jody [00:00:00]:

This program is brought to you by Pussy Magnets.

Freya Graf [00:00:10]:

Welcome. Welcome, my lovely lumps, or should I say lovely labs? I'm so thrilled to have you here in the Labia Lounge. We're gonna yarn about all things sexuality, womanhood, relationships, intimacy, holistic health, and everything in between. Your legs. Oh, can't help myself. Anyway, we're gonna have Vagelords of real chats with real people about real shit. So buckle up. You're about to receive the sex ed that you never had and and have a bloody good laugh while you're at it.

Freya Graf [00:00:39]:

Before we dive in, I'd like to respectfully acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I'm recording this, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation. It's an absolute privilege to be living and creating dope podcast content in Naam, and I pay respect to their elders past, present, and emerging. Now if you're all ready, let's flap and do this. Oh my god. Is there such thing as too many vagina jokes in the 1 intro? Whatever. It's my podcast. I'm leaving it in. Access my new mini course for free before I start charging for it in future.

Freya Graf [00:01:32]:

It's for people with vulvas and it's quick to complete. It's all about demystifying the female body and pleasure anatomy and getting some basic fundamentals to understand your body better. It's called Pussy Pleasure Secrets, Your Roadmap to Bedroom Bliss. You can grab it on the freebies page of my website or in the show notes. It's a great little free resource to kind of dip your toe in or act as a bit of a taster for my work. So if you've ever been curious about this sort of thing and you just don't know where to start or you want a really quick, easy, accessible, non threatening way to get the ball rolling and start working on this stuff, this is a great place to start. Hey, my labial legends! Welcome back to the lounge. Today, I've got an incredible woman on to talk about involuntary childlessness, and we'll probably go into aging without children of your own as well as that's a topic that's close to this particular guest's heart.

Freya Graf [00:02:32]:

So it's a topic that's obviously laden with a lot of misunderstanding, a lot of judgment, and grief. So I've got the wonderful Jodie Day, the English Irish founder of Gateway Women, on to chat with me today. And Gateway Women is the global support and advocacy network for childless women founded in 2, 011. Many have called Jodie the founder of the childless movement, and as well as a prolific output of blogs and articles over the years, She's also the author of the go to book on the topic, Living the Life Unexpected, How to Find Hope, Meaning, and and a Fulfilling Future Without Children. Jodie has been a World Childless Week ambassador since its inception in 2017 and was chosen as 1 of the BBC's 100 Women in 2013 and as a UK Digital Woman of the Year in 2021. God, you've been busy. She's a global thought leader on female involuntary childlessness. She's also a psychotherapist, a TEDx speaker, a founding and former board member at the UK charity, aging without children, and a former fellow in social innovation at Cambridge Judge Business School.

Freya Graf [00:03:52]:

After a lifetime in London, she now lives by the sea in West Cork, rural Ireland, where she is completing a novel featuring a childless heroine, of course, and nurturing her emerging gateway elder woman project, which we will chat about. She's managed by a small white terrier called Halfnip.

jody [00:04:11]:

So adorable.

Freya Graf [00:04:13]:

Yeah. She is adorable. Oh, I love that. Beautiful. Well, it's it's it was so nice reading out this intro, just seeing your beaming face smiling at me through the screen. Welcome.

jody [00:04:27]:

Thank you. It's lovely to be here.

Freya Graf [00:04:29]:

So I did a bit of a deep dive, through all of your sort of blog posts and some writings that I could find, and, I think I discovered your work through Ruby Warrington, who I had on the podcast. We did an episode called No Kids, No Regrets.

jody [00:04:46]:

Great episode.

Freya Graf [00:04:48]:

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And I just I just thought I've got a chat with this woman. So I suppose to kind of lay the foundation and just set the scene a little bit, if you would be so generous and vulnerable as to share a bit about your story and why this is now something that you're really passionate about because I know that you've had to move through a lot of very deep grief and find acceptance in something that you initially probably felt like was 1 of the worst things that could befall you, you know, being involuntarily childless. So, yeah, I'd love to hear you speak on that.

jody [00:05:24]:

Oh, thank you. Well, thanks for the invitation and that thought was a bit embarrassing sitting through having one's bio read out. You did it I I guess when I was, when I was growing up, I, I actually didn't think I wanted children, as a, as a young girl and young woman, I grew up in a very unhappy home with a very unhappy mother who'd had me, as it was called in the sixties, out of wedlock. So my mum was, 18 when I was born and, my parents, they were both teenagers and, you know, they split up before I was born. So as a kind of Catholic teenager in London, in the sixties, this was still really, really shocking. So, so I was born in the Catholic home for fallen women, which,

Freya Graf [00:06:15]:

you know, and, That's what it was called? Yes. Wow. It was

jody [00:06:20]:

a hugely shameful thing to be, to be, you know, to be pregnant and unmarried at that time. And then when my mum changed her mind about, giving me up for adoption, just after I was born, the nuns threw her out on the street with nowhere to go because she'd been sort of, you know, disowned by her own family. So my mum had a really tough time and she was very brave and, but, you know, I, I, she didn't have any support and then she got married when I was 3 to a really totally unsuitable man. She was sort of forced into that marriage by her family and by his family and this man wasn't my father, to create a respectable home, and that's in air quotes for radio, for me. So my mum grew up, you know, in a sort of almost in a forced marriage to a very unpleasant and violent man who, abused and dominated us. So to me, the idea that family life was something you would kind of aspire to was kind of not there at all. And then, you know, I get to, III was really bright. I worked really hard at school, and certainly as I kind of came to adolescence, you know, the, the message we got from school was that, that children ruined your life, you know, and that was the message I got at home as well.

jody [00:07:43]:

It's like, whatever you do don't get pregnant, the children will ruin your life. And it's, you know, so I kind of came to young adulthood very much thinking that all of the other things other than motherhood were, were what I wanted in my life. And, you know, that I just wanted to get out of home and sort of start my life and be independent. So that was kind of my launch pad for life. And so I actually did have a pregnancy when I was 20 accidentally and I was totally terrified because I was terrified that I would mother as I had been mothered. And I am the unmothered daughter of an unmothered daughter, you know? So there's a long line of trauma in my family. And it was like I freaked out. And even though I was with a lovely guy at the time who was totally open to having the baby, I didn't want that and so I had an abortion.

jody [00:08:40]:

And then when I, which was, you know, pretty traumatic because even though I, you know, I wanted to do it, I was really scared. And my mum came with, and my mum came with me to the hospital, you know, and at no point did she say to me, you know, the things that now we always hear, you know, having you is the most meaningful thing I've ever done in my life. It was like, you go girl, you have the abortion. So, so when I met later, a few years later, met the man who would become my first husband, you know, and we were getting serious. I said to him, I don't think I want to have children. And he was like, okay. And then we got married and I was 29 and I'd been part of his big, loving, dysfunctional but loving family for quite a few years at that point. He was 1 of 6 siblings and I thought, okay, maybe family could be something different than my idea of what family could be.

jody [00:09:34]:

And I said to him, I, you know, I think I've changed my mind. I think I do want to have children. He was like, okay. So these 2 enormous decisions that can derail relationships, I, you know, 1 partner wanting or not wanting or changing their mind about having children. That part was easy for us. What wasn't easy was getting pregnant. So I was unable to conceive. I, after 3 years of trying, I had an operation which is called a laparoscopy where they send a, basically send a camera sort of through your kind of belly button and down and have a look around because I thought, well, maybe there was some damage, you know, from the abortion, but, the very avuncular, Harley Street gynaecologist afterwards said, finest uterus I've seen all week.

jody [00:10:19]:

You lovely young people just go off and have lots more sex. That was it. That was the end of the advice. So there was no endometriosis, no

Freya Graf [00:10:27]:

scarring, nothing wrong at all. We both checked out on all of our tests.

jody [00:10:28]:

That was it. The consultant didn't really say at that point was to give us maybe a little bit more or the consultant didn't really say at that point was to give us maybe a little bit of advice that, you know, you're 33. It might be worth doing other investigations. You might not have much time. There's obviously something wrong that you're not getting pregnant. So, but we didn't get any of that advice. So I carried on trying to conceive and I went into what I describe in my book as, I just descended into baby mania. It was all about trying to get pregnant and, I went to see every holistic therapist, every quack, every nutritionist, everything you could possibly see in London.

jody [00:11:14]:

Nothing was happening. My marriage was, kind of going down the pan at the time, not just because of my infertility, but my, my very charming, debonair, exciting, artist, entrepreneur husband was kind of moving from workaholism into alcoholism and from alcoholism into addiction And, you know, as I moved through my thirties we were dealing with, you know, significant cocaine use and then it ended up with, he became addicted to crack cocaine, which if anyone has had any experience of it coming near your life is just about the most destructive force you can imagine. So so things kind of came to a head when I was 37. Interestingly when my then husband said to me, I think we should, I think we should think about doing IVF and I suddenly thought, I can't bring a baby into this. It was a deep down knowing in my heart that I just couldn't, I couldn't bring a child into the chaos that was happening around us. And yeah, and it's hard to take myself back to that time 6 weeks later I had a big nervous breakdown, to quote Brene Brown, nervous breakdown slash spiritual awakening. For those of you who may know what it is, I had something very scary. I had a spontaneous Kundalini awakening, which is a very, very physical experience and I was not a spiritual person.

jody [00:12:51]:

I had really blocked off that part of myself as a young girl due to childhood trauma. And so it was, you know, I basically woke up in my life and had a look around me and went, who the fuck made all these decisions? And just totally changed everything and was out of that marriage very, very fast, which probably too fast. But that was also driven by baby mania because I thought I still had time to meet someone else and do IVF because it always works, because that's what I'd learnt, you know. I was, you know, a couple of years off 40, I thought I still had time. So I went out into the world, tried to find someone to do IVF with, that didn't work. I was bat shit crazy at that point. I, I wouldn't have chosen to, to settle down and had kids with me either. I was reeling from so much unhealed trauma and unprocessed stuff, which had been awoken by my Kundalini awakening.

jody [00:13:51]:

So I arrived at midlife 44a half when I realized, okay, this is definitely not going to happen. I was in no position to adopt as a single, childless, divorced, broke, person who worked for herself. You know, in adoption really the needs of the child are the most important and they often, they nearly always choose a very, very secure in every way, financial, emotional, housing, job couple because you know, that's probably the most likely unit that's going to be able to support the, the many, many difficulties that can come with adopting a child who already has experienced the trauma of losing their birth family. So, I was 45, single, childless and looking around for support, couldn't find anything, Tried to talk to people about my story, nobody would listen. All they would say is, oh, but you're so young, you've still got time. Or it's like, no, I've been, you know, I've been infertile since I was 29 and no, and no 1 can find a reason and you know, I'm in perimenopause. It's like, it's not happening. Why don't you just adopt? I've just explained the reasons why.

jody [00:15:04]:

Or the great 1 was children aren't all they're cracked up to be, you know, why don't you have 1 of mine Or oh, you're so lucky you get to sleep in and travel. You know? So you'd swap your kids for that? You know? So, you know, these kind of thoughtless statements which I found from the child free by choice community are called bingos. They have a slightly different version to childless people but they're, they're vaguely similar. And it is a way to invalidate what someone's saying with this very short statement. And basically we don't wanna hear what you've got to say. It makes us uncomfortable. Please be quiet. So I stopped talking about it and because I, I got this stuff from professionals as well, you know, from, you know, from therapists, from doctors, even doctor Google.

jody [00:15:47]:

It was everywhere. So eventually I started writing about it on a blog, a new blog that I'd started called gateway women thinking I'd be the only woman in, maybe 3 people would read it. And, I was wrong. It turned out I was articulating something that many, many women were experiencing, which was finding them themselves childless when that hadn't been the plan For many, many reasons, not just infertility, probably the biggest reason, and this is that now sort of 20 years later, this is definitely 1 of the biggest reasons, is not having a willing or suitable partner during your potentially fertile years. I mean, the incidence of what the United Nations politely calls not being married or in a union. I love that union. In the UK, for example, has risen 70%, 7 0 percent since the 1970s, during those, those, during those years when a woman is most likely to be conceiving. So it's, you know, there is a big reason, there is a huge cultural reasons why many reasons, you know, many women and men don't, you know, don't have children when they would have liked to as well as, you know, many more people now choosing not to have children.

jody [00:17:01]:

So from that first blog, from that first blog things took off. I've been interviewed by The Guardian. I've done 2 TED Talks. I've been on breakfast TV in Australia and New Zealand. I've been, I've been around the world running my workshops. I've, I've wrote a bestselling book about it, living the life unexpected. And I'm now probably me and Jennifer Aniston probably have the 2 most famous empty uteruses, I think. I think she's earned more from hers.

jody [00:17:31]:

And now I'm, I'll be 60 in a couple of weeks time and now I'm really, my writing is really focusing on the identity experience of shifting into elderhood when you don't have children, when the only word of, the only compliment under patriarchy for a woman 60 plus is grandmother. All of the rest are insults, you know, they didn't used to be before patriarchy. But so I'm really looking at that and I have a Substack called Gateway Elder Women and over the weekend, I mean, I published something just very recently and it's the second time it's gone viral. So it's kind of the number 3 most read article on Substack out of about 25, 000 Substacks. So this essay, not just the issue of being childless, but the issue of aging as a woman in our culture and the identity issues around that is really touching a lot of people. So, so I hope that's, I hope that's it. And here we are today and I'm with you and, I've made peace with my childlessness. I think I feel as at peace inside as if I had chosen it.

jody [00:18:39]:

I mean, I will never know for sure because I can't live both lives, but I've done the grief work because it is a grief to make peace with the life unexpected.

Freya Graf [00:18:51]:

Yeah. Beautiful and just huge that you've managed to come to that place of acceptance and

jody [00:18:57]:

Mhmm.

Freya Graf [00:18:58]:

I just it really it's not surprising that all of your content is going viral and and gaining so much, popularity because not only is there a growing population of people who find themselves involuntarily childless, but there's also people like me in the the age bracket where it's still possible for them with a lot of fear around that happening and going, oh my god. Like, it's harder and harder to meet a suitable partner. Mhmm. The older I get, the harder it gets. The less I think it's even gonna be possible, the more mounting pressure I feel, and then the crazier I fucking act when I'm dating. And I'm thinking, oh god. I've got you know, I'm looking at my watch being like, I've got a couple of years before I need to start trying, but I wanna be together for a few years before we actually start trying to have a baby. So and then as your time gets, you know, smaller and smaller, that window, I imagine you when you go out into the dating world with this kind of thing hanging over you, this pressure, this ticking, you know, biological clock and this expectation that now has to be overlaid on my brand new relationship.

jody [00:20:07]:

That's a pleasure.

Freya Graf [00:20:08]:

You know, people can smell it a mile away and that freaks them out. Or they might not be at that stage and ready, and it changes the entire kind of way that you approach dating. And, anyway, that's another topic that we'll get into. But, I I, yeah, find it really fascinating, the statistics around this you listed 1. I'm curious about the stats around women without children. I feel like I read somewhere, maybe it was 1 in 5 or 1 in 4 even now that, the of of women that don't have children, which is a lot a lot more than it used to be. Right?

jody [00:20:41]:

It's double what it was for our mother's generation. So it is, on average around, in westernised countries it's around 1 in 5 but we are looking at countries like, Japan where it's been 1 in 3 and soon it will be 1 in 2. Wow. It is, on the right. So it's currently 1 in 6 in the UK, but the way that statistics are going, I think in the UK we're probably heading for 1 in 3 because, this year, and actually last year as well, the Office For National Statistics for the first time ever found that 50% of women aged 30 hadn't yet had a child and it's never been that high before. Now, obviously now the peak age women are having children in the UK is now 31. So it's, you know, over the last few years it's gradually crept higher and higher. So that doesn't mean that none of those women are going to have children, but the later the, the later the age of the mother at first birth is the less number of children she's going to have, including 0.

jody [00:21:48]:

So, so what we're, what we're seeing is what I've been predicting for a long time is we're coming up for a big increase, in childless women. And of course you've probably seen insane, pronatalist headlines around the world about sort of, you know, birth rates plummeting, you know, human race going extinct, you know, and all of the problems to do with, there not being enough babies. Now, the thing is, although this is, yes, it is to do with women having fewer children, including no children, it's also to do with the fact that the, that in many countries we had a huge generational bump called the baby boom. You know, the clue is in the title, which means actually fertility went up massively for a cohort. And actually that cohort is now, moving into old age. My mum was the 1st year of the baby boom. She would have been 77 if she was still with us. I'm the last year of the baby boom or the 1st year of gen x, depending on what you look at.

jody [00:22:47]:

So I'm literally just about to turn 60 soon. So we were kind of, but, so, but the cohort below us has had less children and actually more like the, the fertility rate historically we had. So, but the transition from that high fertility to a lower fertility is really problematic because our entire, economic structure is, is a Ponzi scheme, which is built on perpetual growth, where you have to have more and more people coming in at the base level to pay the taxes and be the workers and do all the things that need to be done to keep society growing. So just like every other part of Westernised civilization is looking at degrowth and it is a necessary because we've, we've overreached our planetary limits. It's interesting it's also happening at the same time in human fertility. And yes, there are countries in the world where there's still a high birth rate, particularly in Central Africa. But even there the birth rate is dropping, you know, it's gone from 9 children per woman to 5. So basically as women get access to education and other opportunities in their lives, other than only being mothers, they choose to have fewer children.

jody [00:24:02]:

This is a win for humanity because they do so, so that their children, they have more resources to offer those children, you know, and more resources to offer themselves. So to see this as somehow a disaster, also having an elderly population to see that as a disaster, it's like, no, we've done an amazing thing to extend the human lifespan. So having done all this, let's appreciate all these olders around us and the massive contributions they have made and still make to society. You know, I hate this idea that, you know, I'm part of a grey tsunami, no way, you know. And I also think, yeah, and I feel really tender towards the young people of the world right now. And just because I, you know, I think they're faced with an incredible, possibly impossible challenge in so many ways. And the fact that so many of them are choosing morally not to have children in this climate makes total sense to me, you know, and I want to, I want to support them in their choices, their diff the difficult choices in their lives. Not, not tell them that they just need to go and have children.

jody [00:25:11]:

It's just so basic. I hate it.

Freya Graf [00:25:13]:

Hey, baby babes. Sorry to interrupt. I just had to pop my head into the lounge here and mention another virtual lounge that I'd love you to get around. It's the Labia Lounge Facebook group that I've created for listeners of the potty to mingle in. There you'll find extra bits and bobs like freebies, behind the scenes, or discounts for offerings from guests who have been interviewed on the podcast. They'll also be, hopefully, inspiring, thought provoking conversations and support from a community of labial legends like yourself. My vision for this is that it becomes a really supportive, educational, and hilarious resource for you to have more access to me and a safe space to ask questions you can't ask anywhere else. So head over to the links in the show notes or look up the Labia Lounge group in Facebook, and I'll see you in there.

Freya Graf [00:25:59]:

And now back to the episode. Totally. Totally. And I wanted to give everyone a rundown on the word pronatalism and and what that sort of means to set the scene, before we launch into, like, what this actually then looks like day to day or people who don't have kids. But you mentioned pronatalism and, you know, the propaganda that we're kind of fed. If you'd give us a bit of a rundown on that, that would be great.

jody [00:26:26]:

Yeah. Well, pronatalism is, I mean, if you ask a fish, how's the water? The fish would say, this is a talking fish obviously, what's water? You know, that is ideology. Pronatalism is an ideology that positions, parenthood and particularly motherhood as the most natural way to be a fully realized grown up human And it is very, very pro birth. So pro natalism, pro birth. And you think, well, there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, I'm not anti natalist, I'm not anti birth, but the problem is is that pronatalism operates as a system which encourages motherhood as the path for every woman whilst not supporting mothers. It's all about increasing the numbers but it's not actually about support for mothers and families and children. Once you've had the baby you're kind of on your own.

jody [00:27:20]:

It also creates a valuation system between people who do have children and people who don't have children. Where let's say you have 2 women, a woman with with children is considered to be more adult, a proper human being doing her job for society and the planet. A woman without children is basically a deviant woman. I mean you can see how deep this goes when you look at even fairy tales, Disney fairy tales. If there is an evil female character in a fairy tale, she is childless. Snow White's, Snow White's stepmother, childless. The witch in Hansel and Gretel, childless. The witch in Rapunzel, childless.

jody [00:27:57]:

Beginning to see a theme and you'll see that this carries through into modern film and TV series as well. I mean, I don't drink but if it was a drinking game it would be a bad drinking game. But if I'm watching something and there's a, there's a kind of evil or unlikable female character I'll go, I bet she doesn't have kids. I'm very, very rarely wrong, you know. It's like extraordinary. So, so unconsciously our culture uses women without children as a cipher for there being something wrong with her.

Freya Graf [00:28:32]:

Yeah. And a lack of maternal nurturing as being bad and evil.

jody [00:28:37]:

Yeah. And it's like and she's selfish and she's career obsessed and she's in some way dangerous. She's not kind of held in by this kind of trope of motherhood. And people, when people say to me like child free and that means childless by choice women are selfish or childless women are selfish I'll go, so you've never met a selfish mother then? You know? And people are like, oh. Because the, the, the kind of the things that underpin pronatalism, we think they're normal and natural, but as soon as you add the slightest bit of logic to them you can see that they just crumble. So this is the belief system that even very young children will have already been indoctrinated to believe and it's, it's the backdrop against which, you know, as adult women we have to find our value if we don't have children. It also blindsides mothers into believing that motherhood is going to be the most fulfilling, natural, easy experience. When in actual fact, you know, that is not the case for, for many women and many women when they do become mothers and they, and they find the reality of the experience extremely challenging, which it can be, they feel they've been sold a pup.

jody [00:29:45]:

You know, they're not, they, they, you know, they can be really angry because also if they try to talk about it, just if like I try to talk about my childlessness, people are going, yeah, but you're a mum now and that's amazing. And it's like, it's not the part, it's not that it's not amazing. You know. I'm, made parts of it are, I'm not, I don't want to give my child back, but you know motherhood is not what I expected it to be, You know? And the identity of mother, which is so socially valued, perhaps is not 1 that they, that they realised how much they were going to lose by taking that 1 on. There is a grief for, for losing the identity of the person they were before motherhood too and you know the statistics of, of women who regret motherhood are very, very high and it is another taboo to talk about because people go, but you can't say that, you know, what if your children are here? It's like, I love my children, you know, I take a bullet for them, but you know, III wish I knew, I wish I knew then what I know now about motherhood. I might have made different choices and now I can't change it. So there is a whole range of things kind of going on under the umbrella of pronatalism, which is controlling our thoughts and behaviours. And, you know, once you see pronatalism, you can't unsee it.

jody [00:31:08]:

It's a bit like taking the red pill in the matrix. It's like you see it everywhere in politicians, the way they talk about hardworking families. They don't talk about hardworking people. You know, they don't, I mean, so many, so there are so many solo households in Australia and right across, Westernised countries. And yet what am I, chopped liver? You know, I'm voting. There is no political party that has woken up to how many people without children they are and how valuable we are to the culture. Nobody talks to us or about us except to criticize us for not producing more voters and taxpayers. But people without children are the biggest contributors to political campaigns in terms of both money and time.

jody [00:31:50]:

We do the most unsexy volunteering work and the most amount of it, we leave the most amount of money to charity and organizations in our wills and we do huge amounts of work in the community. I mean, many teachers, gynaecologists, people you know will be people without children and we pay taxes to support the civil society that everyone else's children uses. We pay taxes for hospitals, for schools, for roads, for playgrounds. We do so willingly because we are members of the civil society, we just don't have children, you know, we are not the enemy. We are part of the supportive system around the children in this world and it drives me nuts to be seen as anything other.

Freya Graf [00:32:35]:

Oh, mic drop. That was awesome. You slayed that. I didn't know those, those statistics, but it makes so much sense and, you know, and volunteering and donating to charity and and contributing. And it's almost like 1 that isn't kind of acknowledged or valued or appreciated as much as it should be. And 2, it's, like, expected because it's like, well, you don't even have kids, so you've got the time. Right? And, you know, you've got the resources, so, like, it's just taken for granted and expected of you. And then, you know, flip side of that is that I feel like people pity people without children in kind of a condescending way that devalues their ability to create a sort of healthy, wholesome contentedness within their lives.

Freya Graf [00:33:23]:

And, you know, I think fear of loneliness is weaponized as, like, another tool of pronatalism to be like, have more kids to, you know, work in the workforce and create more and more kind of capitalism and, you know, I I feel like take

jody [00:33:41]:

care of you when you're old. I mean, that's the Yeah. You know, that is a genuine fear. I mean, it never occurred to me when I was trying to conceive, but the moment I knew I was definitely childless, the next thought that came up in my brain and I had never thought it before was, who's going to be there for me when I'm old? And it is a huge worry and it is a huge concern. Mean, that's not 1 you can just sort of go, oh, well that doesn't matter'.

Freya Graf [00:34:04]:

No, totally.

jody [00:34:05]:

It's a big part of my work. And it was interesting, I was 1 of the founders of a charity in the UK called AWOC which is Ageing Without Children and we produced this report and we had this big kind of conference and lots of, lots of big wigs were there and quite a few of them, you know, were parents because the majority of people still are. And I remember having this conversation, with a sort of quite senior sort of barrister or something like that. And she was saying, the thing is I didn't have my children so that, you know, they could take care of me when I'm old. And I said, yeah, III absolutely get that. It never, the thought never crossed my mind when I was hoping for a family. And I said, and it's wonderful that that's not. So I'm really interested.

jody [00:34:47]:

What plans have you put in place so that that doesn't happen? You can imagine the answer. Crickets. And the fact is, is that although parents don't necessarily realise it, they, they have an unconscious, you know, hope that that's how it will work out for them. And because as a society and as human beings, we don't like to think about our old age and, and about being infirm and about being vulnerable in some way that we might need support. We don't wanna think about that. You know, we're, we're in a hyper individualistic, you know, culture, which is like, no, I'm, I'm going to be independent to the end. And actually the idea of being vulnerable or dependent in any way is actually seen as a character weakness. It's like, oh no, no, no.

jody [00:35:32]:

I'm not going to do that. So it's really, people really defend themselves unconsciously against the thought of their own ageing and potential vulnerability. So it's really hard. I mean, 50% of people don't even have will. That's 50% of people who don't think they're gonna die. You know? So we're really up against a very difficult human barrier and cultural barrier to making plans for, for our old age if we don't have children. It's a big part of my work going forward is helping people to think through what their options are because it's a really hard 1 because you don't necessarily know what you're planning for. However, not making any plan at all is not a good idea either.

jody [00:36:12]:

And we do say to young people, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up? And we don't know what's going to happen when we grow up but we're prepared to have a few ideas about what's going to happen and I think we need to start asking people, what kind of old age do you want? What kind of old lady do you want to be? What kind of life do you want to have? And then do what and actually go, this is a creative part of life that we can have ideas about because if we don't have any ideas or make any plans, the possible outcome for us is unlikely to be what we might enjoy. And we need to talk about it.

Freya Graf [00:36:49]:

Yeah. Yeah. And I've got some, questions around that that I was gonna wrap up the episode with because I think it's so important to, you know, prepare and plan and put things in place and actually think about this. And I know it's confronting because there is so much discomfort around the idea of death and aging. And, you know, it's all very well for these, you know, these people with kids to be like, well, that's not why I had children. I don't you know? And it's like, well, easy for you to say because there is this unconscious expectation and this safety net of having children to support when you do get, you know, too old

jody [00:37:27]:

to support your child. To say back to me, well, you know, not everyone not everyone is there for their parents. And it's true, but 96% of children are. And also if their children aren't there, they might be on the phone. They might be the ones sorting out the problems long distance. They might be the ones paying for or organising care. You know, they may not necessarily sort of be showing up to visit because there may be reasons for that. But it's very rare that, that an adult child isn't in some way involved, you know, in their parents' care.

jody [00:37:59]:

And that's not always great, You know, because the thing is, is if you do leave it to your kids, they don't necessarily do it the way you might have chosen. You know, you might not like your kids. You might not get on with them. You know, they might be really controlling, you know, so many things can happen. So I think whether you have children or you don't have children, you know, with an aging population, it's really time to start thinking outside the box and thinking creative ways to approach later life.

Freya Graf [00:38:27]:

Definitely. Yeah. So I'd love to do this segment get pregnant and die, which is where I ask my guests for a story about their sex education, if anything springs to mind. Yeah. Don't have sex because you will get pregnant and you're done. Don't have sex in a missionary position. Don't have don't have sex in standing up. Just don't do it.

Freya Graf [00:38:52]:

Promise?

jody [00:38:57]:

Okay, Sex Education, I feel like mine was in the stone age, to be honest. So it would have been, 1970s, late 1970s and boys and girls in class probably age about sort of 14, something like that, When, the fear of God was put into us girls about getting pregnant, about how it would ruin our lives. There was at the time a massive drive in the UK to, to reduce the incidence of teenage pregnancy. It's been a massively successful campaign. I think they're slightly regretting it now because of the birth rate drop. So I mean I was so, I was so scared, you know, I kind of, I remember even being told it's probably not a good idea to sit on a warm chair if a boy's just been in it, you know. So it was really like, you know, like sperm was just like this kind of weapon that would just, you know, you go anywhere near it and you get pregnant. That was basically the extent of my sex education.

jody [00:40:07]:

I mean so much so that, you know, by the time I was trying to conceive in my thirties and this is 1 of the reasons why I'm quite angry that, you know, when I couldn't conceive at 33 or wasn't given any more information is I didn't know anything about, I knew that female fertility sort of ended at 40 or that was the problem age when I'd need to do IV. I didn't know how or why. I didn't know anything about the declining age of eggs. And also, you know, we really were filled with this idea that getting pregnant was the easy part, you know, that, but actually that's not the case for, for, for many, many women and couples. And I also now think it's, it's terrible that we weren't taught anything about male fertility because there is, and the boys weren't taught anything about it because there is still this myth that male fertility goes on forever and female fertility declines. That is not true. The quality of male sperm starts to decrease a little bit later, you know, 40 to 45. I mean if you were to donate your sperm to a fertility clinic they wouldn't accept it if you were over 35 if you were a man because of the chromosomal abnormalities that start to build up in the DNA after that point.

jody [00:41:19]:

And yes, perhaps an older man can get a female partner pregnant. But the problem is, is that it is more likely to lead to miscarriage. So if you have a couple in their forties, trying to conceive, you know, after about the age of about 42 for the woman, 45 for the man, the increase in miscarriages is extremely high. So, and if a much older man gets a, you know, gets a much, much younger woman pregnant, so let's say a man in his seventies and a woman in her late twenties or something that might work because the, the young egg might be of such good quality that it can counter out the, you know, the chromosomal abnormalities. But the increase in, birth complications and, incidences of, you know, conditions that the child can grow up with get higher and higher with the age of the male sperm. So we really need to start letting boys know that, you know, Mick Jagger is an outlier on the bell curve. You know, he is, that is not a plan. That's like making, okay, that's like having a financial plan, which is I'm going to find £50 notes on the street.

jody [00:42:24]:

It, maybe it happens once you, once in a lifetime, you find a bit of money, but that is not how to plan your financial life. And I think it is a real shock for men, to their virility, that perhaps it's not possible, you know, to have a child with their female partner when they want to because they are not being taught that male fertility declines too. So it's, that's the thing I really wish I'd been taught and a lot of, you know, 50% of people having IVF treatment now, it is a male sperm factor problem. You know, that's gone up from 30% when I was trying to conceive. Also around the world, male fertility is plummeting. The sperm quality is plummeting. I think it's gone down by 50 or 60% and, you know, some scientists are saying that the human race is going to go infertile because the, you know, all of the chemicals and, pollutants that are in the atmosphere and in our food is having a hugely, deleterious effect on the quality of male sperm. So yeah, boys, you know, you really need to know that this is your story too.

jody [00:43:36]:

And I hate the fact that fertility is always talked about as a female issue and birth rates are always talked about as a female issue. It's like, hello? You know, there are, there are other factors involved, you know, even if you're, even if you're, you're not heterosexual, you're still going to need male sperm to get pregnant. Yeah. You know, we're not seahorses yet. But

Freya Graf [00:43:59]:

If only. Yeah. It's like a it's like a sci fi movie out here, honestly. Yeah. God. Excuse this quick interruption. I'm shamelessly seeking reviews and 5 star ratings for the potty because as I'm sure you've noticed by now, it's pretty fab. And the more people who get to hear it, the more people I can help with it.

Freya Graf [00:44:20]:

Reviews and ratings actually do make a big difference to this little independent podcaster, and it's really easy to just quickly show your support by taking that simple act of either leaving 5 stars for the show on Spotify or, even better, writing a written review and leaving 5 stars over on Apple Podcasts. Or if you're a real overachiever, you can do them both. That would be mad. If you're writing a review, though, just be sure to use g rated words because despite the fact that this is a podcast about sexuality, words like sex can be censored and your review won't make it through the gates. Lame. Anyway, I would personally recommend doing that right now while you're a member just to get on top of it and let me know you're with me on this journey. Thanks, gang. Enjoy the rest of the epi.

Freya Graf [00:45:09]:

So So let's chat a bit about how the social, mating, dating kinda landscapes have changed in recent years and, you know, what a drastic shift has occurred in such a short period of time due to technology. Yes. Because I feel like that's, you know, that's a big complex topic, and I bet you've got some good shit to say on it.

jody [00:45:35]:

I have young, so my ex husband is 1 of 6, so through him and 4 of them had children. So I have nephews and nieces that I'm close to. They're kind of nieces by blood, nieces by love not blood. So it's been fascinating to watch them growing up. They are in their, all of them are now in their early thirties and seeing how different dating is for them. Seeing how, how much slower they were to get into relationships than my generation was. And we, we, we were all pretty much getting into relationships at 15, 16, and, being sexually active much younger and, we met people in the wild, you know, we met people through, through our brothers and cousins. We met them in our local now to young people the way that we used to meet.

jody [00:46:38]:

We used to spend a lot more time out in the world because that was the only way we could meet our friends and meet people. So we were also probably a lot more independent. So we I mean, people say gen x are quite scary, because we grew up quite feral because our parents were, you know, busy kind of self actualizing and they just kind of sent us out to get on with shit and basically come back in to be fed and then go away again. So I, I, we, we do seem to be a very independent generation, Gen X, but I'm noticing with my, with my nephews and nieces that that I mean they are more nervous about relationships, more nervous about intimacy, have less experience and, there's a lot more rejection involved, because of the, you know, because of the dating apps and the way they and they they've turned kind of human relationships into a consumer product. There's yes, it's increased choice. I did meet my second husband that I've been with for 8 years. I did meet him through a dating

Freya Graf [00:47:40]:

app, but that just seemed like

jody [00:47:40]:

blind luck, because I know it's not a replicable experience, it was just luck. And I also, you know, previous to that about 8, 8, 9 years, I had tried dating apps and, you know, I'd met, I'd met a couple of frogs so I didn't do it again for a very long time, including the obligatory narcissist. I had to, you know, had to meet my narcissist. Yeah, that was, let's just say that was a very growthful experience. And, yes, the look of despair on your face, I think, you know, unfortunately it is an amazing hunting ground for predatory narcissists, dating the dating world right now. Because if 1 was to meet those things, those kinds of people through one's friends, they'd probably say you, you don't want to go there, you know? But unfortunately people, people don't come with references on dating apps. I think they should. So Big time.

jody [00:48:38]:

Yeah. And III think because getting established as an adult, what we currently think of as established as an adult in order to settle down and have a family, you know, finding a secure job, a secure income, a secure housing situation has become increasingly difficult. I think that is also pushing, like you said, you know, you're thinking I'm coming towards the end of my fertility window and I'm, you know, I haven't found the person, I haven't found the person I want to have children with and yet, you know, for, for my generation we, we tended to partner up sooner. Yeah. Possibly because, you know, we weren't blinded by so much choice, you know. There wasn't a sense that there's someone else forming around the corner. I mean, you know, you would break up to someone and then you'd be, you'd be single for a while before you possibly met someone else. It was, it was, I mean, I'm not going to say it was perfect.

jody [00:49:35]:

I don't want to say it's like the good old days and I can see that dating apps have made it possible for, for people to meet who wouldn't have met, But there is a flip side of that. But the data is showing that the youngest generation, you know, the, the younger Gen Zs are definitely turning away from the apps, You know, they are, but they're also turning away from relationship, you know?

Freya Graf [00:49:57]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh gosh.

jody [00:50:00]:

And that's what's happening in Japan. People are, you know, a lot of people aged 30 in Japan now are virgins. You know, they're not having they're not having sex. They're not having relationships. So it's, it's a very interesting moment in human sexuality and human dating and mating behaviour. I don't think we can place it all, you know, at the feet of the dating apps, but I think gamifying human meeting, human relationship, Well, who'd have thought that would go wrong?

Freya Graf [00:50:33]:

I think, yeah, of a very similar similar opinion to you around all of that. Talked about it before on the podcast, definitely. So to kind of follow on with, like, the sort of sexuality and intimacy thread, how can being involuntarily childless impact sexuality and intimacy, you know, in relationships in your experience? Obviously, there's, you know, the mounting pressure and the ticking clock and maybe potentially the stress of IVF and the strain that that puts on relationships. But, yeah, I'd love to chat about that. And and then also once you've, you know, you have now moved past your fertile years and not had children, how does it affect things now? Because, you know, maybe maybe it's great not having kids for your sex and intimacy. But back when you were, you know, trying to have children, it was a big dampener on things.

jody [00:51:29]:

Yeah. Well, I did, I created the world's first training course for, for sex and relationship therapists on exactly this topic and it it you can actually purchase it and download it. It's with Cosrt, C0SRT, which is the UK College of Sex and Relationship Therapists. So, you know, if that is part of your work or part of your experience, it could be really like a sort of 5 part video program that I created. But in a nutshell, it really, really impacts your sexual identity. And I think more than anything else, your your if you spent a long time trying to get pregnant, the idea of your body as a site of pleasure can be completely destroyed. It becomes a site of production and then a failed reproduction. So your, kind of, identity is your sexual identity can be really, really damaged and that can take a lot of work to rebuild.

jody [00:52:27]:

I mean, for example, I know of 1 couple that had multiple miscarriages and the male partner after a while could not bear to have, you know, sex with his wife anymore because he couldn't bear, you know, and, and this is, you know, this is many years now after, after their final miscarriage, they, they don't have sex because it's left him so traumatised that he could quote unquote do this to his wife, you know, put her through that pain that, so it can do lots of things to both partners. Something that is a really shocking statistic that a lot of people don't know is that 50% of women who go through, IVF and fertility treatments regardless of whether, you know, they have a live birth or they end up childless is, 50% of them have PTSD. Now when you consider that, the that's higher than combat veterans. When you consider the the the rate in the general population is 8% and women who've had IVF is 50%. Now, I mean, I mean, sometimes, you know, women have said to me that, you know, so many people have, you know, have, have looked at my vulva and have looked inside me. You know, it, it no longer even feels like it belongs to me. So there can be real sense of disassociation from the body and also from the body as a sight of pleasure. And as you said, the pressure within the relationship, you know, time, sex, ovulation, all of that stuff, it can, you know, it can really damage this sense of sex as a place of pleasure, a place of intimacy, and obviously the knock on impact in that, in, you know, in, in the relationship is huge.

jody [00:54:07]:

So I think with, we do, you know, if, if you are working in that field, with clients who have experienced, you know, childlessness or, you know, even infertility in their past and now they have children. It's something to really, really look at and, I don't make any money out of selling my course, but if you, if you want to watch that course on COSRIT, it might really help you to understand some of the things those clients are going through. And I think we also need to include, you know, people who are going through same sex, you know, same sex experiences trying to get pregnant as well, You know, because it's extremely complicated what is happening within those relationships. They can only, those relationships can only experience a pregnancy often through IVF or some form of fertility treatment and that, and 1 partner at a time probably will be going through that. And what is that doing? You What is that doing to the dynamics within the relationship? I think it's really that the queer, queer fertility is nearly always left out of stories about fertility and about childlessness. And I think it's really important that we have a more inclusive approach to everyone who's trying to build a family and struggling.

Freya Graf [00:55:16]:

Yeah. Big time. I'm so glad you mentioned that. And it was just, like, occurring to me as you were talking. Obviously, it has a massively, negative and profound effect on your sexual identity and your sex life and relationships when you are trying but can't have children.

jody [00:55:34]:

Mhmm.

Freya Graf [00:55:35]:

But then I think about all of the parents who whinge about how kids absolutely kill your sex life as well. And it's just like anything to do with kids is really tricky for sexuality. But I have an episode on on motherhood and and sex and how to kind of keep your sex life alive and still feel sexual as a parent. I don't have 1, around, yeah, what you were just speaking of, which sounds like such a big complex topic. So that's awesome. You've got that resource. I'll have to get the link and put it in the show notes

jody [00:56:05]:

for people.

Freya Graf [00:56:07]:

So can you explain what you mean by the tightrope generation and maybe then roll into talking about how you know, what we could be doing to prepare for aging if we don't have that safety net of a family to care for us when we start needing more regular support.

jody [00:56:24]:

Yeah. Well, thank you, and thank you for doing your research. I'm very impressed. It's really nice.

Freya Graf [00:56:29]:

No worries. I read lots of your writing. It's, yeah, it's amazing. A friend should get on

jody [00:56:34]:

it. So the phrase the tight rope generation was created by, Kirsty Woodard, who was the, the, the founder of AWOC, aging without children in the UK. And what it refers to is we talk a lot about the sandwich generation and the sandwich generation is those people in midlife who've probably had children a bit later, maybe in their late thirties or forties. And, so they have young children at home or probably school aged children. Maybe they've got adolescents or teenagers at home and they're caring for or organising the care for, vulnerable parents. So they're kind of, they're sandwiched in between these 2 caring responsibilities. Now the tight rope generation, are people like me who don't have children so, and are caring, you know, are caring and or have cared for vulnerable, older members of the family or it can also be sometimes, you know, siblings, you know, caring responsibilities are very broad. It's often not just, caring for parents, But we, when we do all that work, let's continue with the example that it's our parents, we know that we're walking a tight rope because there's no safety net underneath us.

jody [00:57:49]:

Because that when often, it's often when we get involved in organising things for our parents that we realise how much work has to be done other than perhaps the hands on caring, how much advocacy, how much organising, how much admin, how much day to day stuff to get organised. And we know that there's no 1 coming up behind us who's going to be there to do that for us. And that's often the moment when people go, oh, really shit. You know, I knew that getting old was like, but I didn't realise what was involved because actually I think, the, the data is, is that people without children are 25% more likely to go into a long term care facility than people without at a younger age and a lower level of physical dependency. And that's because they don't have natural advocates from the next generation. So for example, my mother-in-law, she, she died earlier on this year at 93 and she lived with us and, you know, we enabled her to continue living independently, to live at home. You know, she became, towards the end of her life, she, you know, her mobility was really going downhill and so that was impacting her confidence. But she was sharp as attack, all of her faculties, everything there.

jody [00:59:08]:

It's just, you know, she couldn't cook for herself anymore. There's lots of things she couldn't do. And, we, and we did all those. Now if she didn't have children, she probably might have had to have gone into a care facility because she wouldn't have been, you know, she stopped driving, lots of things she couldn't do anymore. You know, we took her to all her medical appointments. We, we dealt with the world on her behalf. Even if it was something as simple as like, you know, my iPad has just updated and now this doesn't work, you know. So her son would sort it out for her.

jody [00:59:41]:

It's like, I wanna watch cricket on Sky and it's not on the same channel anymore, You know, because the cricket for that year, she was mad cricket fan, had been bought by a different channel, you know, and we had to Google Google and find, you know, where is, which number is the cricket on this year and things like that. And, you know, so navigating the online world, navigating online banking, dealing with things breaking up, breaking in the house, getting to medical appointments. It's not always about feeding and bathing. And that's what people think about when they think about care. It's actually about having someone from a younger generation around who can help you navigate the world and deal with the bits that you don't quite understand anymore. And we're gonna see, I mean, I always thought, you know, I'm very computer literate. I'm an early adopter. I thought I'm gonna be okay.

jody [01:00:27]:

And then holy fuck, AI comes along. I'm pretty sure that in 20 years time when I'm 80, the world will be unimaginably complicated in a new way that I, I wasn't part of learning how it worked. And it's like, I thought I was going to be fine because I'm computer literate. No. Computers are going to completely change again. The whole world is going to change again. And so what to do about that? So none of us want to go into a long term care facility. I mean, it's, it's not on the top of anyone's list.

jody [01:00:59]:

Also they're extremely expensive. And if you don't have someone from the younger generation also checking on the care you're receiving, you know, they can be vulnerable places to be. We all mostly want to age in our communities. And that's the word. The word community is really interesting because people say, I need community, I want community. And there's a shift I'm noticing that people are almost thinking as if it's a product. I want it as if it's something I can, I, when it's there, I want to, I want to use it, this, this thing called community? Well, I try to explain that community is built on interactions over time, many of which are inconvenient. You know, it is built on making yourself available for inconvenient people at inconvenient times to do inconvenient things.

jody [01:01:48]:

It's about showing up and most of all, it's about staying in the same place. Globalisation and the other things have meant the population is way more mobile than it used to be and that is, you know, that has great, great advantages but as you age you really need to stay still. So it's kind of, you know, I'm know, I'm 60 soon, my husband and I built this house in Ireland together, you know, it took a long time because of the pandemic and various other things but it is, for me, it is my forever home and people are like quite shocked. They're like, you know, but you're so young, you know, you could still have another big adventure. You could go and go and live up a tree in Thailand. I said, yeah I could, but I'm not going to. I'm going to stay still because that is how I'm going to build community and I'm really focused on getting to know the people in my area, getting involved in local initiatives and becoming known. And in time, not just yet, I've only been in this area for a year now, we were somewhere else about 20 minutes away before that, is I want to create something, a pilot study for something I'm calling Alterkin, which stands for alternative kinship network.

jody [01:03:02]:

So looking around me in my area, I can see, already in this tiny little Irish area I've identified about 8 people without children and I want to bring us together to create, a mutual aid network. Now that is different from friendships. It's where we have a structure and where we are explicit about what we're doing. What we're doing is actually building a network of care that's going to support us as we age, whereby we have a pool of resources to pull from. We have different people who can give you to lift a hospital, someone else who can come and feed your dogs when you're, you know, you're away, people who can come in when you're not well and maybe kind of keep an eye on you. People who can navigate the social care system if and when it's needed. Because in a way women going into the labour force in, in all of the numbers that's happened, you know, since the early seventies, people talk about well, you know, families need to do more and it's like, no, what they're actually saying is women need to do more But those women who used to provide informal care to vulnerable people in our communities, whatever age they were, the women that used to keep all the local networks going, that used to do the flowers for the church, that used to be the the Brownells at Brownies. All of those women are now out at work.

jody [01:04:20]:

It's not that we don't care, it's just that we no longer have the time to care and if those women also have children it's almost impossible now unless you're super rich and that comes with a whole other load of shit that I'm glad I don't have to deal with is, you know, you're both out at work to support your family. You know, the option of like 1 parent, whether it's the man or the woman to stay at home whilst the other 1, you know, earns the money, it's very rare now because the cost of living has become so, so high. So we need to really rethink how do we create community from the ground up. It is a very natural thing to do. We kind of think that it's hard, but actually when the shit hits the fan in our culture, whether it's a war or a climate disaster or a pandemic, people very naturally come together to support each other. It's actually what we do as humans. It's the reason we are successful as a species is because we cooperate in groups, not because we run the fastest or we have the biggest claws, it's because we know how to cooperate in groups. So actually when, you know, when sort of the supports of modernity drop away people very naturally support each other.

jody [01:05:34]:

So we're not really pushing against, something that is completely alien to us, but we do need to proactively create it. If we are aging without children, it doesn't happen on its own and it doesn't happen online. You can do a lot of the organising online. You need people who can come round to your house. Yeah. And so that's probably going to be the big work of the next 20 years of my life is, piloting that. I'm going to be in, it's my next non fiction book. I'm going to be interviewing people all around the world who've done it.

jody [01:06:09]:

I'm going to sort of try and sort of understand what is the best practice to reverse engineer something that we always used to have naturally. And I think that also does a lot for loneliness. I think if we can be, if we can develop communities, you know, it's also, it's also a way to alleviate the loneliness that so many of us are feeling.

Freya Graf [01:06:30]:

Yeah. That's so incredible. Yeah. I've got goosebumps. I'm so excited to hear that you have something like that in the works, and I'll be following eagerly because that's such a, such a fear of mine around. I mean, I'm I'm lucky enough to have always been quite, good at making friends really easily and building community wherever I go. But over the last few years, I've moved a lot, and starting a business in a new area and also trying to build community in a new area. As I get older and more jaded and introverted, it gets harder and harder because I'm exhausted.

Freya Graf [01:07:03]:

And I really realized the value of staying in 1 place long enough because I didn't I didn't understand how much I relied on and needed community until I didn't have it and had to keep actively seeking it and building it from scratch again and again. And I just I always think about, you know, how loneliness is such a huge epidemic and, the the average number of, close friends people have in the states, according to 1 study, was 0, which is just fucked. And, you know, there's more and more social anxiety, more and more kind of, insular, lifestyles and disconnect. And then, you know, you get the introverted people that find it a little bit more tricky to put themselves out there and proactively go and seek community or that struggle with group settings. And it's like, oh my gosh. It's actually really more and more difficult to to have and build that community. So I'm stoked to hear you've got some really amazing things in the works, and I'm keen to hear how that goes. I'd love to start something like that.

Freya Graf [01:08:09]:

Around me, there's more and more single people in my life. There's a whole batch of us that have just, you know, had horrific breakups and are starting to go, oh my god. Like, this is not where I thought I would be in my mid thirties and, you know, where, like, where do I turn and how do I because even just stuff like, you know, oh, I've gotta go and pick up a couch for a house that I've just moved to, you know, doing multiple loads in the van that I had to buy myself and find a friend to come and look at it with me that knew about cars. And, 0II can't lift the couch on my own, so I've gotta find a friend who's available at 1 end to help me get it in the van and then at my house to help me unload it. And that's like, you you just can't do shit alone. Being single fucking sucks. And so being, you know, potentially single and or childless and while you're aging, let alone if you live in a sort of more isolated area, it's just it's a whole thing, and I think about that quite a lot because loneliness is just just, yeah, awful. And I feel so much so much grief and and empathy when I think about how many people, you know, are living very, very lonely lives and not getting those needs of connection and intimacy met, on any level.

Freya Graf [01:09:22]:

So, yeah, good on you.

jody [01:09:24]:

So I'm I'm I'm forging I'm forging ahead with that 1. You know? So, quite a lot of a lot of people who are younger than me when they sort of hear about this, younger people without children, they're like, well, that's great because Jodie's forging ahead. So that means when I need it in my life. She'll have it all worked out. I can't promise that, but I will, you know, I, I, my first book Living the Life Unexpected, I wrote it because I wanted to write the book that I needed to read that didn't exist. And really, you know, I've read an awful lot of books around ageing. They, they, they nearly all, apart from a couple of exceptions, presume that the person reading it is, is someone, is a woman who has had children and possibly has grandchildren or will have grandchildren. There is this kind of pronatalist assumption that that's what older women are like, you know, but there are gonna be, there are already so many of us without children and there will be even more of us without children and many, many, many without partners too.

jody [01:10:21]:

So, you know, it's, it's, I, you know, I, I do have the great fortune of having a lovely partner. You know, it's luck. I can't take it. I hated it when people said, oh, you deserve to meet someone nice'. I went, it's got nothing to do with it. I know many people who deserve to meet a nice partner who haven't. It's just dumb luck, you know? But, so don't get me started on that 1. But I, you know, I want to create, you know, he's recently been diagnosed with a chronic illness, which is possibly means he's going to have, you know, very, very poor health in old age.

jody [01:10:52]:

And so, you know, I probably have caring responsibilities ahead of me but I, I want to, I want, I don't want to feel that I'm in my house on my own, even if I have a partner, that I'm not connected to the people around me. And I think we need to think about the difference between friendly and friendship. I think perhaps we, you know, to create community, it's not necessarily that everyone in the community is someone, you know, who is your, your, your best friend or that you have the same values or the same politics. It's that you become interdependent and that becomes the value that you operate around. And we've, we've become very bad at asking for help and I'm not very good at it. It's also my attachment style, you know, I have an avoidant attachment style so I learnt very young not to have needs, just to manage everything myself. And, but something I'm learning and I'm teaching is that when we ask for help, we actually create the opportunity for connection because people actually like helping. And when you, although it's vulnerable to ask for help, in that vulnerability, when that person steps in to support you, if they can, creates connection, which creates relationship.

jody [01:12:06]:

So it's actually by not having any needs, by outsourcing all our needs to, to kind of capitalism, that we've also lost that very human weight of building local relationships. So I'm kind of learning gradually. I'm sort of, there are a few people around here who do it really well. I have a local friend who is brilliant at asking for help, but she's also absolutely fine if you can't, because you'll just ask the next person.

Freya Graf [01:12:31]:

Yeah. You know?

jody [01:12:32]:

And it's like, he is such a good skill. And I think we need to get uncomfortable and be vulnerable and start asking for help. I think you'd be, could be really surprised what happens when we do.

Freya Graf [01:12:44]:

Beautiful. That's so well said, and it's something definitely that more of us need to be thinking about and practicing. Yeah. Yeah. Asking for help. Hey? I know. It's it's a tricky ad.

jody [01:12:57]:

It gives you a kind it gives me a kinda squirrelly feeling in my stomach just thinking about it. It's like, that is my in a way that's like my growing edge is is learning to ask for help.

Freya Graf [01:13:07]:

You know, because we've been kind of taught we need to wear our independence as a badge of honor and especially as feminists. So I've, you know, I've been getting a lot of practice lately at asking for help. But I'd love to do the segment TMI before we wrap up.

jody [01:13:21]:

Mhmm.

Freya Graf [01:13:21]:

I don't wanna miss out on this juicy, juicy segment. Do you have a TMI story for us, Jodie?

jody [01:13:35]:

Well I do, and this is perhaps for perhaps for some of your older listeners, going through the menopause means changes in the vagina. They don't necessarily come immediately, but it can lead to a sort of a shrinking, of the vaginal passage and a thinning of the vaginal walls and this can start to make penetrative sex I thought I had dodged it because it didn't happen to me until 10 years post menopause. So I thought that, you know, that part of menopause, the gift that keeps on giving, had, had passed me by. And, so I just wanted to say that I, I have tried many different, lubricants, to make, to make sex because I started to actually avoid sex because, you know, once you associate sex with pain, it does, it does make it difficult to kind of like get in the mood. So, this this product here, I'm not going to show the product because it's going to vary in different countries, but what I've discovered is you need to find a product that has something in it called hyaluronic acid. So

Freya Graf [01:14:52]:

I actually make my own lube and I I do make 1 with that in it.

jody [01:14:57]:

Yeah. So Yeah. Okay. And what you need also is you need to be think if you're able to tolerate estrogen, you need to type off topical oestrogen, that, because what was also painful is the vestibule, which is the kind of the very, very tender, tender piece of skin which is just, it guards the entrance from the, the vulva into the vagina. It's a very, very fragile piece of skin that kept tearing. Yes, you can put lube on that but really what you need is topical vaginal oestrogen and that, they usually give you a, a pessary to put that deep inside, your vagina. Actually you need a little bit to go on the outside. So get the cream and put a little bit of cream on the outside, which they don't tell you and that will help that part to also retain its flexibility.

jody [01:15:47]:

So there you are, if you, if you want to continue having pain free penetrative sex post menopause, those are my tips.

Freya Graf [01:15:55]:

Look at you go. Menopause hacks. I love it. Oh, amazing. Thank you for that. Hey. Me again. If you'd like to support the potty and you've already given it 5 stars on whatever platform you're listening on, I wanna mention that you can buy some really dope merch from the website and get yourself a labia lounge tote, tea, togs.

Freya Graf [01:16:18]:

Yep. You heard that right. I even have labia lounge bathers. Or a cute fanny pack if that'd blow your hair back. So, if fashion isn't your passion though, you can donate to my buy me a coffee donation page, which is actually called buy me a soy chai latte because I'll be the first to admit, I'm a bit of a Melbourne cafe tosser like that. And, yes, that is my coffee order. You can do a 1 stop donation or an ongoing membership and sponsor me for as little as 3 fat ones a month. And I also offer 1 on 1 coaching and online courses that'll help you level up your sex life and relationship with yourself and others in a really big way.

Freya Graf [01:16:58]:

So every bit helps because it ain't cheap to put out a sweet podcast, into the world every week out of my own pocket. So I will be I'm dyingly grateful if you support me and my biz financially in any of these ways. And if you like, I'll even give you a mental BJ with my mind from the lounge itself. Salty. And, I'll pop the links in the show notes. Thank you. Later. And 1 thing that I would wanna just slip in, I may have talked about it in the podcast with Ruby, was, like, you know and and maybe you can speak on whether you feel this pressure to, like, do something really big and meaningful and significant with your life to justify not having kids.

Freya Graf [01:17:41]:

And, you know, and then just following this classic thing that everyone views as being a woman's greatest achievement or, like, legacy in the world. Yeah. Do you feel that sort of pressure to create or put out something big to, like, I don't know, justify your existence as a woman without kids?

jody [01:18:00]:

I mean, this is pronatalism by the back door really. Because if you if you buy into the idea that that you have less value as a human being, as a woman because you don't have children, then you can see how that might feed into the idea that I've got to do something extraordinary with my life. I mean, I used to have this, this fantasy quite early on in coming to terms with my childlessness and I had I used to have this fantasy that I was going to give away all my possessions, you know, get down to sort of 1 bag and then I was going to go to Laos and I was going to, volunteer in an orphanage. And then I was going to live my long life and then I was going to, I was going to die and I was going to be on this kind of beer that floated down the Mekong river covered in flowers, all in flames. And then there was going to be this little piece for me in the South Sea China news of this kind of very, very thin, I was going to be very thin, old English woman with the long gray plaits and, you know, the extraordinary, you know, way she lived her life. And I had this whole sort of weird fantasy going on in my mind about, panda. And then I just thought, 1 day I just thought, I wasn't thinking about the kids at all. It had nothing to do with this fantasy orphanage which probably doesn't even exist.

jody [01:19:16]:

It was about what people would think of me, you know. This extraordinary sacrifice I'd made, you know, as a woman who hadn't had children. I'd selflessly dedicated myself, you know, to a life looking after orphans. I I mean, I mean, it's an old film so many of your listeners may not know it but I blame the king and I. I had this whole kind of old Siam sort of backdrop to it Then I realized, you know, it was just an entirely narcissistic fantasy because I wasn't thinking about the children, I was thinking about me. And, I just thought, oh and that was my first inkling that I was, I wanted, number 1, I wanted a way to make my childlessness visible so that people would understand it. Gosh, you know, it must have been such a huge loss to her that this is what she did instead but also I wanted people to respect me. And the only way I could imagine being respected was by doing something extraordinary for children.

jody [01:20:13]:

And then as my thinking kind of evolved over the years and I found out about pronativism, you know, the penny started to drop and then I thought, well, if I'd been a mother, would I have felt the need to do something huge and extraordinary with my life? Now I'm not saying that mothers don't, you know, do things other than be mothers, but I wouldn't have felt that I had to prove myself, you know, and so I began to unpick it and realized that actually, you know, we don't have to live extraordinary lives as they look to other people if we don't have children by choice or not. But what we do have, we do have to have a big extraordinary inner life because we are living an identity which is a stigmatised identity. And if we buy into what society thinks about being a woman without children that is probably going to, well it's going to impact our sense of self esteem and self worth and our behaviour. So you actually do need to do quite a lot of work to locate your internalised locus of identity much more strongly based on what you think of yourself and what your values are, regardless of what society thinks of you. And you know what? This creates quite extraordinary people. And yes you might do something, you know, you don't have to do a Jodie, you know. I, I started writing about childlessness to save my life, you know, I didn't do it in order to become a well known person and writer and things like that. I did it because I was dying inside with all of the pressure that I was feeling of coming, trying to come to terms with my life and my childlessness and it struck a chord with lots of people.

jody [01:21:57]:

But you know, 1 day like everyone else I will be forgotten, my book will be forgotten, I will be out of print. It is the, and I will be out of print literally because there will be no more Jodie's in the world. Or little, you know, little people that came from me and it's, you really have to find a much deeper sense of your value as a human being if you are childless or childfree than the 1 the culture ascribes to you. And I think that as more and more of us are childless by choice or not by choice, I think we're going to see some fascinating conversations coming up in the culture over the next 20 years. And I'm really happy to be, you know, the, as someone once called me at a conference last year, the Dumbledore of childlessness. Once I was called the Beyonce of childlessness. Now with my kind of increasingly silver hat, I'm the Dumbledore of childlessness, and I'm very happy with that. So I am gonna become that old lady with the long grey flats, but for a very different reason, but 1 who is at peace with her life and in service to her local community and to the wider community of people without children right across the world.

jody [01:23:02]:

And I think that's enough.

Freya Graf [01:23:05]:

You think that is more than enough? I was literally just in awe of how amazingly, eloquently, articulately you were just speaking, and then you dropped the Beyonce and the Dumbledore card, and I was like, oh my gosh. She's earned that? That's I I backed that. I was just thinking, like, what higher compliments could you be receiving? You're killing it. I love all of this. I love you. I love the way you speak. I love the way you write. Oh my god.

Freya Graf [01:23:36]:

You're the most divine writer. And I love what you're doing in the world. So I really appreciate, yeah, how much time you've taken to sit and chat and be generous with your knowledge. And, and, yeah, I just wanna give you the floor for any other thoughts or things you might wanna leave us with. But I'll put all of your work in the show notes for people to go and check out and, yeah, this has been a dream.

jody [01:24:03]:

Okay. Well, if you're listening to this and you are childless, or you think you might be childless, not by choice in the future, I just want to tell you that you were born childless and worthy and your childlessness does not take that away. You are still worthy as a human being. You do not have to have a child to be worthy as a human being. You have in you are a unique human being who was born with unique gifts for this world and never forget it.

Freya Graf [01:24:33]:

So beautiful. Oh my god. High value podcast guest right here. Honestly, you have just been rushing it. I don't know. You're so like, I get so tongue tied. I suppose you've had a lot of practice speaking, but, yeah, that was that was such a wonderful chat. And, yeah, really appreciate it.

Freya Graf [01:24:55]:

And that's it, darling hearts. Thanks for stopping by the labia lounge. Your bum groove in the couch will be right where you left it, just waiting for you to sink back in for some more double l action next time. If you'd be a dear and subscribe, share this episode, or leave a review on Itunes, then you can pat yourself on the snatch because that's a downright act of sex positive feminist activism, and you'd be supporting my vision to educate, empower, demystify and destigmatize with this here podcast. I'm also always open to feedback, topic ideas that you'd love to hear covered, questions or guest suggestions, so feel free to get in touch via my website or over on Insta. You can also send me in TMI stories to be shared anonymously on the pod. My handle is Freya Graff underscore the labia lounge. If my account hasn't been deleted for being too sex positive, which, you know, is always a possibility with censorship.

Freya Graf [01:25:49]:

But just in case the chronic censorship finally does obliterate my social channels, I'd highly recommend going and joining my mailing list and snagging yourself some fun freebies for the trouble atwww.freaghraft.com/freebies. Anyway, later labial legends. See you next time.