This is probably the world’s first CPD training around involuntary childlessness and its impact on sexual intimacy. I really hope it is the beginning of the therapy profession waking up to the needs of this hidden diversity demographic, both in society and in the therapy room”. – Jody Day
COSRT has launched a new professional self-access training course on the impact of involuntary childlessness on sexual intimacy, the first of its kind in the UK. It has been designed to help therapists gain a better understanding of important and often inadequately understood challenges presented in therapy.
Presented by integrative psychotherapist Jody Day, this CPD was released as part of the College of Sexual and Relationship Therapy’s (COSRT) Conference week themed on ‘The Parenting Relationship’.
Jody is the founder of Gateway Women, the global friendship and support network for childless women with a social reach of around two million in the English-speaking world.
The two-hour training is broken into four lessons:
- Intro and Overview
- An introduction to involuntary childlessness
- The disenfranchised grief of involuntary childlessness
- How involuntary childlessness may impact emotional and sexual intimacy.
Jody said:
“The impact of involuntary childlessness on the sex life of a couple is like an iceberg – so little of it is visible and even less of it is spoken about. After a decade of being the private vault of so many childless women’s experiences, this is still the most hidden and shame-filled part of their experience, even though difficulties in this area appear to be very common and deeply troubling.
Whether childless due to infertility or the many, many other ways a couple can find themselves without their longed-for children, the loss of ‘the world as you thought it would be’ is identity-shattering for childless people; for couples, sexual intimacy can feel like it belongs to the land of lost innocence.
With 1 in 6 couples experiencing infertility and an average of 1 in 5 women in the developed world finding themselves childless at midlife (only 10% of them by choice), the likelihood of meeting a childless woman or couple in the therapy room must be pretty high. Yet counselling and psychotherapy training rarely touches on the life-altering nature of this rite of passage, and consequently few therapists understand that it is a very common form of disenfranchised grief.
Living as a childless person and couple in a pronatalist world is a daily battle against exclusion and prejudice, and for many childless clients, their first task in therapy is often to educate their therapist on how to work with them. In this training in collaboration with COSRT, we have created what is probably the world’s first CPD training around involuntary childlessness and its impact on sexual intimacy. I really hope it is the beginning of the therapy profession waking up to the needs of this hidden diversity demographic, both in society and in the therapy room”.
COSRT’s Professional Standards Manager Jo Coker said:
“Sitting one evening with a childless friend in her 60s after a long day walking, a mutual friend said to her, “You should have had kids you would have made a lovely Mum.” Tears sprang to my friend’s eyes and she responded, “I did not choose childlessness, it chose me”. This really made me think about the judgements we make on our fellow women, until this point, I had thought her the corporate career woman, I had not considered this was not the choice she would have made if other options were available.
In this class Jody Day, founder of Gateway Women, takes us through the emotional turbulence of involuntary childlessness for women in a society that can be obsessed with motherhood, including the assumptions that those with children make. Many of our clients fall into this group and while their situation is common, their individual circumstances are all different. Some may suffer with infertility and the pain that that brings with the “merry-go round” and lottery of IVF treatments. Some may just not have met the right person at the right time and have decided lone parenting is not for them. Some may have transitioned and being a mother in a traditional way is not possible but is a painful absence in completing their life as a woman”.
COSRT Chief Executive John Dodd said:
“I am hugely excited that COSRT has launched this hugely important training. As an organisation we are committed to helping professionals build knowledge and skills. A big part of this is exploring issues that are all too often underdiscussed and inadequately understood. Involuntary childlessness is one of these – and anything that helps understanding of its multiple direct and indirect impacts will be of great benefit to professionals from many disciplines.”
Until Sunday 14th March 2021, Jody’s masterclass is available for just £25 here.