Author of 'Otherhood' shines light on women who are childless because they didn't find the right partner.

By Nara Schoenberg

Melanie Notkin could not have been clearer about her desire to have children.

At age 12, she was buying baby-name books. When she was 23 and interviewing for her first job in New York, she inquired about maternity benefits — just in case.

But a few years ago when a TV news producer approached Notkin, an entrepreneur and Huffington Post contributor, about appearing on his show, he didn't even entertain the possibility that Notkin, like most American women, wanted to be a mom.

"We've been doing a story on women who are childless by choice," the producer wrote in an email. "Are you available?"

Notkin, author of the book, "Otherhood: Modern Women Finding a New Kind of Happiness" (recently released in paperback by Seal Press), is part of a largely invisible segment of American women: those who are childless in their late 30s and beyond because they haven't found the right partner.

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