Guess Who's a NotGrandMom? It's ME!

Ever since I began working on The NotMom in 2012, my interest in women without children by choice or by chance incuded the ones I dubbed NotGrandMoms --older women living within a different space of nonparenthood. At my conferences in 2015 and 2017, I added panels of these women because their sttories were very different from those of us younger than 50.

The comment they each shared was that they were feeling the same things they'd felt in their 30's. Their girlfriends, now grandmothers, talked a lot, A LOT, about their grandchildren.. Their friends grandchildren were frequently included in events like lunches and museum trips that had been reserved for adults only. And no matter how much the NotGrandMoms liked the kids, and generally enjoyed their company, they missed having girlfriend time. Some of the panelists said that even if the children would be welcome in their homes, their girlfriends decided it wasn't a safe place for little ones. The NotGrandMoms were lonelier than they had been, especially the unmarried ones.