Things you should never say in front of childless women

[Clothrabbit]

Just following on from another thread I started, what things have childless women on here had said to or in front of them, or read celebs spouting in public, that really hurt or upset them.

For me:

You don't know what real responsibility is until you have a child.
Having a child makes you less selfish.

Leigh, I’m sorry for your loss. You very clearly are in the depth of grief and need support with that. This thread wasn’t about comparing grief. I posted in support of women who felt the head tilt when they say they don’t have children. I posted saying that POV was ridiculous. The grief part of the post wasn’t a competition but to demonstrate that parental love was intense and not in a good way. If you read back, you’ll see my posts were taken in the spirit intended (until the last few minutes)

Leighhalfpennysthigh, So very sorry for your loss.

Helpmefindaholiday

I think you have been very kind, respectful and concise in your posts. I find on threads like this, unless you are in absolute agreement with those who are childfree, you simply cannot say the right thing. Probably best just to leave it be.

I wouldn't say it to someone but I don't believe you know real love until you have your own kids.

I wrote this for the World Childless Week website - contributors were asked to write specifically about this comment, under the theme 'comments that hurt'

So to respond to this exact phrase, here's one I prepared earlier. Let's have a little grammar lesson, shall we?

Copy and pasted from the WCW website

"You never know true love until you have a child" is definitely a podium winner when it comes to ‘hurtful comments people say when you’re childless not by choice’

Let’s dissect this sentence, shall we?

1. ‘You never know true love until you have a child’

Which ‘you’ is that? You, the person saying this out loud, may have felt this about your own experience - that you were wandering in a world bereft of genuine love until YOU had a child. In which case, dear person making this comment, it would be more accurate to say, ‘I myself didn’t know true love until I had a child’. A statement which is all sorts of problematic in so many other ways, but let’s get the pedantry out of the way first.

‘You’ doesn’t mean ‘me’. It means ‘the person or people that the speaker is addressing’, or may also be used ‘to refer to any person in general’
If you’re addressing me personally, then I have two words for you. One begins with ‘F’, and the other is ‘off’.

Firstly, that’s a massive assumption: you know absolutely nothing about my life. You know nothing about the love I share with my beloved husband & soulmate; the loving relationships I have with friends and family; the love I have for the things in my life that fulfil and enrich me; and the love I have for the amazing women I have never met - but who have been my lifeline throughout my experience of infertility, pregnancy loss, and involuntary childlessness.
And secondly, even if you did know my innermost thoughts (which you don’t), you cannot speak for anyone else but yourself. Your narrow-minded feelings are your own, you don’t and can’t speak for me and mine. And certainly not for ‘any person in general’ who doesn’t have a child.

2. You never know true love until you have a child’

Another semi-linguistic point. ‘Until’ is another insensitive and hurtful part of that sentence. ‘Until you have a child’ suggests that having a child is an inevitability, that it’s something ‘you just do’, that it’s a universal experience. Newsflash: it isn’t. Many, many people will never have a child. Many of those people are childless not by choice. We desperately wanted to have a child. We wanted it to be part of our own lived experience. But life didn’t turn out that way. There simply is no ‘until’ for us.

3. You never know true love until you have a child’

Why and how do you get to define true love? How can you compare different experiences of love? What does ’true love’ even mean? That every other kind of love is invalid compared to love for your child?

It also makes no sense from a basic logic POV: if the only true love is a parent’s love for their child, then by that definition all love is unrequited! A parent’s true love for their child isn’t truly reciprocated, because their child can only know true love until they have a child. And so on, and so on. Which is a pretty fucked up way of looking at the world!

In my world, my love for my spouse, family, friends and community is enormous, real and true. I don’t know what my experience of loving a child would be like, but I would hope that it would be a joy that didn’t automatically negate every other experience of love in my life.

There is no higher or lesser form of love, every form of love is unique. Love is love.

find on threads like this, unless you are in absolute agreement with those who are childfree, you simply cannot say the right thing.
So true!
I wouldn’t assume someone’s life is easy because they don’t have kids and patronise people with some of the comments people have reference. But-not at all but some of the stupid defensive comments on her are ridiculous. To name just two
“Jo cox’s murder being more sad because she was a mother”...yes the fact is it’s more devastating for a little child, who cant process their feelings, to turn round and not see their mum anymore.

And the argument that the love of a spouse can equal that of a child, and the death of either could be equal. What crap- most normal, decent people would save their child over their spouse, and would never recover from the death of a child.

And the argument that the love of a spouse can equal that of a child, and the death of either could be equal. What crap- most normal, decent people would save their child over their spouse, and would never recover from the death of a child.

But that's a different question

Is the love for a husband the same as the love for a child? No. Each form of love is unique

But to say that the only form of TRUE love is the love for a child, is incredibly hurtful

I can't have children. I have no doubt if we had been able to have a child that I would love them fiercely and with a burning and primal depth

I have no doubt that would be a different kind of love to my love for my DH. I don't think they'd be equal because I imagine they'd be very different types of love.

But I would hope that I would never say that because these forms of love were different, that the only TRUE form of love was my love for my child

That every other love was somehow false. A facsimile of love.

It's the word 'true' that is so upsetting

What crap- most normal, decent people would save their child over their spouse, and would never recover from the death of a child.

So those parents that do find a way to cope and move forward with their lives aren’t decent people? The ones I know most certainly are.

And who was talking about saving one or the other?

People say this isn’t top trumps, usually after they’ve played it. For the record, I am a parent. I do not think I am some superior human being with a capacity for love any more real than the next person. The love for my children is different to the love for my partner and family. It’s not any more valid. FWIW, I have an exceptionally close relationship with my nephew and would die for him. I didn’t give birth to him.

What banana said in spades.

'You don't know what tired is'.

I always wonder why in any thread where childless women try to have a space where they can articulate their sadness, their pain, their feelings of being marginalised, their frustration and anger at being looked down upon, treated as lesser than, their sense of isolation, amongst others who share the same experiences - some people feel the need to barge in and tell people who are suffering deeply, that they're wrong to feel upset.

I wonder why these people feel it's OK to be so unkind

When 15 different people say 'I find X, Y & Z' hurtful, I wonder what is the motivation for coming in and telling all these people to get over themselves

Why not keep these thoughts to themselves? If a whole thread full of people specifically state that they find X, Y & Z hurtful, why come in and then decide to contribute to the thread by actively saying the exact things these people say have caused them such pain?

Why feel the need to come in and deliberately upset people?

If they feel a burning desire to tell someone that they do believe that you only know true love once you've had a child, why not start their own thread to say this? Why go onto a thread of people who've said they find this hurtful to pour salt into the wound?

Why do they feel the need to be so actively unkind?

What do they gain by choosing to deliberately upset people, many of whom are hurting deeply?

Does this give them kicks?

I am truly baffled. As it happens time and time again. Every. Single. Time. I recognise lots of names from previous threads. And every time, this happens. It's downright cruel. But yet it keeps happening. Always.

The worst thing about the kind of comments that have been cited here is that I totally believe them. I know that I'm not as tired as my mum friends; I fear that I will never know a true and pure love in the way that people talk about their love for their children.

But every time someone says that to me, it makes me feel totally worthless. And I'm not worthless. I'm nice, and hardworking, and loving, and kind. I just can't have kids. And it feels so unkind that someone wouldn't just think about how it might make me feel. I think really about how not to make people feel bad about their parenting because I know that it can be really hard sometimes. It would be nice if people would return the kindness. I was going to say courtesy, but it's not about manners, just humanity.

When I didn't want children, I found these comments deeply infuriating, and now I have children, I haven't changed my mind.

I remember being so exhausted I was hallucinating, and still being told 'you don't know tiredness until you have a child'. Well now I do, and shocker, tiredness is tiredness, and nothing has trumped that tiredness yet.

And the love comment, pfft, love is different, but it doesn't have to have a hierarchy. I feel a bit sorry for people who go on about not knowing love before. I knew love before because I love my husband with a deep, primal and startling ferocity. I wish we didn't treat parent - child love as the gold standard of love to which everything should compare. It's not how love works.

Actually, the fact that people who have children have all, earlier in their lives, been people who haven't had children makes it worse because there is that trump card that says 'I didn't know then but I know now'. It's hard to counter that. I bet there are a lot of us on this thread crying tonight.

@ElizabethinherGermanGarden has hit the nail on the head. It's humanity. Basic human decency.

Would it be OK to barge into a support group of people struggling with homelessness, who are sharing with each other the things they find difficult about being homeless, and how hurtful they find certain comments

And march into the room and say 'well you never know true happiness until you have a detached mansion with 2 acres of land'

It might well be true.

But what benefit does it serve to go into that room and say something like that?

Why would you go in and rub it in their faces? Why would you think, hey, I think this would be a great way to contribute to the support group?

Why wouldn't you walk past the support group, and head on back to your nice warm cosy home, and keep your thoughts about the wonders of having a beautiful home to yourself?

I've not had any of these comments directed to me personally. The worst I've had is a mother of 3 under 3 looking and feeling it and telling me "but I know I should be grateful". She knows that for the space of 1.5 yrs I was ttc. I then decided my sudden desire to have kids was hormonal, I'd never wanted them before and had gone through painful miscarriages as a result of this sudden urge. I love my freedom, my relative lack of responsibility, the ease of my life. Out of kindness I kept biting my tongue because I can see (even if I can't possibly fully understand) that her situation is a tough one. I didn't want to come across as gloating in the face of her struggle but I did finally have to tell her that I in no way envy her but respect her choices. Things have been easier since then.

If you can't beat them join them..

"There's nothing better than the sound of children's laughter"
Ummm.. The sound of fucking silence while I enjoy my lie in.

I mainly feel pity for those people who think childfree life is so awful. They must have had a hideous life before and I wonder why they had children with a man that makes them unhappy.

I think the remarks and condescension reflect the way our culture has become very focused on the nuclear family

most normal, decent people would save their child over their spouse

But if you don't have children, this becomes irrelevant. The person, or people, whom you'd save before all others is someone other than your child(ren) because there are no children. Just because that 'before all others' space is filled with someone other than your children, doesn't mean you have no one in your life to fill it.

Sorry! All other wider family relationships, friendships and sense of community have a become a bit devalued. One outcome is people being unable to image child/free women as anything other than tragic.

Leigh I am so sorry about your losses.

bananafish81 I didn’t say the love for your partner wasn’t real - just that it’s not the same.
PurpleDaisies coping isn’t the same as recovering. I believe on the whole more people “bounce” back from a partner passing a way than a child because a child is part of you.

MaggieSimpsonsPacifier
Do you have children now?

Many years ago now, a colleague jibed at me,, 'easily known you weren't up all night with a wakeful baby' because of some suggestion I made to improve a system we used, and I got a bit of praise for it from the team manager.

I laughed it off at the time. If she only knew what I would have given... I'm not childless by choice.

I always wonder why in any thread where childless women try to have a space where they can articulate their sadness, their pain, their feelings of being marginalised, their frustration and anger at being looked down upon, treated as lesser than, their sense of isolation, amongst others who share the same experiences - some people feel the need to barge in and tell people who are suffering deeply, that they're wrong to feel upset

I don't understand this either. It just reinforces the view that in society's eyes we are less - less important, our feelings less valid, our experiences less useful.

After my husband died I wanted nothing more than to join him.

I stayed alive because of my parents, by siblings (who are annoying and take me for granted but by god I love them) and my nieces and nephews. Then I added my dogs to that list.

I also love my dogs beyond belief.

I also have a plan that when my dogs die. My father dies. I can safely kill my self and join them. I'm not depressed. I'm just realistic.