Are You Working with People Without Children?

I would LOVE to help you work even better with this population. It would make my heart sing!

Here’s the key point I’d like to get across before you read any further: Clients may not come to you to sort out their non-parenthood, but it will always be in the room with you. Like many other parts of identity it interacts with and informs every part of life.

Clinical consultation for therapists to work effectively and authentically with childless clients.

Most therapists know very little about the lived experience of childlessness

One would assume that some of our clinical coursework could have included anything about the needs and experiences of the 1 in 5 adults that reach middle age without children. (see footnote for this statistic below). I hope this gap in education changes very soon. Even those of us with lived experience of childlessness need to do our own work to understand our clients’ stories that may be different than our own.

Through choice, chance, condition, and circumstance, many people that come through our office doors will not have children. My own interest in this topic is quite personally driven and thus my passion. I hope you can feel it through the screen! I aspire to make an impact in my professional community through awareness, consultation, and collaboration.

Thinking about how you can Improve your clinical competency around childlessness?

So what can you do? I don’t think one quick workshop or consultation is enough to address the deep pronatalism and bias about parent status that we all carry, so I’ve come up with a few ideas to make learning both rich and continual. The simplest is a monthly free email that will help open your eyes to this lived experience and how you could apply insights in your work. I know our inboxes are crowded and want to make this succinct and meaningful. You can expect a monthly delivery containing a fact, a resource, and a clinical reflection all related to therapy with childless people. A few times a year I may also include updates about my offerings but always without any sales-y pressure. Sign up below!

If the reflections spark some questions I am also available for individual consultation, please contact me if you are interested. My Instagram account or Substack are other ways to follow along for more information.

Sign up here for a monthly email about increasing your clinical competence with childlessness:

Frejka T. (2017) Childlessness in the United States. In: Kreyenfeld M., Konietzka D. (eds) Childlessness in Europe: Contexts, Causes, and Consequences. Demographic Research Monographs (A series of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research). Springer

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