02: Melanie Notkin - Savvy Auntie

Melanie Notkin is a media entrepreneur,
author, speaker, marketer, and a leading voice of childless, often
single women.  She is the founder of the Savvy Auntie
lifestyle brand and is also the national best selling author of the
book, SAVVY AUNTIE: The Ultimate Guide for Cool Aunts, Great
Aunts, Godmothers and All Women Who Love
Kids and Otherhood: Modern Women Finding A New Kind of
Happiness. You can find out more about Melanie’s
work here. Melanie believes that being childless for her was
due to circumstance. She always wanted to find love, get married,
and have a child with that man and yet she remained single. She is
46 and always expected to have found that love and would not settle
for anything less. Unfortunately, whilst she hoped it would happen
before her fertility waned, she has remained without a child.
What do you think are some of the reasons that women are
facing? “Social infertility” is an increasingly
used term.  Melanie uses the
term “circumstantial infertility,” the pain and grief over not
having a child because you don’t have a partner and you
would prefer to have a child with a partner.  It is
a global Western trend and is a global phenomenon. There was a
15-page feature in DE Morgan, the largest daily in Brussels for
Mother’s Day on “Otherhood”,  the title of her second book. “I
think that part of it has to do with the fact that women today, our
generation, the daughters of the feminist movement born in the 60s,
70s, 80s, imagine we’d have the social, economic, and political
equality our mothers didn’t have when they were born. Naturally
we’d have the husbands and kids that they did have. Plus the
education and the financial stability, and independence, alas many
of us had not been able to find that love.” Melanie thinks it’s
partly because of the even split in education and in financial
strength and ability. This generation of single women are among the
most well educated, most financially successful, often the most fit
and fabulous. These are the most A+ women who can’t find a match.
 It’s not because they are too picky, it’s that they want to
have a partner who challenges and supports them and to feel that
the person adds value to their life and family. Also, on the
women’s side, we’ve been told, believed, and in some ways agree
that in order to be equal to men, we have to become a little more
like men. Women have lost our femininity and trying to shoulder a
lot of the traditional roles that men often participated in.
Melanie thinks that we are all a little confused about how we
should act and truthfully feels that we get turned on by courtship.
It seems that there is work to do on both sides to try to bring
that together in a more balanced way.  She believes that the
simple solution is honesty. Melanie learned to only agree to dates
that only work for her. This means that she would make the man work
and choose the place of venue rather that her making the decision.
We have to understand as women, that there is tremendous
power in our femininity. If there weren’t such great power
in our femininity, there wouldn’t be such male misogyny. It’s
actually our femininity that is threatening to men than there is
masculine energy. As women, we nurture everyone around us so we
need to be aware and know how to use that femininity appropriately.
How did Savvy Auntie come about? Savvy
Auntie came about before Otherhood. Melanie had the
idea in 2007 and she launched it in the summer of 2008. She was in
her late 30s and always expected to be married and have kids by
then. The most important people in her life were her nephews and
nieces. She didn’t know what to do, what they were in to, and all
the things parents were talking about. Often, women who don’t have
children can feel left out because they are spending a big part of
their life without kids. Melanie then got the idea that there
needed to be a community just for them, which is how Savvy
Auntie was born. She was a marketer by trade so she knew there
was a business in that. When is International Aunties’
Day? International Aunties’ Day is always on the
fourth Sunday in July so this year it will be on July 26.
What do you typically do on that day and what do you do to
celebrate that day? How does that work? Just like
Mother’s Day, it’s a day to celebrate and honor the aunt or
godmother in a child’s life. It’s up to the families how they want
to celebrate that day but it could is simply be a Skype call to
communicate or with a card or a hug. It’s a way to acknowledge how
much you love and care about them and how much they mean to you.
 What is your definition of “childfull” and how did
that word come about?  Melanie struggled with the
words “childless” and “childfree”. Childless
is the generic term for a woman or man who doesn’t have children.
It has the word “less” in it and nobody wants to feel less than.
Childfree is the implication of one that is free from children.
Melanie does not feel childfree because she has children in her
life. “Childfull” means that one’s life is full of children they
love. This sounds very positive and most women who don’t have a
child of their own but have a child in their life would agree to
that term. Melanie titled her book Otherhood because it’s
not motherhood. Feminists talked about the idea of women being
second to man, that women are other to man, and that equality would
mean that we are no longer other to man. Childless women often feel
other to mother. Melanie thinks that our next stage of liberation
and feeling equal of our own equality movement is to show that we
are equal to mother and that we are not other to mother. It is a
good way to show we are fighting for that sense of equality. There
was a study done in Australia that showed how even among
self-assured, confident, successful women, the feeling of otherness
can make a woman feel less than. It’s interesting how people now
choose the natural period in a woman’s life when to have children.
People often make stereotypes that can be damaging and are not
valid at all. It can be a lot of pressure on a woman who’s not
necessarily responsible for her circumstances. Melanie thinks that
one of the stereotypes are called “career woman.” If you are single
at 40 and don’t have children, most people will identify you as a
career woman meaning that you care more about your career than a
family which can be completely incorrect. Melanie talks about women
freezing their eggs in their mid to late 30s even 40+ in order to
have children once they find a man. It’s quite an expensive process
that women are doing. Two major companies, Apple and Facebook, said
that they would fund up to $20,000 for women to freeze their eggs,
which is an extraordinary gift. Melanie calls it “The Dating
Bermuda Triangle” where women are between the ages of 35 to 40 and
men often think that the women are desperate for children. The
truth is that she could be feeling desperate and can be a
challenging and tough time for her. One should know that this whole
process reverses itself. Once the woman is in her 40s, all of a
sudden a man who is in his 40s or 50s, starts to wonder why isn’t
that woman desperate for me and he becomes more desperate for the
woman who was once the confident one. However the woman of the
“otherhood” will never settle for lesser love because if they were
to have done that, it would have been at age 22 when their eggs
were much fresher. What do you think is the way forward and
how do you think we can address this? Are there more women than men
in that age group? Melanie thinks that it can be very
helpful to be more honest. We have to be the ones to expect
something different from ourselves. Once we start doing this,
the conversation will start to change and the way the conversations
are told back to society, through media, marketing, etc, that’s
when things will start to change. There are so many women leading
fulfilled lives creating things for themselves when they come to a
point where: They either didn’t choose to have children by
choice. It just did not happened due to
circumstance. “Babies are born from the womb, maternity is
born form the soul, and there are many ways to mother.”
Melanie states that this was not the life she expected but
it is in many ways a life beyond her
expectations. She is doing things she never expected
to do. People have asked her if she had any regrets. Her response
is no but beyond that, the way she looks at life is, “Regret is
behind me and my love and my life is ahead of me and if I’m back
there in regret, I’ll never meet him and I’ll never life the life I
was meant to live.” The only advice she gives to “otherhood” is to
the reader to turn the page and start her next chapter. She wants
everybody to move forward. What happens to many of us is that we
get stuck. Many of us live on this “borderline regret.” “Do I
choose A or B?”  Melanie wants every listener to make a choice
and once you’ve done that, you’ll be free and you’ll be living the
authentic life you’re meant to live. Be honest with
yourself/ Have honest conversations with
others. Don’t live in that regret and try not to
be stuck in that grief. As children, we’d imagine and
dream what our future would be like. We do that today as adults and
we don’t let go of what our imagination had decided our life to be.
Whoever is feeling stuck and that their life isn’t the way they
want, write down 10 things that you appreciate abut yourself and
the accomplishments you’ve made. Then you’ll realize all of the
things you actually have rather than what’s missing.
 Who would you say are your most inspirational role
models of women? Diane Von
Furstenberg – her mother is a Holocaust survivor.
Elizabeth Gilbert – childfree by choice No
matter how you feel, there are women like Diane who are born out of
the ashes. Sometimes it takes those low moments to realize that
change is about to happen. What would you like to
leave the world as your legacy? “Move forward and
keep going.” You can find out more about Melanie’s work here.