Childrearing: Not everyone who reads this column has children. And some pople who read it are feeling a lot of pain because they are not parents

I realised this anew thanks to the reaction of some infertile couples to my piece on THINKERS (two high incomes, no kids, early retirement). Members of the National Infertility Support and Information Group (NISIG) pointed out that I should have drawn a distinction between the involuntarily childless and the voluntarily child-free.

Talking with women who have suffered from being involuntarily childless, a few points struck me. One is that you can be a parent without having living children. Our society tends to limit parenting to biological or legal parents, when, in fact, every child needs more than just two parents. We need to involve childless adults in our family lives, if they want such engagement. You can be childless, yet still know a lot about children have valuable advice to give.

Many of the "childless" or "childfree", which ever way you want to look at it, care deeply for children and crave an outlet through which to express this - even though the surrogate children they parent will never quite be the same as having their own child.

Another point is that to grieve your unborn child is to feel a grief as real as if it was for a born child. To mourn the non-existence of your unborn or even unconceived child is to feel a grief as real as if it was for a born child. That can be hard for those of us who are parents to believe, but it is true.

At times, all of us can be insensitive to the grief that people who are involuntarily childless feel.

National Infertility Support and Information Group: 1890-647444