, and it failed. The next week, they were back chasing more appealing plotlines. The character goes onto have two children with her partner, Fox Mulder; I assume this is due to some science-fiction super sperm twist.
More recently, Apple TV's Trying portrays an infertile couple, Nikki and Jason, attempting conception on a bus after exhausting their three rounds of IVF on the NHS (they must live in a good postcode). They successfully get through the adoption panel in one series (series writer Andy Wolton is adopted himself).
Media and news have a lot to answer for when it comes to informing society and opinion. All the men without children on Game of Thrones were portrayed as weaker.
I struggled to locate well-known, positive references in fictional popular culture where a childless person was treated with respect, empathy, and kindness by giving them space to own their narrative. They seemed to be given a magic solution that resulted in parenthood or were gradually erased from the storyline.
Gail Miller, MD reminded us that in healthcare, enquiring about parental status is seen as a way of building connections with people, a theme that Robert Nurden observes several times in his moving book 'I Always Wanted To Be A Dad: Men Without Children' which I had the honour of designing. Dr Annie Kirby references the bias and exclusion in her extraordinary novel 'The Hollow Sea.'
That pro-natal influence happens so often. Amid lockdowns I attended a business event. I sat through talks from many presenters on stage who shared that they were parents, including one pregnancy announcement, as they felt this was a common connection. It was somewhat ironic for a marketing conference with a theme of getting to know one's audience. I felt that deep-seated lurch inside my stomach, a maelstrom of despair, anger, and sadness. It felt like parenthood had invaded my home at a time when homeschooling had hit the news and was understandably hard on parents. Nobody talked about the people who had to clear space in a room that they hoped would be their child's nursery or those whose IVF had been stopped, possibly never to resume.
Media always influences us, even if we try to avoid or recognise that it does. Politics, house restoration, garden design, holidays … all the miniature of life exists online, in the press, or on television. The tide might be slowly turning as spaces realise that the childless community has value, but the bias towards us runs deep.
When I began researching the history of childless women for academic study, I encountered stories of women who could not have children being beaten with goatskins at Ancient Rome's Lupercalia festival and pilgrimages across counties to take waters and healing to restore infertility. As recently as the twentieth century, some doctors thought infertility was psychosomatic and that becoming a mother through adoption would help women to relax and aid conception (perhaps this is why 'just adopt' is often cruelly offered as a fix). Across the ages and worldwide, infertile women were seen as promiscuous and abandoned. And of men, very little, though Samuel Pepys writes about his hopes for his wife Elizabeth after 'the absence of her terms for seven weeks.' Pepys and his wife did not have children.
What are my experiences with media? My first interview was enough to silence me for a long time until I realised that was what the people commenting probably wanted me to do. I hesitate to use the term 'trolls' as they were perhaps influenced by culture and the weight of history. Miracles happen, telly told them so, and it's easy to adopt because a sitcom showed them how. Nevertheless, I was told I was 'selfish,' 'inhuman', and 'should think of all the orphans.' Had I been a parent through natural conception, I may have thought the same, I guess.
It wasn't until I created Walk In Our Shoes, a social design project (a design piece that solves a social exclusion) for a Masters degree, that I began to find my courage. I met a journalist who published my words in an independent paper. She had a bucketload of empathy, and we've remained in contact.
It's not without fallout. A former friend drew her children away from me post-publication as if I might be a bad influence or likely steal her unlikable children. Her loss, my gain. I have better friends these days.
The Times - not a paper I particularly like - interviewed me when the story on Jennifer Aniston's infertility broke. But I agreed that it was essential to have women who had the same story, as there are plenty of us failed IVF'ers out there who are hidden away who appreciate why we look pregnant during treatment. I've appeared on other podcasts, written guest blogs, and stood up on stage in several events. The bittersweet fact of the matter is that I'd have fewer words to share had it not been for childlessness.
That should be a good reason to keep writing, talking, and informing others. By joining up my story and using media to share knowledge (sometimes in spaces that I do not politically align with), it is gently informing others. I have made better friendships and alliances with parents and childfree for doing so.
The Full Stop reflects that storytelling. We don't tend to say 'childless' that much, as the stories that our guests share are often wrapped up in other themes that are compelling in their own way. Words forever connected to our guests' vocal inflection bring humanity and emotions that challenge the wider non-childless world to listen and learn.
I still have that maestro inside me; it still throws me, but I'm curious, not cross. Can it make a podcast episode? Do I need to chat with a friend who gets it? Is it worth our valuable energy, or can we cheerlead someone doing better things?
It's why World Childless Week, The Full Stop, and many other mouthpieces for us childless people matter to us and to broader society. If it changes one person's view and compels them to critique that TV show or book, then it's worth the courage.
