to find childfree comments on parenting forums insensitive?

But she will never know, for example, what it’s like to be without children in her 60s. Or what a marriage without children lasting several decades is like. She only knows what her life was like before she had children.

My husband and I chose to not have children, but occasionally a person who doesn't know us will assume that we have children and then ask us well why don't you have any.
It is actually nobody's business as to whether you do or don't have children.
I don't know how mums/dads do it to be honest, so much respect to you.

@SmellycatSmelllycat well said. I’m glad you found this site at a time when you needed it and it was a help to you to carry on.

It baffles me that people can’t look past the name mumsnet and see any other reason why people might join and post.

I’m childfree but was directed to mumsnet by friends (with children) out of frustration when everywhere else was being censored heavily when it comes to being gender critical and women’s rights. I don’t think I’ve seen anything about specific parenting issues on these boards except for concerns about trans children and the worries about risks of transitioning which is an issue everyone should be concerned about in my eyes - not just parents.

I have also found helpful advice and support on the mental health and relationships boards, there was lots of information when I considered weight loss injections, being a small women (4’10) I appreciated knowing there were others out there with similar struggles and the shopping boards were helpful for clothing.

I wouldn’t have been aware lots of my worrying symptoms were perimenopause if it wasn’t for mumsnet and it gave me help in approaching my GP and convincing her that despite being young that it was a possibility and after hormone levels were tested it turned out I was right.

On Christmas Day when I was at rock bottom after a series of traumatic events I was seriously considering if I wanted to carry on anymore.
Someone posted about having an Emma Thomson Christmas (the love actually scene where despite her world crumbling she wiped away her tears and had to keep going) I’m grateful to the person who started that thread and everyone else who showed me that not everyone was having a perfect magical (or even boring mundane but pleasant) Christmas.
I don’t know if I’d have been here if it wasn’t for that thread and reading about the strength, courage and pain lots of other women were experiencing.
I wiped away my tears just like Emma T and I’ve carried on.

I feel I’ve offered invaluable advice and support to parents with ND children based on my experience as a support worker and also being ND myself. I’ve had parents who have children in supported housing thank me for letting them know how much the staff care and for being understanding and sharing my own insights and experiences as a ND child.

I have posted in AIBU a few times about small amusing dilemmas and things that were genuinely worrying me as being autistic I often worry about friendship issues or social situations that I might not have handed correctly. I received so much support and was grateful it stopped my intrusive thoughts and set my mind to rest.
Also a post I made about my friends bizarre behaviour was picked up on by a few people who pointed out it might be down to a health condition - they were right and she was diagnosed last week.

Apart from all this there have a lot of laughs and it’s passed time when I’ve been bored or travelling or just had time to kill pondering about why phrases like “can I get” “picky bits” “cuppa” and “a red lip” have the power to make people feel murderous 😂. It’s also been a relief to find other people with misophonia and to enlighten other sufferers that it exists!

As a pp said this is one of the only forums in this country that has mostly women posters.
I don’t think the parenting side is the main incentive for most people on here and mumsnet is often trending on social media, comes up in Google searches, is mentioned in women’s fiction books and even on the news.

I think it’s a shame anyone criticises other people’s reasons for being here or their posts, everyone lives their lives differently and as women we all have a lot in common that’s more then our reproductive choices (or unfulfilled hopes) and a lot of advice and wisdom we could offer - even if it’s just one person on one occasion.

Instead of focusing on the name and trying to gatekeep the sight for parents the people who want the site to only be relevant for mums need to think about how limited the discussions and topics would be when there is plenty of support for mothers in other areas.

As for childfree people gloating about their choices or saying they hate children - lots of parents post about not liking children except their own and how annoying children can be. It’s not just childfree people who get irritated by a child kicking the back of their plane seat or have expressed a wish for adult only flights even!
When they post they are accused of child hating but parents can happily say they don’t want to sit in a family friendly section on a plane to be surrounded by other peoples kids!

There have been many many posts over the years I’ve been here about women hating motherhood or even regretting having children that were met with so much sympathy and support (as they should have been) but when someone on the childfree board made a post about being childfree and their own personal reasons behind it it’s been brought up a few times about how shocking it was and how the board should be banned.
Most of it was banter that had been posted multiple times by women with children and there was lots of discussion about how bitter and jealous childfree people must be but apparently that wasn’t as shocking as someone saying they were grateful they had never had children so they could have a tidy house and a lie in!

There will still be comments after I post by people faux naively wondering why childfree people are on this site (I wouldn’t be surprised if people don’t read all my post as it’s a lot longer then I planned!) and after multiple others have tried to explain their own reasons. It’s just another excuse to criticise other others choices or some people genuinely don’t realise that not everyone thinks exactly like they do.

I think it’s a shame that for childfree women who find this site valuable and useful that it’s another form of exclusion that we face constantly because we have made a decision that even in this day and age appears to be taboo to a lot of people.
I agree that it’s not kind to act smug about being childfree when a mother is struggling but as plenty of others have pointed out this scenario of someone posting something unrelated to the OP happens on pretty much every thread, it always seems to be treated as a big scandal when childfree people act satisfied with their choices but we do face a lot of stigma over it and have to regularly defend our choices which can come across as defensive.

It would be great if mumsnet was accepted more as a woman’s forum rather than a parenting one and a place for women to impart support, advice and life experiences on all issues we face - including - but not mainly parenting.
There really isn’t another forum like it unless you head to Reddit which is heavily populated by American teenagers or TRA’s looking to start a war by any mention of women’s rights.
But if people can’t see it as anything more then the small site it was started as where posters knew each others first names and met up IRL then it’ll continue to isolate women who might be at crisis point I was like last Christmas who feel they have nothing to contribute because the parenting section isn’t relevant to them.

I also find it ironic that “it takes a village” is mentioned so many times and yet when a village is offered online it’s rejected because despite women on here being child psychologists, teachers, social workers, have raised their own siblings or just aren’t able to have children their input is worthless.

I don’t have kids and found mumsnet because the AIBU’s were plastered over Facebook and I think they’re interesting. I avoid certain topics like TTC or pregnancy as they’re not relevant or helpful to me. Sometimes I’ll click on something else and have no interest in it and move on.

Yes some posts make me grateful for not having children as it looks like bloody hard work but I wouldn’t post that in response to someone struggling. I might say thank god I’m single if someone is moaning about a feckless husband.

I love being a mother, but I think making the choice to be child free can be a difficult one even if it’s right for some people. For this reason I welcome child free perspectives, even on parenting threads.

When are people going to realise that AIBU is full of women who are wind up merchants that want to antagonise the OP for sport?

I say “women” as a fellow woman, because any time someone does blatantly try to wind up an OP, someone comes along to say “there’s a lot of men on the boards tonight” or “trolls”.

Nah.

It’s women, fellow mums or people who you’d think would be sympathetic, but who actually have spotted a vulnerable OP and want to deliberately share a view which could be antagonising or upsetting, but they wrap it in faux-naivety, or condescending “correction”, or whatever else can be shared in a velvet glove

even this comment will inevitably attract the “well Netmums might be more for you” etc

I post because there are lively debates about all sorts of things.
Plus AIBU is super addictive. Perhaps you can suggest some UK based alternatives though? Why would anyone join multiple separate forums just for one bit of particular advice when they could get it all here? I hate joining new forums and going through all the rigmarole of passwords and usernames before I can post. I can never think of a good username for one. Plus few other sites have the traffic this one does.

If mumsnet was really all about parents surely they'd have only posts strictly related to raising children?

Living with without children ^for now* and ultimately planning/hoping to have children someday is very different to living life without children ever and knowing you intend to live your entire life that way. There are vastly different things to be taken into consideration.

But everyone’s experience of love is subjective. You cannot know the depth or breadth of the love someone else is feeling. People can’t even agree on a description of what love feels like.

If all parents felt this wonderful, transformative, ultra-special love that we’re told about, then we wouldn’t have Disney Dads that rarely ever see their kids, or parents who abandon them altogether, we wouldn’t have the myriad of threads we see on the relationships forum where women are putting their desire for a relationship ahead of the needs of their children, we wouldn’t have examples of parents neglecting and abusing their kids and we wouldn’t have cases of parents myrdetkng their kids, save for rare circumstances like serious mental illness.

Meh, I’m child-free and I would say my life is pretty stressful. The difference is I own my choice - I picked a notoriously difficult career and trapped myself in it by emigrating and getting stuck on a non-transferable visa. I’m a fool who now has to lie in the miserable bed I’ve made for myself.

The issue some people have with the threads where the OP is complaining about how hard ‘3 under 3’ is, is there’s very rarely any responsibility taken. In a country with sex education from a young age, widely available contraception and one of the most permissive abortion laws in the world, ‘3 under 3’ is very, very, very rarely not a choice.

Of course she has. Life without children is when, you know, you don’t have any children - like BEFORE you have kids.

I had a life without children until I was 35. I nearly didn’t have any because of infertility. I don’t see my time before having children as just “before I had a child”. That’s not how I’d define it - it was my life without children.

But this statement is absolutely true. You can’t know, really know, unless you’ve had your own children. How could you if you haven’t?

I lived with my nieces and nephews since they were babies until nearly secondary school. I babysat ALL the time. I thought I knew everything about having kids.

It turns out I knew how to look after them, but the emotions that hit you about your OWN child is something that you cannot prepare for, or have any idea what it feels like. You can’t know what it’s like to have, or how you can feel for your own child, if you’ve never had one.

But that’s a numbers’ game isn’t it? MN attracts far more mothers than it does child free people. I wonder what the “stats” would say if you looked at it proportionately?

I absolutely understand that my life experience / the shape of my life is not everyone's - and also @KimberleyClark 's about before vs without. For me personally it is very much 'before and after' and so on which I don't think is unusual

For MN specifically I post on a range of topics and obviously having children or not is irrelevant to many of them. For parenting topics however I do post as a parent and feel it is fair enough to make the assumption that I am talking to other parents or people with a professional interest in children

Indeed they do.

And MN is a microcosm of the world: far more childfree women are judged, commented on, asked rude questions about being child free than women with children are asked about having chidren.

The latter is generally seen as "natural" and the "right thing"; the former is generally seen as "unnatural" and odd.

I'm not certain I fully agree with you on this issue. I'm not criticising - I do see your point - but in my mind it perhaps centres too much on motherhood being the ultimate experience and there being a clear "before" and "after" which I don't think there is. You (and everyone) can't imagine their life taking a different path because philosophically it's too hard. So reflecting on other people's situations you can only ever emphasise, irrespective of your current life situation. And that applies to everyone. Does that make sense?

OK, but for me that falls under the heading 'some people are dicks' which applies equally to parents and the childfree.

For all anyone knows, the posts that are outrageously goady specifically to parents may well come from trolls, pure and simple, who might not even be childfree.

Well, there is a tagline 'by parents, for parents' to clear that up, but the original focus of the site as 'parenting advice' has expanded to include many topics that have nothing to do with whether you're a parent or not, which is why I struggle to understand why childfree people are criticised for being here.

I thought it was for people WITH mums. That might where some of the confusion comes from.

You could try Penisnet. It's great, if that's your bag.

I would’ve thought it was obviously a reference to the kind of childfree posters the OP refers to in her opening post. So no, not “MN’s entire childfree contingent”.

Being a parent clearly comes with sort of tolerance for others, empathy and kind nature that makes them ideal to shape the next generation.

To whom are you referring here? Particular posters, or MN's entire childfree contingent?

I don't have children by choice and am now kind of old, but completely get that wanting and having them is perfectly normal and reasonable (and a good thing for the human race, tbh😁)

If I've ever given advice or support to people with parenting issues I hope it hasn't been done in a twattish way. Noone exists in a vacuum and even those of us without kids can have much younger siblings, step children and grandchildren etc.

Wouldn't dream of crowing about my childfree state though, personal choice, as anyone telling childless people they are wrong shouldn't.