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As the country, nay the world<\/em>, descends into maternity mania once again at the arrival of yet another blue-blooded baby, our newspapers and newsfeeds awash with the details as if the arrival of a child was something unusual in a world already buckling under the strain of 7 billion humans, spare a thought for a moment for the women for whom this public display of pronatalism causes deep dread rather than excitement: those childless-not-by-choice.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the question that every involuntarily childless woman dreads, and it almost always comes from another woman: \u201cSo, how many children do you have?\u201d Rarely does the interrogator even notice the subtle shift in the demeanour of the object of her questions: the sudden peak in heart rate, the deep breath as she reaches down into the depths of her soul and steels herself to deliver the most emotionally-charged of revelations in as casual a manner as she can muster: \u201cOh, none, actually.\u201d<\/p>\n

The childless woman silently pleads with the other female to read the warning message in her eyes to leave it there, change the subject. This rarely happens. \u201cOh, you didn\u2019t want any? I can\u2019t say I blame you (grabbing one of her wayward offspring by the arm and gently strapping them into the buggy), it\u2019s such<\/em> hard work. You can borrow one of mine if you like.\u201d And off she goes, buffered by her burgeoning brood, completely oblivious to the small fragment of the other woman\u2019s heart that she has inadvertently chipped away and crushed to bits under the retreating buggy\u2019s wheels.<\/p>\n

Being an infertile woman myself, scarred by my failed quest to become a mother, I had felt like an inconvenience to society; an insignificant other. So when I came across Denise Felkin\u2019s photographic project entitled Mum\u2019s Not The Word, a collection of 50 images representing the 20% of women in the UK who are childless or childfree, I was eager to take part – despite the fact that to do so would require me to pose\u00a0naked in the foetal position, exposing my body as well as my soul. I was undeterred by this requirement; finally, my voice would be heard. As founder of The Non-Mum Network<\/strong><\/a>, I enlisted other women from my group to take part. They were willing to do so for similar reasons to my own: whether reluctantly childless, or childfree by choice, they felt their stories deserved to be told; that their existence as a woman without children is every bit as valid as that of someone who has reproduced.<\/p>\n

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