September 21, 2014

"We can’t change as much as we’d like to how society looks at us, but we can certainly change how we look at ourselves...we are not second to mother." - Melanie Notkin

"The reason I didn’t have kids is not because I wanted a career instead of children. It’s because I just didn’t want to have children of my own. And I think that’s a valid choice too." - Jennifer Rapach

More and more women are reaching their mid-forties without having children. Sometimes this is by choice, and sometimes it's not. But here's what both sets of women have in common: they're operating in a world where being a mother is still considered the default setting for women. Discussions of women in leadership usually assume every woman has to juggle her work with children. But where does that leave the rest of us? 

In this show we meet three successful women, childless and child-free: Melanie Notkin, founder of Savvy Auntie and author of the book Otherhood, Sara Hinkle, who works in academia and is tired of feeling left out of conversations about work/life balance, and Jennifer Rapach, who has been married for 20 years and has never wanted children. Try explaining that to the rest of the universe. 25 minutes.