Joan Eisenstodt
Joan is originally from Ohio, and moved to Washington, DC in 1978. In 1981 she founded Eisenstodt Associates, LLC, a DC-based meeting consulting, facilitation & training company. Joan has immersed herself in the hospitality industry and is considered one of its most knowledgeable & ethical practitioners. Joan always thought that after marriage, she’d have 1.9 children (replacement number) and then adopt as many as she could to ‘save the world.’ After reading a blurb in Time magazine about the National Organization of Non-Parents (NON, she began to rethink her belief in having children. That lead to a decision and a crusade to find a doctor to perform a tubal ligation. At 26, with hospitals having rules that required a woman’s age times the number of children she’d had to equal 120, she faced obstacles. Sent to psychiatrists to ‘get permission’, she was told ‘no’. Through volunteering for Planned Parenthood in her Ohio hometown she became the first patient in her state to have a laparoscopic procedure done. She became involved in NON as a speaker on “The Phil Donahue Show”, on shows in New York, Chicago, and elsewhere, and as a NON board member. Her visibility led to both hate mail & kudos. Her favorite question, consistently asked was “how do you know you won’t regret it?” To that, she’d answer: “I’d rather regret not having children than having them. They are not returnable.” Divorced, remarried, & childfree now for 50 years, she has never regretted her decision.
