Dawn Llewellyn

1. Please tell us a bit about yourself and your work.
I’ve been based at the University of Chester for over 14 years, having completed a PhD in Religious Studies (Lancaster). My research is grounded in feminist qualitative approaches in the study of religion and I examine gendered experiences and structures that are often silenced by patriarchal ideologies. I focus on women’s lives in contemporary Christianity and feminist spiritualities. To put it another way, I research how sh*t Christianity can be for women, and I’m also interested in what women do, think and feel about that!

I’ve published on various themes, including women’s religious and spiritual reading practices (how women use literature, poetry, prose as a resource in their lives rather than conventional ‘sacred texts’ like the Bible), third wave feminism, feminist methodologies, and motherhood and childlessness. I’ve co-edited several works and co-authored pieces on broad themes of religion, gender, and sexuality! And, just to say, I don’t identify as religious, although I do have a Catholic background.

I started writing and researching motherhood and childlessness in Christianity about 12 years ago. Pronatalism is in part inherited from Christianity’s legacy (in the global north, at least) and religion presents and constructs women as ‘maternal bodies’ (Gattrell, 2011). There is a heavy maternal expectation that circulates women’s Christian lives (yes, they get in wider society but if you are part of Christian community, the message is heightened) and is inscribed in doctrine, teaching, texts, and everyday social situations in Church contexts. I was interested in how women experienced this and thought about their reproductive choices in light of their faith commitment. Given that motherhood is the ideal fulfilment of a woman’s Christian identity, what happens when women don’t consider that an obligation but a ‘choice’? I’m currently writing up this project (contracted with Bloomsbury) and I’ve published articles and book chapters exploring this.

Academic life is busy! I teach undergraduates, MA students, and supervise doctoral candidates.

I think it is important that academic research reaches beyond university campus, and part of my activism includes creating spaces for discussion, learning and for community. For example, I’ve been part of Storyhouse Women’s Festival since its inception contributing and co-ordinating panels, and I co-founded Storyhouse Childless, an event that explores the many different expressions and experiences of childlessness.

I’m also a swimmer, gym-goer, lover of someone else’s dog, and happily not married to my partner of over 22 years, Bran. He works for the BBC and is a singer/songwriter.

2. Has writing always been a focus for you or was it a Plan B?
Academia is a writing job ... it’s sometimes hard to find time for research in my schedule but it is central. I knew I wanted to pursue postgraduate study when I first encountered feminist approaches as an undergraduate (this was in the late 1990s). I loved the challenge, critique, and reform of Christianity that feminist scholars had posed, and I wanted to be part of that conversation and contribute to it!

I think through my teenage/early adulthood I’d thought having children was a possibility - my parents had never done that "One day when we’re grandparents, or one day when you have a family of your own". They always said you might decide to have children, you might not – I’m grateful to them for that – but I guess I presumed there would be a right time, right person, right set of feelings and certainty about it.
 

Bran and I are not married by choice, and we first came out to family and friends as childless by choice in about 2015. What prompted that open, public disclosure was an appearance on BBC Radio 4 to discuss my research on childlessness and motherhood in Christianity. I thought "I don’t want all the important people in my life to hear about a potentially life changing choice for us, when I’m being interviewed on national broadcast media." Up to that point, despite being together a long time, we’d only been living together for about four years. Before I had been an EFL teacher in another country, I’d been travelling on my own, or a postgraduate student living in Lancaster and then South Wales while Bran had a job in London – so we’d never lived in the same city or country together. It wasn’t until I’d finished my PhD and been appointed at Chester that the conversation about children started to surface.

Although I thought researching women’s reproductive choices to have or not to have children was just an interesting project worthy of study, looking back, I think it wasn’t exactly a co-incidence! I’m not Christian, but listening to the mothers and the voluntary childless women weigh up what that meant for them was having quite a profound effect and bringing my questions, concerns and anxieties to the fore!
 

Before that we didn’t really need to think about it and it wasn’t something that I was conscious of wanting to plan for. It’s been really a very circuitous, up and down, non-linear, messy conversation! Early on in the relationship, there have been times when Bran’s been sure he did want children at times when I was warming to the idea; times when I’ve been ambivalent at best and he’s been a definite ‘no’; times when neither of us have had any clue; a couple of pregnancy scares that have meant thinking through what might happen and what it would mean, and on those occasions there was a very certain sense that I did not want to be pregnant or to be a mother. I sort of felt it. For us, if one of us is fairly sure they don’t want children, and the other is at best ambivalent, then that didn’t seem the most secure foundation for a forever decision.
 

But then sometimes we’ve left it open ended: what will be, if one of us changes our minds, then we wouldn’t want to make the other unhappy. Sometimes, especially when we spend time with our beloved niblings, we think how much fun, generative it would be and we wonder if we made the ‘right’ choice and if we’ll regret it – but I think that’s mainly because people tell me I might regret it, usually tagged onto to a comment about how I’m so great with kids, that I’d be a great mother, that the world needs people like Bran and I to have children.
 

And YET there are lots of reasons that surface. Before we lived together and I had a job, I would unconsciously explaining away my voluntary childlessness (Gillespie, 2000): "I’ve been a student for a long time"; "My partner and I lived in different cities for ages"; and "I’m commuting between London and Chester … it’s difficult". That was all true. For me, it is about career. I didn’t land my first proper job until I was 33. I’d lots of fun in my 20s but I’d worked hard to get my academic credentials. I knew the sort of hours that job takes and that I was coming to it a bit later. I’m an all or nothing sort of person – I don’t think I’d be great at managing a career and other major responsibilities.

We’re both conscious that there are economic and ecological reasons too at play, but mainly we really really love our life together and the life we’ve taken a long time to build. In that sense, as we’re now both in our late 40s, sometimes I think we’ve just made a choice to stay as we are, rather than a choice not to have children.

3. How do you explore ideas or find inspiration for your work?
My participants! As a qualitative researcher, I tend to interview women about their experiences and I always learn so much. I want to help tell their stories. My students too! I’m lucky to work with a brilliant bunch who are engaged, interesting, and give me hope!

4. What does the process of writing involve for you?
It is mainly painstaking – I'm really slow! It’s a combination of working with the scholarship that helps inform my work, designing and undertaking qualitative projects, analysing the data, trying to think of ways to theorise my findings, and then going through a convoluted process of writing notes, writing drafts and re-writing endlessly.

I don’t particularly enjoy the ‘blank’ page. I tend to ‘write to think’ so I know I want to explore certain themes or ideas but I don’t often know my precise argument until I’ve got a very, very, very drafty-draft ... and then I just keep going. I’ll have notes, big bits of paper with questions, mind-maps, and key words pinned to my room (I’ve done this since I was an undergraduate). I love the part where there’s enough words for me to ‘sort it out’. I get out a big red pen and cross things out, move things round ... it’s very messy, disorganised, and stressful. It’s taken me a long time to learn to trust this process, but I still battle constantly with the demons. Somehow, miraculously, I eventually get there but I don’t half make a meal of it! 

 

I find it helpful to talk through my work. I’m really lucky. I’ve got amazing friends and colleagues who also work in my field, and we can talk honestly about our writing. That inspires me too!

5. And what does writing then also give you in return?
There’s the creative satisfaction and the intellectual satisfaction ... and it is a gift to be able to work with women’s experiences. I love learning.
 

6. Has seeing your work in print changed how you view yourself, and also how you view your NoMo status?
That’s a tough one! It was really exciting when my first book was published and they arrived in a box, all neatly stacked. Often, though, by the time something is published, it has been ages since it was submitted. And when it is submitted, I usually just feel relieved that I’ve finally completed a project!

It’s nice when I’m cited in other people’s work, or someone tells me they’ve read my stuff and found it helpful/interesting/challenging.

7. Tell us about the wider reception that you’ve had to sharing your story - has it changed how others have viewed you and your identity as a non-parent?
It’s been mixed! I’ve had questions, comments, challenges but I’ve also had support. My parents were always, "Well, you might have children one day, you might not!" For a Storyhouse Childless panel (two years ago, I think), they joined me to talk about this aspect of our upbringing (I have a younger sister).

I’ve always been very keen to bring all the different experiences of childlessness together, in conversation. Yes, it’s important to recognise differences and not collapse them, but if we want to understand and keep challenging pronatalism, then it is important to discuss how pronatalism and patriarchy affects inequality in diverse ways, so finding points of connection and commonality is crucial. That’s not always been easy and there is sometimes understandable resistance to that. It’s not easy, when you are grieving and in pain, to hear someone declare they are happy with their childfree choices. I’m so privileged to be able to have a choice and I’ve learnt so much from hearing the experiences of childless-not-by-choice communities. I’m told that my CNBC friends have learnt from me too.

8. How do you feel about the current representation of childless and/or childfree people in literature?
You could answer, "What representation?!?!?". There’s very little! I could go on for AGES about how Christianity has problematically (not) represented childlessness (and I do go on about it, a lot).

It’s difficult. Most people become parents but that doesn't mean that childless experiences shouldn’t receive a richer, nuanced and well-drawn depiction. I’d also find it quite refreshing if childless characters or childless themes were mentioned, but weren’t dwelt upon and didn’t elicit much commentary! Saying that, there is more out there! There’s been a bit of a swell of writing in the past 10 years but mainly prose, memoir and non-fiction. I loved Annie Kirby’s The Hollow Sea.

9. What would you like the publishing world to know about non-parents, both as writers and readers, and our stories?
See above!
 

10. What future plans do you have, especially for your writing?

Finish. The. Book.