World Childless Week Sep 14th-20th

From the website: 
"World Childless Week aims to raise awareness of the childless not by choice (cnbc) community. To help the community to find support groups that understand their grief and can help them move forwards to acceptance. It's for anyone who is childless despite their longing to be a parent because they have never been pregnant (for any reason), not carried full term or have suffered the sadness of a baby born sleeping. All our Champions and founder Steph, represent our audience. 

We are here for you through the year, we get louder in September"

Starting Monday is "World Childless Week" and I recommend anyone interested to click on the link here and go explore the community. There will be daily different topics and posts on the subject, and daily webinars.

Overall, the numbers of people who are childless might surprise you - depending on where you are in your life and who you are friends with. At the moment, on average 1 in 5 women reach midlife (45 years old) without any children. In Germany it's as much as 1 in 3. There's a choice of words when it comes to talking about "being without children" and that I like to bring up since it gives a little more nuance to the concept.

• Some are childless by choice (childfree) - implying that it is voluntary and by choice
• Some are childless by infertility - tried to have children but didn't succeed either on their own with a partner or with IVF/fertility treatment
• Some are childless by circumstance - the group that is considered to be the biggest one, and for which there is no "explanation" or rather a quite long list of potential options ranging from "never met someone with whom to have children" to "being with someone who didn't want children and then break off that relationship and then being too old" or other options. If you are interested, there is a list "50 ways not to be a Mother" in the book "Living the life unexpected" by Jody Day found here

For many of us who aren't in the childless by choice category I would say that there are a lot of times when it feels like you are the one who needs to put on a brave face and a smile - and often ignore all the "oh so private commentary regarding my choice or not" that comes along after the question; "do you have children?" has been uttered. 

(I usually say "No, unfortunately not" as I'm tired of hearing "oh, you decided to go have a career instead" or other rationalizations that have been thrown in my face too many times.)

Personally, I would say that some of the comments that I find the most demeaning have to do with parents stating - and often times this happens in work settings, leadership classes or other discussion groups - that "once you have children you realize how important it is to care for others" or "once you have children you become a an adult since you have to take care of someone else" and other short phrases that are thrown around to stated that "they didn't become an adult until they became a parent - however that might not be the universal truth"....

Anyway, I am not going into the Four Yorkshiremen territory (Monty Python) but if something, I would like all you parents and couples who haven't started trying for a baby yet - please consider that not everything in life plays out as one would've wished. And that there might not be a "simple explanation". Or even an explanation at all. That "just have a baby" might not be as straight forward as "boy meets girl, boy and girl have sex, girl gets pregnant, boy and girl have a healthy baby".

It's more talked about today, and maybe even within some sports communities like NHL where a few hockey players the last couple of years have been very honest and vocal about their miscarriages and baby tragedies. If nothing else, the sheer number of how common it is for a detected pregnancy to not proceed and reach week 22 or even later (miscarriage/still birth), is one of the things I wish I would've known earlier and would have been discussed in sex ed in high school. 

Or that it isn't a "simple as something wrong with the woman leading to issues" or other old stories from historic times where fertility is very much linked with male success and female definition of being a real woman = motherhood. That dinner party with my close women friends where it turned out that 75% had had one miscarriage....

As always, it's easy to see the world through one's own lens. All we can do is hope that a lot of us remember that everyone is embarked on a different journey through life, and that with humbleness, friendship and caring for others - we can find friends we didn't knew we had or learn new views from. And communities that support us through different times and obstacles that we might not have thought we would encounter when we started out life journey.

Be kind to each other.

(my post from last year can be found here)