to find childfree comments on parenting forums insensitive?

You are 100% correct that anyone doing that is being insensitive. That’s not to say people are not insensitive in many other ways on many other topics as they absolutely are.
It also would be a fair criticism that child free by choice women tend towards being smug about issues parents are facing/say they should have planned better and resentful about “their”money being spent on other people’s offspring or that mothers tend towards being smug about their kids being the most important thing they’ve ever achieved and dismissing the worth of the contributions those who are child free make. Not all women (child free or not) are like that by any means but certainly enough are that it’s a common response to be an arse to
someone different. See also breastfed vs not, SAHM vs working one. Then you have the whole high earners/benefit claimants clashes, left vs right political views etc. I’m depressing myself a bit coming to the conclusion that actually quite a lot of people can be awful about at least some topics. That said most of us are a bit more considerate than the various bad examples in the thread most of the time.

I see a lot more vitriolic and rude comments from childfree women aimed at mothers, than I do the other way around.

Not this faux-naive shite again.

I’m honestly having flashbacks to that awful thread we had when we were discussing with MNHQ setting up a MNers without children board. Just like this, it was taken over by the scolding parents who weren’t at all listening to the perfectly sensible arguments for including it and instead ranting on about how Mumsnet was for mums and couldn’t we go somewhere else, totally ignoring that only a fraction of the site is now actually about parenting. It seems we will always be interlopers here.

I am minded to stop offering advice about any of the areas in which I have professional knowledge and expertise or personal experience until I’ve checked if the person to whom I’m offering it is happy to receive advice on these totally non-parenting topics from a person who isn’t a parent. Because for many, it seems being a parent is apparently the only qualification needed for knowing about menopause, architecture, cooking and the planning system.

There are plenty of interesting topics to discuss. I've been here for years. I've never had children and never had any intention to do so.

Genuinely curious as to what drew you to a site called mumsnet if you’re childfree?

(If you have at some point been trying for children I could understand it).

I had it done to me on a thread on the parenting board where I was struggling with my newborn baby and a childfree person said it had reminded them to get sterilised.

Do I think though that post is representative of all childfree people? Of course I don't. But some childfree people will post on parenting threads when a person is struggling to say it makes them glad they don't have children. Just as some people with children for some reason go on threads about children to wax lyrical about true love, about their children paying these peoples pensions etc etc.

Both are arsehole things to and it's important to recognise like life there will always be arseholes and people who act like it on both sides of the fence rather than this turn into some childfree vs mums debate and both sides going on the defensive.

I can't get worked up about who posts on here. This board isn't a dictatorship and people should feel free to post whether they have kids or not. There's lots of topics such as mental health, elderly parents etc that people without kids male very valuable contributions to.

Just as a heads up, the board is for MN without children, so that's the CF like me but also for people who wanted children but never had any.

Despite it having been explained over and over again?

Again. I don’t care.

i have been here well over a decade, maybe more towards 15 years now
I searched when I was pregnant and being blackmailed into a termination, and got here via a Google search. I don’t have children but I stayed for AIBU, style and beauty and many other topics
it’s not like you get to “right I’m not having DC, must leave this forum”

maybe someone googled best trousers for work and ended up here and decided they liked it and stayed. It’s nothing to do with children

I don’t have a problem with it.

I don’t give 2 fucks either way what people do on here.

I suppose it’s not your fault you’re unduly literal and fundamentally misunderstand what Mn now is. A chat forum with a huge membership, male and female, parents and non-parents.

If you have a problem with non Mums posting here, or the existence of the Mumsnetters Without Children board, take it up with MNHQ. It is their policy to welcome all women regardless of whether they have children. Or do you just like moaning?

Exactly. It’s got ‘Mum’ right there, in the title.

So, the correct assumption would be that the site was set up for mums, therefore most of their users will be mums.
If you have no intention of ever becoming a mum, why would you join?

As i get older, I find myself saying this so often: some people just like moaning.

Yanbu. It baffles me that people who are not parents or trying to become parents would frequent this site. No way I’d visit a forum meant for a specific sector of people that didn’t include me- eg golf enthusiasts, men’s issues, healthcare professionals etc etc.

it doesn't matter. They can say it if they like. They didn't break any rules.

I had that from everyone body - people kids adjacent and ones who had kids decades ago and other with younger kids - everyone was an expert on my kids and I could know nothing despite sepending 24/7 with baby/child.

It started in pg with people suddenly deciding what me a well edcuated independent adult was allowed to consume. I was lucky with maternity care bar post natal ward which was horrifc - but maternity care subsquently often tried to treat me the mother as an inconvience to point last pg they put mine and babies life at unnessary risk.

I think it was a mix of having more than one child and area we moved to but HCP and wider professionals also started talking to me in very condensending manner. I remember being an an local event and being run at and grabbed by woman anxious to sign me up for basic english classes - I have a degree and masters despite being dsylexic - I was mortified wonder what about me had triggered that and DH said later after he's stepped in he'd overheard and it was just having multiple young kids with me.

It why I found MN useful - to know I wasn't being rude when 24 hours after giving birth sore and tried and still establish bf it wasn't unreasonable for me not to run round after unexpected guests.

It that drip drip drip on your confidence when you are most vunerable - learning new skills learning about a new person while not at your best - so many feel need to jump in and decide they know better - it stays with you and no one told me that it not an infrequent event though thankfully not every mother gets it.

I'm sorry it happened to you as well.

You think your friend is typical of all childfree women? Have you ever seen a childfree woman on here lecturing a mother on how to look after a baby? I wouldn’t dream of it. Doubtless you’d also be complaining if she’d shown no interest at all in your baby.

The OP was in any case talking about childfree posters saying “this is why I’m glad I never had children”, as opposed to childfree women thinking they know better than mothers, and I don’t often see that on here outside of the Mumsnetters Without Children board and why shouldn’t childfree posters say that there. I don’t think you’ll see childfree women going on the specific parenting threads as opposed to AIBU or Chat.

I think this sums it up. I think empathy is OK, but not chiming in with views and opinions on something you have no experience with.

I had a friend about 30 years ago (who I'd known about 7-8 years at the time, I met her through a hobby group,) who was childfree, but not by choice, she just 'hadn't met the right man.' I had my first child, and she came to see me in hospital the day after, (yes, that soon!) She also came to see me as soon as I had got home a week later.

She then came 3 times a week. Every single time she came, she started lecturing me on how I should be looking after my baby. Advice about breastfeeding, telling me I wasn't doing it right when I did it while she was there, telling me my baby's nappy needs changing as it's 'full.' (It wasn't) Telling me what time she should be going to bed, what time she needs to be put down for a nap, and all sorts of 'advice.' Acting like she was a midwife or social worker or something! (She worked in a bank!) When my baby was just under 5 weeks old, she said she wants to babysit her, and DH and I can go out. She said to my DD 'we'll show mummy how to look after a baby properly.'

I felt my cheeks flushing red, I was fucking fuming. I said 'mummy has only had a baby for 33 days, mummy is learning as she's going along...' She said 'awwww, don't get all salty, I just know a lot about looking after babies and small children, I have 2 nieces and a nephew with only 7 years between them, that I baby sit sometimes. Anyway have a word with Dave and let me know which date you want to go out next week, and I'll be here....'

tl;dr I told DH all this and he went mad. Firstly that she had upset me, and secondly that she thought she knew more because she babysits her nieces and nephews sometimes. It's not QUITE the same as having your own babies, and being woken all through the night, and breastfeeding them, and having them hang off you half the day, with 3 hours sleep a night! Along with postnatal depression for many months, for many new mothers.

I didn't have her babysitting, and when she phoned again, I got DH to put her off and kept putting her off again and again, until she got the message 'leave me alone.'

I didn't have babies til around 30 years old, and I don't ever recall - when I was childfree - lecturing mothers of babies/young children on how to look after them properly, and I used to babysit my little brother AND my neighbours kids!!!

.

Not at all - I’m saying they’re everywhere, on both sides. It’s equally repugnant. But the parents lambasting the childfree need to recognise that, too.

I've never been to the child free board (because why would I?) so I wouldnt know and have never seen people do that. Why cant you address what the OP is saying instead of engaging in pointless whatabouttery?

You are literally excusing arseholery as long as its demonstrated by MNers without kids so I suspect you also have the potential to be one.

I agree OP, I am childfree and have no regrets but I'd never jump on a post by someone who was having a difficult time if I had nothing supportive to add. Its just plain unkind and reeks of having something to prove to themselves more than anything else. Its as if they can't understand that someone might still absolutely love being a mum but just be having a rough time right at that moment. I swear empathy is in short supply these days!

Quite apart from the previous good reasons posters have provided about Mumsnet going way beyond being a parenting forum…

You have to take into account that society has considered having children to be the default purpose/function/preoccupation for women for millennia. To the point that until recently many people thought there was no other legitimate role for women.

Given that context and the fact that more women are choosing to (and being allowed to) remain child free by choice, can you not see that some child free women might have perspectives on parenting and the role of women in society generally?

I agree that coming onto a forum called “Mumsnet” and declining that having children is shit is tone deaf and stupid.

But by the same token I don’t want to live in an echo chamber of talking only to other parents. I value the views of childfree women.

They equally are dicks.