“It’s as if you are pressing your nose against the sweet-shop window of life, and you’re never ever going to be on the other side.” Jody Day is describing involuntary childlessness. The author and founder of Gateway Women, a global friendship, support and advocacy network for childless women, tells me about what she describes as the “friendship apocalypse” that can happen between women when one is able to have the children she dreamed of and the other doesn’t. After realising that children weren’t going to happen for her as a result of “social infertility” (which means not having children due to circumstance rather than medical issues and is the most common reason for childlessness), Day experienced profound grief. In the process, she lost friends.
“I began to find it incredibly painful to be around my friends with children. And I also realised that I had been the one doing the work to maintain friendships. And when I stopped doing that, when I stopped keeping up with their children’s birthdays, with likes on Facebook, with just making sure I was included – what happened? Crickets. It was like I had dropped off the planet. I heard from practically nobody. It was an incredibly lonely period of my life.”
