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.

Please leave it open. There are so many useful and supportive comments on here that do help us. Couldn't you just delete the posts that have been rude to us?

@Peanutss please do!

And yes happy to recommend resources for childless not by choice (CNBC)

May I suggest that if this thread does go pop that someone starts a new thread in Chat away from AIBU and if user decides to follow us there then I think that would tell @AnyaMumsnet a great deal about their intentions as a contributor

We'll leave the thread up for now as it seems to still be providing support to a lot of posters.

Not just support...I've been reading to make sure I don't inadvertently say the wrong things. I am gobsmacked at the antics of certain posters. Doesn't MN do 'time outs' anymore for people who are relentlessly barraging support threads?

I do not have children. Some of the things said to me over the years are just ridiculous. Once at a dinner party " How can you not have children, it's natural!' and the usual ones about being selfish as I did not want children. I have found answering back an inane equally tactless response preferable to explaining myself ( I have never asked anyone to explain why they do have children). So I responded ' Well cancer is natural too'. And to one of the 'O you are selfish as you don't have kids', from a catholic I responded with 'Well Jesus, Mother Teresa and The Wests might disagree with that one'. I do not invite this obtrusive comments so will belt back. It never fails to stop it.

Thanks mumsnet.

Thanks MN

Thanks MN! A bit off topic but seen as we're here, I've been curious as to how you ladies deal with work with all this going on? I've found recently that I'm really just lacking any form of motivation for it. Did you throw yourselves into it or the opposite? I'm actually pretty worried about how my career will end up panning out. I feel like this is the biggest thing in my life and I can't seem to give anything else any head space. I'm a bit concerned. My mother seems to think I just need to 'turn cold to it and be stronger' by just cracking on with it like normal but it's so much easier said than done and any joy I once got out of it has gone. Sorry for the lack of paragraphs, my return button is broken!

I'm not the shockable sort as a rule but the trolls/posters/twats on this thread have left me open-mouthed; such malice! Gobsmacking.

@Peanutss with difficulty to be honest. It might just be my line of work - very male dominated as its sport and also very physical, but I found it hard to explain the physical pain that I was in from some of the treatments, along with the emotional/hormonal changes. I felt as if I was inadequate and had to work even harder than normal just to stand still. I was still building up my client base in those days and was desperate to have the high paying clients (the sports teams that had money) so I could pay for the IVF so I spent a lot of time pretending that everything was ok. For my appointments and scans I made out that I was working for another client and when I was pregnant and suffering horrendous morning sickness I hid it as well as I could. Most of the time I was working with men, so it was easier - they were young men too, somhad probably had limited experience around women, let alone pregnant ones!
Looking back I don't know how I managed. After the first couple of attempts failed I did tell the head coach in a couple of clubs and they were surprisingly kind, but didn't know what to say. One of them had been the coach when my husband was playing for the club, so my husband had confided in him.
In some ways it was worse for my husband. He was a primary school teacher so could never escape children and babies and, at any one time, it seemed like there were at least 2 pregnant women working at the school. He was held in suspicion as a man who didn't have children, teaching 5 year olds. He constantly had to fend off queries about when he was going to have children. He suffered from depression and had lots of time off, then, after the last attempt, could take it no more ams killed him self.

These days it's known that I'm single and widowed and don't date and that I have no children, so the questions, at least from my clients and people who know me are coming less and less.

I wonder- have any of you ever heard men getting these comments (pretty sure I know the answer)? All the stuff about selfishness, being unnatural etc. is said to women. I used to get the sneering "I suppose you're too busy with your career" as if that were equivalent to being busy murdering pensioners or something. Such poisonous bollocks.

@Leighhalfpennysthigh thank you for sharing. I'm so so sorry for what you and your husband went through I can't believe how unbearably cruel life is reading this thread. I find I spend so much of my time pretending like you say. Some of the colleagues I work closely with know my situation and to be honest I just find it all the more awkward, they don't know what to say and neither do I. It seems like the only place I want to be is home at the moment.

I’ve often wondered what childless men think of the term “family man”. After all it’s not something a man without children can be.

There were contributions from men for World Childless Week - they're on the website (there were themes for each day, one of the days was about the male experience)

Dr Robin Hadley also researches involuntary childlessness from the male perspective, v interesting - all worth a read

World Childless Week articles from the male perspective - Men matter too

Thank you, @bananafish81 that's a great link. My infertility didn't just affect me, it affected my DH, who actually wasn't infertile. I was desperate for him to tell me how he felt about it all, but he never expressed his sadness. I know that this was because he didn't want to make me feel worse, but I actually wanted him to share his feelings with me; I sometimes felt as though he didn't care, though I knew he very much wanted a family.

I still think he would have benefited from talking to someone other than me. Quite obviously, it would have been hard for him to share his feelings with me honestly, because I was the one who had the fertility issues.

I used to feel guilty about depriving him of the chance of fathering his own DC, but I've learned to stop worrying about that. We've now adopted our 2 DDs (9 and 6) and he's completely devoted to them.

But I think his feelings have been overlooked through the whole process, and I've been guilty of focusing on my own feelings myself. I suspect that's true of a lot of men in his position.

The tired comments really piss me off. From the outside I look like an average healthy woman. On the inside I'm Narcoleptic AF. Don't talk to me about being tired. Yes I'm sure you learnt new levels of tired after having kids, but don't assume you're the queen of tired and all childless people have no clue.

Thank you @bananafish81. My husband wasn't infertile either, it was me who couldn't maintain a pregnancy. In my darkest hours I begged him to leave me because he needed to be a father so much, but staying with me meant he never would be. Even now I wonder if I had forced him to go, to make him leave me amd drive him away for his own sake, would he still be alive and happy with someone else.

Most people here clearly got more decency in their little toe than that woman.. She is the same in every thread. I think she had the same empathy bypass as Drumpf. No one could be that stupid as not be deliberately doing it.

Leigh I am so sorry to hear your story, for you (seems so inadequate though)

I know I certainly told DH to leave me on more than one occasion, and find someone who could give him children

He said not to be so ridiculous, and never to say that again - but I know that many of us have said this to our partners, if we're the ones 'with the problem'

So, so many respondents to my anonymous questionnaire have said this. So, so many.

A dear friend is also going through infertility and mc, and said that she had also said something like this to her husband. He said to us 'what you both need to understand is that we've already got everything we came for, anything else is a bonus'

I'm so sorry Leigh for everything you've been through. It's just heartbreaking - words seem so hollow. I know we can't possibly understand what you've been through in losing your husband, but know that your sisters in loss, and those of us who are childless not by choice, are standing right beside you

And please please know that you couldn't have made your late husband have done or not do anything. What happened was deeply, deeply tragic, desperately unfair and utterly devastating. But it is not your fault xxxx

I know I certainly told DH to leave me on more than one occasion, and find someone who could give him children A “friend” of mine asked me how long I thought dh would stick around if I continued to fail to give him kids.

I could not say it any better than bananafish81 Ive told my DP on occasions the same thing. Please don't blame yourself. Sometimes I feel fortunate my OH has children from his previous relationship, other times (when I'm feeling admittedly selfish) it makes me feel worse because I feel isolated even from him. No one is at fault for something which is outside of our control. Leigh I can't begin to imagine what you've been through but I'm so very sorry.

banana, I just want to say that you are in every way an awesome human being, and I can't wait for your book to come out.