Happy Women’s History Month.
Let me start by saying I’m extremely irritable right now, having just lost a dear friend to COVID a few days ago. I’m edging into the angry part of the grief cycle, which I know will come and go for a time. Meanwhile, people in Idaho are staging photo ops of their children burning life-saving masks. Innocent people are dying and others are acting like drunken teenagers careening down the road of life threatening all the rest of us. So there’s stuff to be truly angry about. But that’s not what I’m writing about.
I wouldn’t say I’m angry about today’s topic, just irritated. In recent days, I’ve had the opportunity to be in the (virtual) presence of a lot of lovely people I don’t know, praying and grieving and helping the family. As irrelevant as it seems to me in those situations, that perennial question still popped up: “Do you have children?”
As always, there was the awkward silence. Then I answered lightly, “No, I’m fancy free.” But then I added, “Why do you ask?” All of a sudden, the awkwardness was on her instead of me. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, “I just thought . . ., “ and trailed off.
No, you did not think. That’s my point: please think before you ask a stranger that question. Some would say it’s not your business, but I won’t, because that sounds mean, and I know the question is not meant to hurt and is probably just your way of trying to connect, to make conversation, to know me.
But you don’t know me, you don’t know my journey, you don’t know that I haven’t lost a child, that I didn’t try for decades to have a child, that I did not endure repeated miscarriages, that I did not pine my whole life for a husband who never came along.
None of those things are true for me, blessedly. Your question is just a pinprick. But I know women in each of those categories and your mindless question is like a knife in the heart for many of them. Surely, you also know people for whom one or more of those things are true. So — please stop. If a woman has kids. you’re going to hear about them soon enough if she wants to talk about them.
I’m not trying to be mean. Really. (If you want to see my mean face, start telling me why you choose not to wear a mask.) It’s just a matter of thinking about what you say. Nearly half of all women of childbearing age do not have children. In women beyond childbearing years like me, 1 in 7 don’t have kids. There are all different reasons for this, but none of them count as “small talk.”
Writing with Spirit 
Mar 12, 2021 @ 11:35:42
Just like any “getting to know you” question, I suppose this one could be delivered clumsily or with a lack of sensitivity to the context. I spend a lot of time outdoors with retired people. Newcomers are always present. They are newly retired, new to the region, new to the sport. While we do our hiking, climbing, camping, natural history study, we are constantly probing each other for stories, advice, common ground, new perspectives. I just returned from a camping trip with 3 friends, one longtime married couple without children by mutual choice and one woman married with no children through long negotiation with her partner. I came to parenthood young and fairly by accident. Our conversations covered the existential, the practical, the cultural, the economic, and the absurd. Our parent status was given no more or less “weight” than our relationships with our own parents, our siblings, our birthplaces, our travels, our careers, our real estate, our Medicare supplements, our dietary preferences, our religious traditions, our political affiliations, our disappointments, our good luck or our bad luck. For sure, for all of us, certain choices, circumstances, or outcomes can cause feelings of discomfort or pain when they come up in the presence of people we don’t know well or are just getting to know. But mostly, we do the best we can and all come away enriched by what we discover about our partners in adventure, about our own unexamined or still-being-resolved selves, and what we can create together.
Mar 08, 2021 @ 16:02:15
Thank you so much for this post! As a proud childfree woman, I appreciate so much when I’m not the only one blaring this message. Quite frankly, I’m dying to ask every mother I meet, “Why on earth do you HAVE children?” because I’ve never been able to understand why people choose to procreate. But I don’t, because I’m too busy appreciating my childfree life. This probably sounds harsh, but most of us without children are soooo tired of feeling obligated to answer these questions and justify our choices. I’ve heard people say that not having children is selfish: um, nope. Actually, having children is pretty much the most selfish activity humans engage in.
If you haven’t already, Melanie, you might see Maxine Trump’s 2018 film “To Kid or Not to Kid.” (Name is just a coincidence! She’s British.) It’s one of the best documentaries I’ve seen in a long time on this topic, and Maxine handles it with candor and grace.
Happy early Spring to you!