Helen Pidd, the Guardian’s north of England editor, had always wanted to be a mother. The moment she realised that her third round of IVF had failed was devastating.
“I couldn’t see beyond how sad I felt,” she tells Hannah Moore.
Since then, she’s been trying to imagine what the next part of her life might look like by speaking to people who are childfree by choice.
Pidd speaks to 80-year-old Marcia Drut-Davis, author of Confessions of a Childfree Woman, who lost her job as a teacher after speaking on television about her choice not to have children. Asked what advice she gives to childfree people, Drut-Davis recommends good financial planning and emphasises the importance of “heart connections” with younger people.
Pidd also interviews Zoë Noble and James Glazebrook, the founders of the We Are Childfree network, and Lise Scott, a nanny who does not want children of her own.
“I hope that in talking about it and being open about how painful it can be, but also offering this kind of optimistic vision, that it might touch other people who have also felt alone and give them a bit of hope that all is not lost if you can’t have children and you wanted to,” Pidd says.
Photograph: Gene Glover/The Guardian
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