Author(s): Gillian Guthrie

Personal Development

Childless challenges many misconceptions about women without children. Forget 'selfish', 'ambitious', 'uncaring' or 'tough'. This book delves deftly beneath the childless woman's facade of top job, financial independence and oh-so-exciting lifestyle options, to find a grief that is seldom shared. It is the grief of longing for the intangible presence of a child that never was and never will be. Gillian Guthrie's book reveals the reasons women do not have children are as many and varied as the women themselves, and so are their emotional reactions. Not all are grief-stricken by their lack, but often childhood grief or extraordinary events over which they had no control have led them down the path of a childless life - and all that it implies. Childless investigates the baby boomers' baby drought through personal accounts of women influenced by feminism, contraception, the Cold War and climate change. It looks at the next generation's economic constraints, addressing and answering questions about the importance of children, why their absence grieves us and how we can overcome this strange sense of loss for something we never had - our ticket to eternity.