Please don’t tell me to adopt or use a sperm donor, that’s not what this thread is about.
I’m 35, single and childless and thanks to a lifetime of abuse resulting in CPTSD, likely to remain so.
All I ever wanted was a husband and children. I’m very maternal, have worked with thousands of children, many victims of abuse themselves and I longed to be pregnant and have children of my own.
I find life lonely but have hobbies and friends, just find the empty house and lonely future hard to deal with at times.
It’s been made much worse by strangers asking questions which make me feel more isolated and against the norm.
Today I was doing my supermarket shop and the checkout lady said “Are your children back at school today?” I replied that I didn’t have children and she said “lucky you, you won’t have had all those worries about childcare.”
I’d never assume someone had children or that those who don’t have them are happily childfree but I find myself being asked these sorts of questions a lot.
At a hobby which helps take my mind off things, our instructor announced pregnancy. One of the regulars who never spoke to me much turned to me and said “You’d better get move on. When’s yours on the way?” When I explained I was on my own she said “You don’t want to be like my daughter. She’d ran out of eggs by 38 and she gave birth to a dead baby with donor eggs at 40. She never recovered. You can’t leave it much later, get shacked up with someone quick. Stop being fussy and thinking you are too good for everyone.”
Then there’s all the social chit chat from everyone, new colleagues, the nurse that takes my bloods at the gp, the guy that fixes my car - “You married?” “Didn’t want kids then?” “Don’t you like children?”
Is it just me that thinks these kind of questions are insensitive?