The article came out on Saturday, both online and in the
Saturday newspaper’s magazine, with photos and, gulp, a video of me speaking in the
online version. So far I’ve avoided looking at the comments, and suspect that is the reason why I feel so surprisingly relaxed about it.
I loved the cover of the magazine, the words they chose (Childless Threat Taboo Freedom Failure Selfish Feminist Invisible Shame Barren Isolation Judgement) and
the question asked. Why are women without children still stigmatised by society?
The title of the article too, was The Invisible Tribe,
although with articles like these, and with the publicity many of the No Kidding
bloggers and websites (Jody Day’s Gateway Women was specifically
mentioned in the article) are getting (it helps to have a No Kidding Prime Minister here), I hope we are becoming more visible. And most
importantly, more accepted.
Finally, although the article was pitched to me to be about
being childless at Christmas, I think that it grew from that, and in fact turned into something
much broader and rather good, but didn't deal with the difficulties childless women/men/couples might face at Christmas. In my interview, I told the reporter that I had decided to ignore all the
“Christmas is about children” hoopla, and that I had, over the years, reclaimed
Christmas to be mine, but unfortunately, this encouragement to women without
children that Christmas can indeed be for them didn’t make the final edit. So I’ve noted that again, and have linked to a more detailed, seven-year-old (to the day) Christmas/holiday post here, to remind us all to think about how we can make the holidays work for us.
