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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To start a thread about things you should not say or do to childless people

830 replies

user1485342611 · 24/10/2017 11:12

As someone who can't have children I have sometimes been shocked at how tactless and insensitive some people can be - the latest being a colleague who objects to having to work over Christmas because 'Christmas is about children. Staff with families should get priority'.

I do have a family, it just doesn't include children of my own.

AIBU to be fed up of this kind of stuff and to ask other posters in similar situations to share hurtful acts and words in the hope that it might educate those not in our situation and who don't always think before they speak/act?

OP posts:
PurpleDaisies · 25/10/2017 20:47

I think any other thinking is incredibly self centred and down right pig headed to be honest.

What an absolute loads of bollocks. People wanting to not work Christmas Day for any reason at all is their right and it’s not selfish or pig headed. Why should the fact that I don’t have children mean that I never spend time with my family on Christmas Day? People choose to have children. Plenty of parents work Christmases without complaining because it’s fair that everybody takes their share of the unpopular shifts. It’s only entitled arseholes who try and guilt trip people without children into working when they have as much right as anyone else to request the day off.

And plenty of children still have wonderful Christmases with parents at work. I was one of them.

ilovesooty · 25/10/2017 20:47

No parents with children should not get priority. They should have the same entitlement when rostering as any other worker. If people want to swap shifts later and are permitted to that's another matter.

KIMBOHO · 25/10/2017 20:48

I had many Christmas's childless and still managed to see past the end of my nose to enable my friends to enjoy their families without feeling bitter. You are a very selfish person to want to take leave and force a parent to work and miss out on something so special.

goose1964 · 25/10/2017 20:49

DSis used to hate being asked when she was going to have kids as she just didn't want them, and is actually baby phobic. Just before my grandson died we took my baby grandson to see her and there were loads of family there, my cousin offered her the baby and she backed out of the room so fast she nearly ended up in the understairs cupboard

PurpleDaisies · 25/10/2017 20:51

You are a very selfish person to want to take leave and force a parent to work and miss out on something so special.

I thought this was about kids missing out but I see the real reason has come out here...

centreyoursoul · 25/10/2017 20:52

Oops, posted to soon, an ad confused me!🙂
Anyway, I worked with children so you might have assumed I didn’t hate them anyway, and she used to ask me every single time I saw her when we would be starting a family. She was a scientist —from Middlesbrough— and I hated her for it.
One day, to shut her up, because it wasn’t the time or the place to explain my utter heartbreak (exH was infertile and he’d sworn me to secrecy) I said “ well we like our holidays too much” and she pretty much verbally attacked me “oh I couldn’t be without my children! How can you compare holidays?” Etc etc.
She ruined my day. In fact it was about 15 years ago, I’ve since been lucky enough to have children of my own, but I have never forgotten her smugness and insensitivity.

ilovesooty · 25/10/2017 20:52

I'm not in a job where I have to work Christmas day but I'm driving a round trip of more than 200 miles to spend Christmas day volunteering with the homeless. If I did work Christmas day I'd be requesting leave to do that and would expect the same priority as any other worker.

AccrualIntentions · 25/10/2017 20:52

FYI I have always had this view point and would always cover Christmas as a young woman

So did I, because I volunteered and my colleagues didn't expect it of me. The second anyone had told me I should because they were more deserving they could piss right off and I wouldn't have been volunteering any more.

BakedBeans47 · 25/10/2017 20:53

You are a very selfish person to want to take leave and force a parent to work and miss out on something so special.

Wow. 😮

Lottapianos · 25/10/2017 20:54

'You are a very selfish person to want to take leave and force a parent to work and miss out on something so special.'

Yeah, you selfish childless people. Don't you realise that Christmas is all about ME AND MY CHILD???

Dear god, this thread Hmm

KIMBOHO · 25/10/2017 20:55

I was a child whose parents worked Christmas and it was utterly shit, as some people have pointed out childcare over the festive time isn't always possible so I had to stay four hours away with relatives which meant I didn't spend any of the Christmas period with my parents. I will always think of their single colleagues as selfish knobs just as I will always think that of most people on here it seems 🤣 I would like to say I'm also one of those people who think Boxing Day should remain closed to non essential business!

centreyoursoul · 25/10/2017 20:56

I love my children but I can’t stand Mother Earth types. I mean, it has been done before.
Of course it’s about the parents at Christmas. Until about 6 I would say. Could be wrong in the exact age they beginnrealising ... may be 5?

AccrualIntentions · 25/10/2017 20:56

@PurpleDaisies I think that's been quite apparent throughout this thread. For all the "won't somebody think of the children!" it's obviously about the parents' feelings. Young children don't know what day of the week it is. A "normal" Christmas is whatever their parents make it. I never felt I was missing out when my dad was working, because it was our lovely normal Christmas.

ilovesooty · 25/10/2017 20:56

Selfish knobs

Oh, the irony.

BakedBeans47 · 25/10/2017 20:57

I will always think of their single colleagues as selfish knobs just as I will always think that of most people on here it seems

Really, please just stop.

PurpleDaisies · 25/10/2017 20:57

I will always think that of most people on here it seems

I’m sure you’ll be happy to know the feeling is mutual.

Galadrielsring · 25/10/2017 20:58

One thing I don’t understand on this thread.

Why is it deemed ok to say ‘you don’t know what it’s like to not have children’ but not ok to say ‘you don’t know what it’s like to have children?

There are things that can’t be experienced by both groups -

Someone who had children easily and has not been through infertility will never understand what it’s like to not be able to have a child, but equally someone who has never had a child doesn’t know what it’s like to have one (stating factually)

It’s not the fault of people who can have children easily that others can’t. It just seems a bit double standard to me.

KIMBOHO · 25/10/2017 20:58

I don't work Christmas at all, I did get a job where I wouldn't have to be in that position intentionally. I'm not saying that businesses should make parents a priority but I do think it's the decent thing to swap and allow parents to be with their children- I have always thought that, and always did that! Maybe it's because it wasn't thrust upon me that I was so willing to swap.

AccrualIntentions · 25/10/2017 20:58

@kimboho So you think that's the fault of the people who didn't even know you and whose circumstances you know absolutely nothing about as opposed to, say, your parents who could have made a wonderful Christmas happen the day before? Or the day after? Or could have chosen to do different jobs which wouldn't require working on Christmas Day?

PurpleDaisies · 25/10/2017 20:59

For all the "won't somebody think of the children!" it's obviously about the parents' feelings

And yet those posters have the audacity to accuse everyone else of being selfish for wanting to spend time with their own family (which doesn’t happen to include children). It’s a spectacular lack of insight.

Geneslady · 25/10/2017 21:00

I've not read all the replies but wanted to add my thoughts. I was that someone who couldn't have children for a long, long time. I was told at age 16 as a what seemed like a definite, 100% that I would be 'highly unlikely to ever conceive' and I believed that. Medically it seemed very, unlikely; that was my destiny. It was that for a long, long time until DS came along and made a surprise appearance 26 years later....so I feel for you so much OP, I really do. I heard no end of 'tactless' comments during those years. When someone asked me if I wanted children age about 34, someone else answered before I got a chance 'Oh no Genes a career woman!'. That still stings now as all I was doing was working to pay my mortgage/way in life and in some ways I focussed in more on my career as I believed then DC was a no go for me. In summary I can see both sides but feel I've earned my Christmases off for my little one in those 26 years when I was there.But it is the nature of people, not just those with children to sometimes not think before they speak. I agree though that we can all give it a bit more thought and I hope your thread helps that, Best wishes xx

ilovesooty · 25/10/2017 21:01

Not to mention the selfishness of daring to do other activities or charitable work at Christmas.

minimonkey11 · 25/10/2017 21:03

My very first boss said similar to me- i was out of university in my first job on the south coast and all my friends and family in the north. He said that a lady who lived 5 mins from work should have xmas off as she had kids. I had wanted to travel home for xmas. It really pissed me off as i would have to spend xmas alone in a town where i knew no one!

isshoes · 25/10/2017 21:07

It’s very patronising to tell someone they need to ‘get on with it’ if they’re a certain age and want kids, because ‘time is running out’. WE KNOW.

centreyoursoul · 25/10/2017 21:09

galad please see geneslady’s Post. I can safely say I fall into a similar camp.

I am very sensitive as to whether someone may not be able to have children. As someone said upthread, most mother’s (can’t say the same about dads) mention their children.
You don’t need to ask.
It is rubbing it in.

I am a person who has experienced long-term infertility and who now has children.
It is far, far, harder, indescribably harder, to not be able to have them than to have: less sleep, money, free-time, adult conversation, intellectual stimulius or anything else you can come up with that is ‘difficult’ about having children.

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