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

[user1485342611]

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?

Whoops, posted too soon! Have been following this thread incredulously.

Okay, you win and I give up defending , explaining myself and apologising. I am the cartoon villain of your nightmares and you can happily accuse me of things I never said and intentions I never had. I won't respond further as apparently defending myself against false accusations is also insensitive and making it about me...

Margaret - there are some kinds of uncertainty, I think, that are so traumatic to go through that even those who have suffered them forget quite quickly what it is like to endure that level of anxiety and doubt. In modern Western capitalist life, everything is so habitual and routinized that there are few occasions where someone's entire world pivots on one outcome in the same way. Acknowledging how agonizing, how exhausting it is to live in that place, in that state, is really important. It's not the same thing as the grief that is attached to a loss or a miscarriage, which carries its own, very different freight of pain and grief. As something that is an event, it sits differently in time, it has a narrative structure that is different. I'm absolutely NOT saying the grief is less as a result of that - it's absolutely not - but that it is different in quality. A specific, personified absence (a loss) is different from a generalised absence (infertility with no prospect of a child), which is different again from the radical uncertainty of someone who is on the journey and doesn't know the outcome. There are many types of pain here.

Margaret. One thing that friends of mine who have suffered the same thing have all said to me is, it's amazing how many women say, "me too" when they say they've had a miscarriage. Yet still most people don't, or can't, talk about it.

From an individual perspective of course this has to be right; it's deeply private and personal. But that also means that people who haven't been there don't necessarily learn how to react. So more people talking about it - and public figures writing and talking openly about it - has to be a good thing I think.

Jesus londongirl just stop!

You've been told clearly that this is not the thread to explain why people without children shouldn't be offended at what KW is saying, and instead to LISTEN to what those women are telling you IS offensive. So just DO THAT. This is painful to watch

💐 to the rest of you

(And KW is a fvcking annoying thespy twat on multiple levels, so this little anecdote doesn't surprise me at all.)

I think a large part of the problem is that people tend to only speak about it when they've had a 'happy ending'. I'm guilty of this too - I intend to be pretty upfront about how we got there if we do ever have a child, but I've told very few people about the current situation. That's partially because the responses are unpredictable and I'm not strong enough to take the upsetting ones. It's also practical, particularly at work: I had to tell my boss about my third miscarriage because I needed time off work, and I really wish I hadn't. Who wants to risk pregnancy discrimination without the compensation of a baby? But above all it's how uncomfortable uncertainty makes people, and how determined they are to insist on certainty - 'I just know it'll work out for you in the end'. Thanks, but you don't. No one does. And that's one of the reasons that people spout the 'my aunt's hairdresser's cousin had twelve rounds of IVF and eight miscarriages but then she had triplets naturally!' stories - because it's the only stories you ever hear publicly.

There was a discussion recently on another conception/infertility board I sometimes read about the bizarre number of people who say 'congratulations!' if told you're doing IVF, somewhat similarly. There's such a strong cultural narrative of the 'miracle baby' that people who have never had to really think about it just take it for granted that IVF will lead to a baby, because there's so little cultural space given to those for whom it fails over and over again. I think that's another reason people can be so insensitive about infertility - there's such a strong assumption that it can only ever be a temporary worry.

Margaret

I completely feel for you and your situation. I haven't had a miscarriage but can appreciate the fear and pain you must go through (although I don't pretend to understand to any extent)
I have heard people say many times 'oh you can just ty again' to people who have suffered recent miscarriages, they don't understand that you already fully loved and already thought of the baby as a living breathing person, you already saw how your life was going to change once the baby arrived and then suddenly, that dream is gone. It is truley heartbreaking.

It is so sad that in this day and age, we don't talk about things like this in real life. I couldn't tell you who of my friends have had miscarriages as it isn't discussed at all. Likewise they couldnt tell you about my fertility issues. I see it as almost shameful and can't admit it to people, even myself to be honest. Still going through the tww and being bitterly upset by the sign of my period. Silently crying over a box of fucking tampons one minute then putting on a smile in front of people the next. I feel everyday is a performance of being okay and it is completely exhausting!

If infitility wasn't such a taboo subject, if people could explain their issues to others, eventually the world would learn not to make insensitive remarks to childless people. We need to learn to live better together in this world.

"I'm guilty of this too"

Well, not so guilty, given the difficulty of achieving any space to do so (witness this thread) and the psychological costs of having to fight for it at a time when you're already vulnerable! But I do agree that we have a discursive vicious circle here - something is never discussed, so the space for it to be discussed remains small. One of the reasons this thread is so good is that it addresses both that general lack of space and the lack of supportive discussion when it does arise. Those two things are linked: make it easier for women to speak about this by not rushing to foreclose the discussion or provide meaningless reassurance (or, indeed, by being simply hurtful), and it will get easier.

Thank you for the sympathy to the couple of people who have posted, but again I don't feel for me the real devastation is my losses, but the crushing anxiety I feel about what will happen next. I think - probably because mine were all early (all before eight weeks) - that I feel more in common with those who can't conceive than those who have suffered one much more serious loss. As all the literature tells you, over and over again, for most people miscarriage is a one-off event followed by a healthy pregnancy which has its own different - not easier, just different - dynamics to repeated pregnancy failure.

Anyway, I didn't want to make this thread about me! I do think it's interesting, and sad, that society deals so badly with the pain of infertility; as I said, I really noticed how much better the responses are if I frame myself as a recurrent miscarrier than if I frame myself as someone who has been TTC for 18 months. I don't think those pains are very different, but society finds one much more straightforward.

"I didn't want to make this thread about me!"

You are absolutely not guilty of this! If you can't speak about it here, then where is it relevant?

I think you might be minimising a bit when you say your own loss isn't "serious" - it is. I think women TTC or after a miscarriage often do this - immediately assume their pain is less relevant than someone else's, or that it can only be acknowledged with a preface that other people have greater things to bear. Again, it's as if absence or early loss isn't "proper" loss, as if there's some smell of illegitimacy about it.

It perhaps says something about the way in which the discussion is always already framed by a fear that the pain will be ignored or minimised or even out-competed! Your pain doesn't have to be either like that of the women TTC who haven't miscarried, or like the agony of those who have lost a child - it has its own quality that is personal to you and your circumstances. Beyond all, you legitimately feel upset, and you have no reason to apologise for that.

'That's partially because the responses are unpredictable and I'm not strong enough to take the upsetting ones.'

I hear you. People come out with such insensitive, thoughtless claptrap that it feels easier to keep it all inside, even if that leads to dreadful loneliness.

I'm so sorry to hear your story Margaret. I haven't had a miscarriage, but I have heard lots of stories about what utter plums people can be when they hear the news. So many people just cannot handle any feelings at all, their own or anyone else's.

Myself and the wife went through several unsuccessful IVF cycles. We stopped trying as our chances of success were diminishing with every cycle plus us as a couple were experiencing huge strain and we were almost forgetting who we were. We are now about two years on from our last effort and it is really only now that we are looking forward to a bright future together, not quite the one we planned, but we are definitely in a better place.

Lots of observations on this thread resonate with me and while I don't think some people are malicious in their actions I am still astonished by the lack of self awareness with regards to some of the questions we get, usually from people we have just met (down the pub, friends dinner party etc). You can guarantee you will be asked about adoption, usually with a cheery 'plenty of kids out there need a good home' bolted on to the end. I have been considerately asked if I am 'firing blanks', have had the pseudoscience nonsense suggestions based on the experiences of a 'friend' who visited some Thai healer and had twins or acupuncture or whatever. What I struggle with is the insatiable need for some people to know all the gory details. In the past this used to make us squirm but these days I tend to close down conversation pretty robustly and if they still don't get it a casual 'shall we talk about your piles, stretch marks or erectile dysfunction next?' tends to get the message across.

"What I struggle with is the insatiable need for some people to know all the gory details"

It can be like an interrogation, can't it?

The person who does it is generally coming at the whole thing with the view that they will somehow - in spite of a complete lack of relevant knowledge/medical training - possess the exact piece of advice to cure the situation.

Cue the questions asking what exactly is wrong, generally conducted in the most unsympathetic manner, ending with an unsolicited and generally totally shit piece of advice - e.g. whether you've tried chewing raw garlic/howling at the moon/a nice vacation in Thailand/spinning widdershins while chanting. The notion that you might have tried everything, putting your health, wellbeing, and bank balance in jeopardy as the central sufferer in this drama for a number of years, is routinely ignored - even if you state it point blank.

The whole thing makes you feel infinitely worse - yet that doesn't even seen to occur to them. Yet they would bridle if you treated something as unemotional as the issue of what is wrong with their car in a similar manner.

It is, frankly, staggeringly insensitive and cruel.

The notion that you might have tried everything, putting your health, wellbeing, and bank balance in jeopardy as the central sufferer in this drama for a number of years, is routinely ignored - even if you state it point blank.

Yes, it's the certainty that they're right, in the face of all available evidence, that I find astonishing. There are a couple of people in my life who have been so sure that:

• pregnancy no. 2 would work out
• pregnancy no. 3 would work out
• the doctors would 'find out what it is so it doesn't ever happen again' (despite me repeatedly saying that more than 50% of recurrent miscarriers are unexplained)

Now that none of those things came to pass they're just sure that no. 4, whenever it happens, will be the one that works, and they are genuinely incredulous that I'm 'so negative' as to not accept their insistence that they 'just know' this time.

Completely agree with you Margaret and whisky - the acknowledgement of grief for what hasn't been (and might never be) is minimised in our society

It absolutely isn't childlessness grief olympics margaret - both infertility and miscarriage are sources of immense pain and suffering, and there is an acute lack of understanding by many (and a stigma attached)

I've experienced both infertility and miscarriage - and am now at the end of our infertility journey with my body, as Drs on both sides of the Atlantic have confirmed that I cannot carry, as my womb is unable to sustain a pregnancy. "At least you can get pregnant' was incredibly upsetting after my first miscarriage- because so what? It's not a relay race where we can pick up where we left off. Just because I got pregnant before doesn't mean I can again (and 'will you try again' involves starting from scratch with the physical, financial and emotional distress of IVF anyway). And as it turns out, that's as pregnant as I'm ever going to get. Whether I can't get or stay pregnant, the result is the same - we are childless.

Coming to terms with childlessness has been a much more traumatic experience of grief for me than the grief of losing my beloved Mum. Her death was a devastating loss, there is an enormous hole in our family left by her absence. I miss her every day. Yes, she was taken too soon (early 60s), but we are lucky enough to have had wonderful memories of a life well lived, and to have benefited from her love and wisdom.My family grieve her loss, but we have cherished memories of the time we had with her.

With childlessness, we have nothing visible to grieve. We are grieving the loss of hope, the loss of memories we never had the chance to make, the loss of a life we hoped to live, and likely never will. I was able to accept my Mum's passing because there was a certainty about it - she was born, she lived, she died, I mourn her loss, but she is gone and I know she will never come back. The pain of childlessness doesn't have the same certainty - you live in limbo of perpetual grief with no foreseeable resolution. And people always want to tell you about the unicorn stories of the miracle children - so how can you ever truly accept being childless when you can never truly rid yourself of hope. You can't ever move on.

When we reached the end of the road with our treatment, DH and I were talking about coming to terms with saying out loud 'we can't have children', and that sadly we would have to accept that I wouldn't get the same acknowledgement of bereavement as when I say 'my mum died', that there would be no recognition of the fact that they were both deeply painful losses.

I posted this before, but will again, because I think it articulates my own experience of 'the pain of never' heartbreakingly accurately

And YY to the 'happy ending' narrative

DH and I were watching 24 in A&E one night, and there was yet another miracle baby after giving up story

He remarked that they never show our story - they never talk about the ones who didn't get there, because it doesn't make for as good a story. People want to hear about the stories of hope -they don't want to hear the stories of hopelessness.

This article by Jody Day (founder of Gateway Women) really resonated with me:

www.tommys.org/our-organisation/help-and-support/tommys-pregnancy-stories/childlessness-after-miscarriage-untold-story

"Where is the place of the forever-childless women in the miscarriage narrative of ‘rainbow babies’?

As a culture, we’re pretty uncomfortable with unfix-able things. We like to believe that if we have enough data, make smart decisions, throw enough money and a really positive attitude at anything, it can be solved. There is also an unspoken but pervasive fantasy that if we’re ‘a good person’ things will work out for us in the end; a fantasy that persists in spite of the fact that not only do bad things happen to good people, but really great things happen to horrible ones!

So this perhaps leaves a lingering unspoken idea in people’s minds that childless women either ‘did something wrong’ or, even worse, that they ‘are something wrong’.

Internalising this guilt and shame can be profoundly corrosive to a woman’s identity just at the time in her life when she may feel acutely adrift from her ‘womanhood’, and struggling to get her head and heart around what it means for her to be a woman if she can’t be a mother. Often, at the very moment when she’s most in need of empathy, compassion and understanding from friends, family, acquaintances and colleagues, instead she’s met with silence, banter or judgement. Her grief becomes an unspeakable thing, both for her and for others"

"they 'just know' this time."

Whenever I've experienced the Interrogation that PanGalactic describes, the person has been someone really very privileged on a global scale, who has chosen to attribute aspects of that privilege to their own doing rather than placing its cause where it really lies - in luck and in accident of birth. They tend to assume that illness or any problems are the "fault" of the person experiencing them, through sheer naivety, having never encountered many serious obstacles in their own lives. Unfortunately, however, they actually interpret their Lives That Have Never Involved Serious Questions in very different terms - they think, because they have been lucky, that they have All The Answers. So they are hectoring and bossy and they truly believe that they possess some insight that those who are at the heart of the situation must lack, else why is there a problem?

This all contributes to what bananafish is saying about internalised guilt and shame - only my point is that it's not just internalised, it's actually out there.

My parents were absolutely breathtaking when I told them. Never mind, they said, you still have your allotment.

banana, Jody Day and her Gateway Women online community are entirely fabulous, and I recommend the community extremely highly to anyone who is interested. Its an extremely supportive place, full of other people who 'get it' and never ever minimise your pain.

Jesus whisky, that must have hurt so much to hear that from your parents. Parents can be a special kind of insensitive around this topic, and many others of course. So much for these magical powers of empathy you supposedly develop when you become a parent

Something I found very unhelpful was people who held a superstition that babies “choose” the parents they are born to. Why on earth would anyone “choose” an abusive parent instead of a loving one?

I’ve also heard of a belief that if someone has lost a baby then any further pregnancy will be the same “soul” again. To me, that minimises the loss, so shouldn’t be pushed onto those who don’t believe it.

Intercom they are the weirdest superstitions I have ever heard!!

they never talk about the ones who didn't get there, because it doesn't make for as good a story. People want to hear about the stories of hope -they don't want to hear the stories of hopelessness.

My husband has said exactly the same bananafish. He was trying to read about infertility to see how people coped and lived their lives when fertility treatment didn’t work out and they had to stop, but without exception they all had their miracle in the end.

Intercom
Fuck me they’re stupid superstitions especially the first one.

There was a thread on here a few months ago, started by a MNer who was having a tough time conceiving; she specifically asked for stories about people who had come to terms with a child-free life. She wanted positive advice about the possibilities of happiness on the other side of TTC, not advice about IVF.

Cue a handful of typically honest MN stories, most saying that though childlessness was a small, perpetual grief, it was perfectly possible to be very happy sans nappies... followed by a deluge of 'we/my auntie Karen/my hairdresser's mum/my gran gave up TTC then went on holiday to Mauritius and came back pregnant with quads'. Even though the OP repeatedly emphasised that this wasn't what she wanted to discuss, some posters were determined - in a well-intentioned way, I guess - to perpetuate that 'no, no, no! You can have kids! Never give up! If you give up you didn't want them enough! Why not adopt?' narrative. As a life without kids was too unthinkable to contemplate. Yes, this is Mumsnet and the demographic is overwhelmingly parents, but this particular thread felt like someone asking for advice on being vegetarian being harangued by the Butchers' Union. No one was saying sausages are evil; just... give me some recipes for lentils, please.

I sometimes feel there's a strange defensiveness on here about this issue - inevitable, maybe, given how sensitive in/fertility is. But saying it's possible to be happy without children doesn't mean you think having a child is a source of unhappiness. Consideration to people without families doesn't take that consideration away from those who do. There is not a finite amount of compassion to go around.

EarlGreyT

There is a brilliant community on Fertility Friends for those moving on from TTC, I have many friends on there leading full, happy lives, of course occasionally mingled with sadness sometimes. All people who have found themselves living childless not by their choice but as a choice that was made for them by simple, cruel nature.