Beyond the Non-Mom Binary with Jody Day

Women Without Kids

Gateway Women founder Jody Day on the false divide that separates 'childless' women who can't have kids, from 'childfree' women who don't want to be mothers. In the episode we discuss:

-The roots of the false binary that divides the ones who “can’t have kids” and the ones who “don’t want kids”

-The role of pronatalism in this divide, which is the ideology that says that parents are more important than non-parents

-The concept of being “childless by circumstance” – versus being childless by choice or due to infertility

-How Jody came up with the word “NoMo” (from not-mother) to describe any and all women without kids

-The “disenfranchised grief” of childlessness – and grief, like love, being a process of identity transformation

-The role of empathy and consciousness raising in overcoming judgement, stigma, and shame

-How women without kids from across the spectrum of non-motherhood can come together and support each other

-The primal roots of our fear and loathing of women without kids, and how this plays out in society today

-Why the notion that we need more new people to support the aging population is an example of ageism – and why the solution lies in changes to current economic policies

-Why the “othering” of women without kids is linked to all other forms of prejudice under white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy

-Jody’s “Conscious Childless Elderwoman”project

Learn more about Gateway Women HERE and follow Jody on Instagram @gatewaywomen.

Women Without Kids: The Revolutionary Rise of an Unsung Sisterhood is out March 2023. Pre-order your copy HERE.