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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To feel upset by casual comments about my choice to remain childfree?

193 replies

Syrinx89 · 18/02/2020 21:39

I love my friends and family, and I love my friends' children. I work with kids and for the most part, feel very privileged to do so and have a great relationship with many of them. However, I'm 85% sure I don't want children myself. As I'm now in my early 30s, I feel that more and more of my friend and family are throwing unwanted comments and opinions at me about mine and DP's future. One very close member of family even turned to me and said 'But you were put on this earth to have children'! This made me cry, and I still feel so sad thinking about how it made me feel - like there's something wrong with me or a missing 'gene' stopping me from feeling a motherly urge like everyone else my age.

I'm sure I'm not the only one out there...? Sorry for rambling!

OP posts:
nibdedibble · 19/02/2020 12:30

Aaandndndndndn I went back and read some of the thread...sorry. I honestly don't know people who think or talk like that.
What a bunch of horrors. 'Not a complete woman' my fat arse

ShatnersWig · 19/02/2020 12:30

nibdedibble Well I'm glad your experience isn't the same as the rest of us who have expressed the total opposite on the thread.

nibdedibble · 19/02/2020 12:31

ShatnersWig I am very contrite and I know RTFT etc. Apologies.

Canapes · 19/02/2020 12:31

I feel like a lot of the answers on here are coming from a place of hurt and anger which I do find a bit shortsighted considering you choose not to have children.

It's 'coming from a place of' not wanting to be othered all the time.

@StarShapedWindow's logic seems to be that a person who can't hack having the same set of intrusive questions asked of them about why they don't have children, should just have children. Then Ta-daah! no one will ask!! Hmm

StarShapedWindow · 19/02/2020 12:37

No, I don’t think you should have children Canapés. Some of the comments are so rude, sorry not to join in your echo chamber of agreement. If I disagree I must be unable to ‘get’ you. Of course Hmm

Trunkysaurus · 19/02/2020 12:38

@nibdedibble

Its not just women. I'm the husband who will apparently leave her for a "real woman"

No chance. Mick and I love each other and neither of us would ever want children in our life. We're happy and no cunt who's life is defined by the detritus of their sex life has the right to demean my wife and our choices.

slashlover · 19/02/2020 12:42

nibdedibble

My point is OP that daft comments like those of your relative notwithstanding, there really isn't an undercurrent of disapproval or pity from people with children. In my experience. Don't imagine we're all side-eyeing you and tutting internally.

I'm assuming from the "we're" that you have children? You might not feel like that but clearly others do.

Have you not seen the comments on this thread from both the people who have received them and the posts of "I felt the same until I had a baby" and "You should try to educate people when they ask intrusive questions".

Canapes · 19/02/2020 12:43

Some of the comments are so rude

With respect, @StarShapedWindow, you appear to have an unusual sense of what 'rude' is.

Brown76 · 19/02/2020 12:47

YANBU these people are being very rude. I have kids but didn't until late thirties so I've been asked this a lot. I never ask people about their procreation plans unless they are very close family or friends and in a private chat because it's so personal. Come up with a comment to highlight this eg 'I never ask other people about how many children they've had and why, as I think it's rude' or 'that's private and personal'.

nibdedibble · 19/02/2020 12:47

I did say very clearly 'In my experience' and I apologise, again, for having got it wrong.

ShatnersWig · 19/02/2020 12:54

nibdedibble Sorry, we cross posted, these things happen so easily when you don't read threads. Apology not strictly necessary but cheerfully accepted.

slash Scroll up slightly, nib explained.

Window Do you really not think that, as you're pretty much a lone voice, there might be something in what we're all saying and that if you really feel "education" is necessary, it's probably you that needs educating but that you refuse to listen to us?

StarShapedWindow · 19/02/2020 13:07

So I am wrong to have a different opinion but you find it hard that your difference of life choice isn’t valued?

Original poster
Syrinx89 · 19/02/2020 13:08

Sorry guys, just went out to get my hair done. Took 3 hours... Feeling fabulous now! Hope you're all having a good day too. 😊

@starshapedwindow You just don't understand that it's not the question itself, it's the statements! Why should we have to put up with them so regularly, if at all?!

OP posts:
StarShapedWindow · 19/02/2020 13:26

You shouldn’t have to! But that doesn’t make them go away.

SerenDippitty · 19/02/2020 13:27

Oh, the other trope that gets lobbed at childfree people is that we all spend our times island hopping round the Caribbean on endless holidays, cocktails in one hand, fuckbuddy du jour in the other, living feckless, meaningless existences of wasted money and irresponsibility.

Oh absolutely and the comment that there’s only so many holidays, weekends away, meals out you can have as though there can’t possibly be any meaning in your life .....I speak as someone who didn’t choose childfree life but is making the best of it, and enjoying it.

slashlover · 19/02/2020 13:29

StarShapedWindow

So I am wrong to have a different opinion but you find it hard that your difference of life choice isn’t valued?

You can have any opinion you want but why do you feel the need to have family explain their child free status? Do you feel the need to question/comment on everyone who has a different opinion or lifestyle to you?

Witsendagain · 19/02/2020 13:35

I think that, rather than staying polite, everyone should be calling them out on their rudeness.
Whether you have children and didn't want them, want children and don't have them, don't want and don't have, or do want and do have. We need to start establishing it in societies view as unacceptable to insist all women should only ever be baby making machines. This will only happen if these questions are called out. Every time. It might prevent the next generation of young people having to face such hurtful and rude comments!

DevilsAdv0caat · 19/02/2020 13:37

I said in my first post that I understand the upset of the topic if you cannot conceive but if you choose not to I don’t see why it’s upsetting.
You can't tell from looking who is choosing to be child free and who has fertility issues. Why even chance upsetting someone just to satisfy your own nosiness or because you can't think of any other line of conversation?

sorry not to join in your echo chamber of agreement. If I disagree I must be unable to ‘get’ you. Of course hmm
People are literally explaining why this line of questioning is damaging yet you're STILL convinced that drilling people about their life choices is ok? You're all for educating people but you're not interested in being educated yourself. Ironic.

slashlover · 19/02/2020 14:09

You shouldn’t have to! But that doesn’t make them go away.

But you are the one questioning your family and saying people should educate others. You ARE them.

MulticolourMophead · 19/02/2020 14:15

StarShapedWindow

So I am wrong to have a different opinion but you find it hard that your difference of life choice isn’t valued?

If you have a different opinion, fine, that's not the issue.

The issue is that the people asking the questions are not interested in being educated, as other posters have said. They are invested in judging those who choose to be child free, and in trying to change their minds.

There is a certain type of person who doesn't like it when others choose differently to themselves. Rather than just accepting that we are all able to make our own choices, these people try to make you change your mind to conform to what they feel is the correct decision, in this case trying to persuade child free people to have babies.

SerenDippitty · 19/02/2020 14:17

You can't tell from looking who is choosing to be child free and who has fertility issues. Why even chance upsetting someone just to satisfy your own nosiness or because you can't think of any other line of conversation?

This. It’s not unknown for people struggling to conceive to say they don’t want them in the hope of shutting down further intrusive questioning.

Whoops75 · 19/02/2020 14:25

Don’t be embarrassed by your choice and feel you need to accept their stupid comments.

Start pushing back OP

Call them out for being rude and ask them to keep their opinions to themselves.

Kit19 · 19/02/2020 14:30

I wanted children but couldn’t have them

When ppl start with the intrusive questions I just tell them straight “I can’t have them, ectopic pregnancies left me infertile”

It makes some ppl embarrassed but you know I’m done with living up other ppls assumptions about me

ConkerGame · 19/02/2020 14:41

My poor friend is getting this so badly from her family right now. She doesn’t have kids (and is ambivalent on this point) but is also single when she would very much prefer not to be (but is sensible enough to realise that being single is a million times better than being in an unhappy relationship).

The comments from her family are all “you must be so devastated to be single as it means you can’t have kids”. Well yes she is unhappy about being single so stop rubbing it in! And no, she’s not looking for a man just so she can have kids (otherwise a sperm donor would suffice!).

She got a huge promotion last year at a really prestigious organisation - she was really proud and all her friends were really happy for her. Her family pretty much ignored it. A few months later her sister announced she was pregnant and her mum’s comment was “oh that’s brilliant, it’s been years since we had any good news in this family!”. Err, What about your other daughter being a complete superstar and by far the most successful of her peers?!

Oilyoilyoilgob · 19/02/2020 21:58

@nibdedibble sadly that was me on the receiving end of ‘not a complete woman’ from sil no less! Still makes me do a big eye roll and sigh thinking of it. Also during this conversation (that she brought up) when I told her about our friends who are also purposefully child free, she said there must be something wrong with them 🤣

Now, she loves her kids. She got married to not work and procreate (fact, not being bitchy!) and constantly comments on other women’s lives.

The sad thing is I genuinely feel sorry for HER. She’s unhappy, has a lot of issues still to be resolved and her festering resentment over lots of things makes her sometimes not a nice person 😕

I’m not perfect but I’m happy. I love my husband and pets and family and friends, I try to enjoy life and love doing new things and am currently really enjoying working on my house and business.
It’s the inference from her that I MUST be unhappy with no children which weirds me out, I’ve told her before children might make me happier, who knows? But right now I’m already happy so they’d only be adding to that. It’s like she thinks that child free people must be miserable and bored. She’s a strange one.

Rant over!