The shelf · Ageing alone
Does Living the Life Unexpected hold up?
Living the Life Unexpected: 12 Weeks to Your Plan B for a Meaningful and Fulfilling Future Without Children, by Jody Day (2016)
A twelve-week programme for women who are childless not by choice.
The short answer
Its figures were close for women born in the early 1970s, but childlessness has since fallen, and it has not doubled.
The claims, checked
About one in five women reach 45 without having had children.
Outdated 19% of women born in 1973 were childless at 45; for women born in 1979 it is 15.7%. England and Wales only.
Evidence: Office for National Statistics
The number of people without children is almost double what it was a generation ago.
Does not hold The ONS measures the share, not the number: 14.8% of women born in 1953 were childless, against 15.7% of those born in 1979, and it calls the share fairly consistent since the late 1950s. The population of women that age has not doubled.
Evidence: Office for National Statistics