The weird things that non parents say...

[Wiggles9408]

Just a general one, no malice intended but what are your experiences of the things that people without children have said to you in regards to parenting?

My examples are as follows (all in one day): dd is 6mo I went into work for a KIT day and a few of my colleagues that don’t have children (in amongst genuine lovely questions about dd) said the following ‘Babies seem easy to me now I’ve got a rabbit..’ and ‘so what’s it like?’ My answer ‘harder than I’d imagined’ the response ‘oh really? I just imagined you watching Disney films all day with a baby!’
And my favourite one EVER ‘I’d love to be getting paid to do nothing all day but watch Jeremy Kyle!’
I know they probably weren’t meant to come across so ummmm belittling but in my head I did have a few brash come backs but didn’t say anything just laughed it off. so anyone else had comments made that left them a little

I have a friend who is child free but has a dog. I cannot talk about DD around her because every single thing I say is met with "oh, dog is just like that, it's so hard!"

This is a tactic some of us use to stop people banging on about their kids all the time. Clearly it works!

When I left my KIT day at 4pm, my (lovely and only making conversation) boss asked me what I'm doing with the rest of the day.

It was practically my baby's bedtime

Again, lovely and well meaning childless friends asking if they can come round for a cuppa at 6pm

THAT'S TODDLER BEDTIME 😱!

Also bumped in to a lovely old school friend recently.
He kindly offered me tickets to his play, while my 1 year old and two newborns gazed at him opposite. So I said that'd be great, I'd bring the children.

Oh no no, he said. It's really not suitable for children. 🤣 That's me out then bruv!

I'm sure dogs can be stressful...but I'm guessing that getting one doesn't often leave you with tears or other structural damage to your body, or PTSD from the trauma. 5-15% of women have lasting mental health issues as a result of childbirth.

Also when you complain that your dog is ruining your furniture, your marriage and your life in general, people don't often say 'ahh but at least you got your dog...so be grateful for that.'

But with babies...

I think the people comparing pets to babies are doing it to join in conversation, and pets are the closest frame of reference to caring for a small child. I’m certainly guilty of “my cat does that!”, even though I have a vague notion that there might be a slight difference- I’ll certainly find out in a few weeks!

When I told a colleague I was pregnant, she was really pleased for me because of the year long “holiday” I was going to have. She’s also been aghast that another colleague’s wife didn’t have the house cleaned and a meal on the table when he got home during her second maternity leave.

This has gone as well as expected when I saw it earlier 😂

It's impossible to explain to people what having babies does to you. Exhibit A : XBF. Had a minor op involving genitals. Oh it was awful ! stitches and everything you know. (Under anaesthetic not having just been nine months pregnant then 30 hours in labour bruised and battered and essentially cut with scissors and sewn before local numbing stuff had time to take effect) And that's considered a fairly normal birth experience. "My mother had to come 300 miles to look after me for a week" Aye. And then he didn't have a sleepless breastfed newborn to contend with for another few months / years.

Exhibit B: But why don't you just 'tell' your autistic child not to be challenging?

Both child free. I'm with you OP. Seriously mad shit is said by them. And to be fair I might have said the same back in the day. Because you can't know. You really can't even start to comprehend it. Usual #notallchildfreepeople disclaimer applies. Lots of people are a lot more empathetic than I am.

Wow DrFoster that was unnecessarily aggressive and unpleasant. Not sure I agree with your assessment of of people who have children being narcissistic tbh.

I actually don't mind people who have pets comparing them to children. It's probably the closest frame of reference when you don't have kids.

Whenever childless people say their lives won't change when they have children, that the children will just fit in, I must admit to having a little smile to myself.

I know that many people are exhausted for different reasons, but there is something unique about the experience of having a non-sleeping newborn. As well as little sleep overall it's never having a complete sleep cycle, and this going on for months, for some people years. I definitely did not understand what this would be like before having kids, and I'm not sure if someone who hadn't had the experience could.

A childless friend suggested to me that I could cure my tiredness, caused by my children not sleeping, by 'knocking them on the head'.

She then told me she was tired because her cat had kept her awake all night. I was very tempted but I resisted.

The weirdness of these comments, has absolutely nothing on the smugness and patronising tone of some the parents relating them.

"The weird things that parents say to people who don't have children." (Real Accounts)

• if I didn't have them I would have to have a serious hobby like sailing or something - I couldn't just sit in at the weekend and drink wine

• How was your Christmas/New Years/Halloween/Bonfire night? The joy of seeing the kids reaction makes it really, all about children - how was yours? (Must have been pretty shit?!)

• I literally fall asleep after a glass of wine these days. Not like when I was young (After saying I was hungover after too much wine ...we are the same age and I work 50 hours a week...should that make me energised?)

• "just be careful how long you wait because you have to be aware of time"I do get that this is a medical fact to some extent.... "be careful because you don't have forever to get back into shape before your baby daddy loses interest." Just because something may be true doesn't give you a free pass to say it surely and hurt someone's feelings?

Gosh I have friends that are super cool about not having kids and some are downright patronising and don't understand...so I guess it goes both ways?

When pregnant a child less work colleague said to me in a group meeting: I’ll never have a baby because you know you poo during birth don’t you, I don’t want to poo in front of my husband idiot. 10 years on I’d love to know if she ever did! I hope she pooed everywhere

My sil when ds was 1. OMG he’s got TEETH

The weirdness of these comments, has absolutely nothing on the bitterness of the professionally offended

Someone at work had no idea I have DC, let alone 3 of them. He said 'what is it with immigrants and having big families'. I work in NYC. At that point the head honcho turned round and told the guy that he should be thanking me for creating future taxpayers to fund his pension. Shut the guy up good and proper.

Most people are surprised that I have 3DC because I'm 37. Most start with their first at 35/38 and only have two. If they have a third they are normally at least 42/45. I was the youngest mother in DD1s daycare class.

Hmm calling parents narcissists on a PARENTING website - not the brightest move

I've heard many of these and others but the most hurtful comment was when I was just home after 2 weeks in hospital due to a complicated mc - "I know just how you feel, I feel the same whenever dh has to go away for work it's so hard missing a loved one" I shit you not

Im childfree by choice and im grateful that the parents have chosen to have children They do it so i dont have to

honey I know what you mean about caring for a parent. Im rushing over to England to make sure my dad is ok every 3 weeks or so while also working FT and raising 3DC, two of which who have ASD. It's stressful and exhausting. It's hard work looking after my dad because he is very stubborn. At least with the DC I get to make the decisions with a passive DH.

I thought I’d be fine because I’d had to get up in the night with a puppy before. And that because I had to get up in the night to use the toilet during pregnancy, getting up with a newborn really wouldn’t be much different.

I failed to grasp that the key difference was that I could go to bed whenever or have naps at weekends and after work, before I had a baby. So in this case, I was the stupid one!

Well Dr Foster was a bit brutal but as someone with a long term health condition that causes chronic fatigue is do understand where she's coming from.

I used to get the 'oh you think your tired, try having children' which doubly stung as it took 8 years to conceive DD.

And TBH a few months sleep deprivation with a newborn, though exhausting, is much easier to deal with than two decades of disabling fatigue.

I also have a dog. IME it really is a lot like having a toddler.

It's tempting to start a thread about stupid things people with children say to childless people, bit I think that's been done several times on the infertility boards

"Babies have no immune system. Adults get sick gradually but babies just die just like that".

I literally did not know what to say. I was pregnant with my first at the time.

Same person: If you breastfeed wrong they will die.

She was obsessed with my baby dying.

Well Dr Foster was a bit brutal but as someone with a long term health condition that causes chronic fatigue is do understand where she's coming from.

Ditto!! Trust me Dr Foster is correct, sleeplessness nights due to babies/toddlers are an absolute walk in the park compared an energy illness. I remember avoiding certain mums at school gate who whined on about their lack of sleep, when they had actually slept, just shorter hours. A bit hard not to want to bite their head off with “ shut the F” up, you really don’t know how f”ing lucky you are” when you literally hadn’t slept at all in days.

Watching Jeremy Kyle all day 😄😄😄. Umm, no. I. Never. Stop. Literally, all day. And when he was little ds was up 5/6 times a night. Bloody nightmare. I used to work 12 hour shifts in NHS nursing. It was easier, most days.

I worked with someone from a rather wealthy posh background who was a bit dim. She was always very well groomed and turned out in the latest designer gear.
When I had my baby and was asked to take her to work for inspection I got all the usual cooing and aaahimg but nice but dim sidled up to me and said she had a question about having children and would I mind if she asked? I was expecting something rather inappropriate about giving birth or similar but she actually asked
" has your dry cleaning bill gone up awfully?"

As a "non-parent" I agree that your co workers are stupid and thoughtless, I wouldn't say those things. Playing devil's advocate, there are lots of parents that say stupid things that grate on me:

"When you have children you start to care about politics" umm when did I ever say I didn't care? Surely we are all effected by world events?
Or "when you have children, your life suddenly has meaning" so mine is meaningless then...

And that's before you get into the whole "tick tock" thing, alright love I'm trying as hard as I can not that it's any of your business.

So maybe it's people in general that are thoughtless