The New York Times Sunday Business section (July 10, 2016) features Melanie Notkin and her brands Savvy Auntie, PANK, and Otherhood in a report on how, by focusing mainly on moms, marketers are missing an influential consumer: the childless woman. The piece credits Melanie for developing Savvy Auntie and Otherhood in response, as well as her research on the demographic she dubbed: PANKs or Professional Aunt No Kids. The piece also credits her work on the Shades of Otherhood study, or the non-mom demographic.

Even as advertisers are embracing new configurations of families — two dads, say, or grandparents raising grandchildren — there’s one group that feels left out.

Women who are childless. Or as they also call themselves, the child-free. Or even the NotMoms.

According to census figures, more women in the United States are childless than at any other time since the government began keeping track in 1976. Nearly half of women — 47.6 percent — between the ages of 15 and 44 did not have children in 2014, up from 46.5 percent in 2012. And 15.3 percent of women ages 40 to 44 are childless. The numbers are growing internationally as well.

Despite these statistics, “the majority of marketing talks to adult women like they are all moms or want to be mothers,” said Adrianna Bevilaqua, chief creative officer at M Booth, a public relations company.

Melanie Notkin has made a career of catering to women who don’t have children but love them — she is the founder of the website SavvyAuntie; coined the term “professional aunt, no kids,” or PANKs; and is the author of “Otherhood: Modern Women Finding a New Kind of Happiness.” She wonders why companies, always eager to target a potentially lucrative demographic, seem to be ignoring this one.

The childless woman is “left off the table,” Ms. Notkin said. “Advertisers don’t know how to pitch to her.”

Photo: Karen Malone Wright (left), founder of the Not-Mom Summit, also featured in the NYT piece, with Melanie Notkin who keynoted the Not-Mom Summit - October 2015.

Read more at The New York Times.