Top 10
1. Living the Life Unexpected
Jody Day
ISBN: 9781529036138
This is a practical 12-week guide to help women come to terms with their grief, and to move on to live creative, happy, meaningful, and fulfilling lives without children, from someone who has lived it. It includes extracts from the stories of 24 people who are childless-not-by-choice.
2. Do You Have Kids? Life When the Answer is No
Kate Kauffman
ISBN: 9781631525810
In this straight-shooting, exhaustively researched book, women without kids talk candidly about the ways in which their lives differ from societal norms and expectations--the good, the bad, and the unexpected.
3. Silent Sorority: A Barren Woman Gets Busy, Angry, Lost and Found
Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos
ISBN: 9781439231562
From celebrity and news websites to streaming and social content to lifestyle blogs, family-building successes are routinely and glowingly shared and celebrated. But where are the voices of those who are unable to have children? Silent Sorority offers an unflinching and insightful look at what it's like to be barren in an era of designer babies and helicopter parents.
4. The Midnight Library
Matt Haig
ISBN: 9780525559481
Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality. One tells the story of your life as it is, along with another book for the other life you could have lived if you had made a different choice at any point in your life. While we all wonder how our lives might have been, what if you had the chance to go to the library and see for yourself? Would any of these other lives truly be better?
5. 21 Miles: Swimming in Search of the Meaning of Motherhood
Jessica Hepburn
ISBN: 9781783526109
After a decade of trying and failing to become a mother, Jessica Hepburn knew it was time to do something different. So she decided to swim twenty-one miles across the English Channel -- no easy feat, especially for someone who couldn't swim very well. As the punishing training schedule commenced, Jessica learned you need to put on weight to stave off the cold. This gave her the idea to meet and eat with a collection of inspiring women, and ask them: does motherhood make you happy?
From baronesses and professors to award-winners and record-breakers, each of the women had compelling truths to tell about fulfillment and the meaning of motherhood.
6. Childless: A Story of Freedom and Longing
Sian Prior
ISBN: 9781922458568
Like many women, Sian Prior arrived at the point where she was ready to start having babies—and found they were not hers to have. Three miscarriages with a supportive partner; a new partner who already had all the children he wanted; step-children; step-grandchildren; the decision to parent solo, followed by many rounds of fertility treatments. After all this Sian found herself, at fifty, childless and coming to terms. Weighing up the freedoms against the losses. Compelling, moving, beautifully written and unexpectedly uplifting, Childless is her story.
7. Nobody's Father: Life Without Kids
Bruce Gillespie, Lynne Van Luven
ISBN: 9781894898744
This book contains 25 first-person essays from men without children; some by choice, many by chance. It is a rare glimpse into the way that men experience childlessness and precious for that.
8. Life Without Baby: Surviving and Thriving When Motherhood Doesn't Happen
Lisa Manterfield
ISBN: 9780983012535
Based on her small-group workshops and popular ebook series, this book offers a combination of hard-won lessons, gentle queries, and real-world suggestions. Manterfield is a comforting and supportive companion who will guide you gently down your own path to making peace with being childfree-not-by-choice and thriving in a new happily ever after.
9. The Hollow Sea
Annie Kirby
ISBN: 9780241522103
When Scottie realises that she may never become a mother, she make the heart-breaking decision to flee to the remote North Atlantic archipelago of St Hia.
10. She I Dare Not Name: A spinster's meditations on life
Donna Ward
She I Dare Not Name is a compelling collection of fiercely intelligent, deeply intimate, lyrical reflections on the life of a woman who stands on the threshold between two millennia. Both manifesto and confession, this moving memoir explores the meaning and purpose Donna Ward discovered in a life lived entirely without a partner and children.