2017 is almost over, and there's a long menu to choose from that wrap up the year's high and low points. Topical lists break down the news from politics to entertainment to people that died. This is our look-back at six stories from 2017 that held special interest for The NotMom community. And most of them will bear watching in the New Year, too. A Look at Government-Controlled Reproduction Hulu' took the world into the scarily believable world of The Handmaid's Tale where babies, and women who can produce them, are prized commodities overseen by a male-dominated leadership. Actress Elizabeth Moss leads a talented cast bringing the classic book by Margaret Atwood to life. Ms. Atwood is a rea

It's no secret that Christmastime and other end-of-year holidays can intensify existing feelings of loneliness. For some reason, the part we don't talk about is that those emotions hang around for the other 11 months of the year, too. Here's an example of both. A few weeks before Christmas 2017,I received a voicemail from a Wisconsin woman hoping to find friends like her through The NotMom networks. She was specific in her hunt: NotMoms who were post-menopausal and living the NotGrandMom experience while surrounded by Moms and GrandMoms. When I failed to quickly respond, she sent me a lengthy text, soon followed by another voicemail. I called her back. I learned that her name is Kristine. Sh

I can't remember where I heard Eva Cassidy sing for the first time. I know it was the late 1990s, and and I scurried out and bought two of her albums, Years later, the rest of the world fell in love with her through the Christmas movie favorite, Love Actually. Love Actually premiered in 2003, but like so many others, it repeats on smaller screens so often that almost everyone you know has seen at least a quarter of it. It's Eva's voice, as always, is memorable. So is her personal story, because fame arrived for her long after she died of skin cancer at the age of 33 in 1996. Eva's featured song in Love Actually is Songbird. In Maid in Manhattan (2002), it's Kathy's Song (an oldie-but-goodi

Childless and childfree women come in lots of shapes and sizes. We are all colors, all cultures, and all ages. As much as we have in common, we are also very different. Some people say it is strange to define ourselves by things that we are not, so let’s determine what we are instead. Childfree blogger Laura LaVoie interviews women without children who answer the question, “If you’re not a Mom, then who are you?” December 2017 is very special: I had an opportunity to talk with the woman behind the man in the red suit, Mrs. Claus. We don’t often think about her role in the Christmas holiday, but she may be the proto-NotMom. Mrs. Claus is married to Santa, a man beloved by children all around

You’re probably already inundated with ideas from all corners of the Internet for this holiday shopping season. But here at The NotMom, we wanted to provide you with just a few more. These are gifts for yourself, your NotMom friends, or anyone else who might be a head-scratcher when it comes to finding their perfect holiday gift. We have curated a list of fabulous gifts to buy with just one or two clicks. But, full disclosure, if you purchase from theAmazon links here, we will get affiliate benefits which will help The NotMom in the New Year.. So, without further ado, here are a few of our favorite things for your holiday shopping list: Get it Together with Sarah’s Scribbles Okay, so I know

There was some pretty interesting and unexpected news out of Saudi Arabia in the last couple of months. First, at the end of October 2017, Saudi Arabia became the first nation to grant citizenship to a robot. Yes, that’s right. A robot named Sophia that has the same rights – more in some cases – as actual human women in Saudi Arabia. By ITU Pictures [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons Then, toward the end of November, Sophia made additional news, and this may have been one of the most interesting stories that major media didn't cover. Sophia, a newly minted citizen, announced she wanted a baby. And, most people oohed and ahhed over this news, becau

While I have admittedly enjoyed author Dan Brown’s best-selling series of stories about Robert Langdon's searches for religious icons that started with The Da Vinci Code in 2003, his use of sidekick women who can’t have children is getting tiresome. Sidekick women are the norm in action adventure novels, especially those novels whose primary audience is male. Such characters aren’t necessarily bad, as they are sometimes quite accomplished and intriguing. However, as women authors continue to be encouraged to enter this genre, such as the fantastic adventure writer Rebecca Cantrell, predictable women sidekicks may one day be a thing of the past. For now, it’s the prominent use of childless w