Whether or not someone has children or not is a personal, emotional and complex situation but a midwife turned psychologist has stepped in to help and says social attitudes are becoming more accepting.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
Dr Joanne Lawrence-Bourne helps men, women, non-binary people, singles and couples through her business Natal Instincts Reproductive Psychology in Orange.
"There can be extreme emotions, you get extreme joy, happiness, elation and then you get really deep sadness, grief, anger, all these different emotions," she said.
"It's hard when you're not getting what you want, whatever way it is."
![Dr Joanne Lawrence-Bourne in her office at Natal Instincts Reproductive Psychology in Orange. Picture by Jude Keogh Dr Joanne Lawrence-Bourne in her office at Natal Instincts Reproductive Psychology in Orange. Picture by Jude Keogh](/images/transform/v1/crop/frm/GpZJ7bTi6nvXt5tnNdnKeU/feb50991-aab1-4fc1-a589-03b8c0e428d6.JPG/r0_294_8256_4954_w1200_h678_fmax.jpg)
Dr Lawrence-Bourne started out as a midwife before becoming a reproductive psychologist.
"Whether people have children or don't have children, this is sort of one of the most fundamental things in our human population," she said.
"It creates all the emotions of anxiety, depression, sadness, anticipation, grief and loss but also the joy as well. Some people are quite joyful as well.
"Some people really want to have children and other people go, 'I don't care if I do or I don't.
"It should be ok whatever we do and it's how we feel about ourselves with these decisions or choice or lack of choice."
A changing society
She said society has become more accepting of people who don't have children and of same-sex couples having children since she started 20 years ago.
"I think society is shifting a bit," she said.
"I think people's sense of family has shifted and the importance of social family and friends are really important. It's not always your blood family that are supporting how you live your life and what's happening at work.
"How we live is often influence on whether we have children or don't have children, whether we have partners or don't have partners and I think society is certainly changing when people don't have children."
Missing out on grandchildren
Her clients range from 17-year-olds to older adults who she said still have a reproductive journey.
"They may have experienced miscarriages that they've never talked about," Dr Lawrence-Bourne said.
She also sees men men and women who never had children for a range of reasons and now they are dealing with not becoming grandparents.
"They've lived through their peers becoming parents and they go, 'right that's done, I've done that' and then their peers all become grandparents," Dr Lawrence-Bourne said.
"I remember in my PhD one man said, 'now I've got to go through all this again. All my friends are becoming grandfathers and I have to live through all that of them talking about their grandchildren."
Social pressure and regret
Dr Lawrence-Bourne also takes into account how culture and religion creates expectations and how domestic violence can take away an individual's choice about not having children.
"Sometimes there's people who have children who regret having children, there's a lot of cultural and religious expectation, social expectations around having children," she said.
"Some people who didn't want to have children were forced to have children."
Stress of IVF
Dr Lawrence-Bourne also helps singles and couples who are seeking help on how to navigate the variety of emotions involved in assisted reproduction such as IVF.
"I think people underestimate the stress people go through and it's not just women, it's people of all genders who go through this distress around it," she said.
"People can still be parents but they may not be the biological parent so therefore IVF and sperm donor, egg donor, all that comes into it as well.
"Some people feel like they are a father to their child but they may not be a biological parent.
"It is really quite complex."
Older mothers
Dr Lawrence-Bourne also addressed the issue of older mothers.
"I have one child myself and I was older," she said.
She said people tend to be apprehensive when a woman has her first child in her late 30s or early 40s but women also had babies when they were older in the past, they just weren't usually their first child.
"I'm the eldest of six so I come from a large family and I myself only have one child and I was older," she said.
"My mother, she would have been 40 by the time she had the sixth child."
Reading this on mobile web? Download our news app. It's faster, easier to read and we'll send you alerts for breaking news as it happens. Download in the Apple Store or Google Play.
Sign-up to our latest newsletter.