If you have ever said ‘It will be different when it’s your own’

[ScheherazadesTales]

What did you mean by it

An aunt keeps asking when I’m going to have babies. I don’t want children, I never did. Most people have stopped asking but this lady is in her 80’s and is persistent but I don’t want to be rude and tell her to fuck off.

At a family gathering this weekend she was at it again. I said there isn’t a single part of motherhood I’m interested in- I don’t want to experience pregnancy, labour, breast feeding, changing shitty nappies. I listed all my reasons from baby years to adult years and kept it balanced by mentioning the positive ones too like unconditional love, first smile and hugs.

I don’t usually go on like this but most people stop asking quite quickly and judge me silently (or behind my back to others) Not her, she won’t let it go and always end with it’s different when it’s your own.

What does she mean by that? That I would suddenly love the endless amount cleaning or tantrums because the human was pushed out of me?

I've said this about myself. I only like my own child. I wouldn't say it to a childfree woman.

About it being generational - my mum was born in the 1920s (I’m 60). When DH and I were struggling to conceive she happily told nosy friends that we didn’t want children!

@Tullig

there's magic in the 'parenting' instinct: deep caring about the needs of someone/something that's dependent on you for love/ food. It'd be a shame to miss that experience

It wouldn't be a shame if you hadn't the remotest interest in having someone or something 'depend on you for love/food'. That's a bit like telling someone without the faintest interest in cycling that it's a shame to miss the experience of cycling the Tour de France route.

This. I can't imagine having anyone depend on me that way! I'm okay missing that experience.

It’s all different- they’re literally made of you so it all feels meaningful and important and you get actual tearful joy from them doing their first regular human things - everything’s a miracle.

Does this still apply if you really dislike yourself? Or will it actually cure your self hatred, seeing yourself in a cute baby?

Asking for a friend.

But the OP did ask grapewine.

Fundamentally, if you see the dependency on you as a 'condition' put upon you if you want your own child that it is obviously not for you. It doesn't take much imagination to realise the capacity for the unconditional bit is what's important. I don't really know why anyone would need to ask what this Aunt means. She isn't right to ask it but needing an explanation seems a bit unnecessary.

Next time just remind her that a woman’s worth isn’t measured by whether she has children or not (or shouldn’t be anyway!). That is perfectly acceptable not to have children and that even though that wasn’t her choice it is yours.

I’m childfree by choice and very grateful I don’t have any family who make these comments to me as I’d be minded to give them an earful if they did!

@whynotwhatknot

I get this aswell and from an older aunt-dont knowif its a generational thing or what -the last time she mentioned me having kids i said why would i want to i like my life

she called me a coward

That was incredibly rude and I’m not easily offended. You would have been well within rights to say you were scared yes. Scared you’d spawn a child that mutated into a rude old cow like her

Mind you - as an aside - there are for me days when I think my little darlings could be used as PR for some sort of National contraception drive and birth rates would plummet 😂
You certainly don’t need to be “brave” to produce children but I am happy to admit there are days when I feel as though I have survived the apocalypse

That's a deep question Pandora64, you see yourself in them of course but your partner too, your own parents, theirs, I see glimpses of my much beloved grandfather in my DS. He never met him as he died in middle age.

It's very different to having a pet, that's a daft comparison.

My mum has openly admitted that for her it wasn't different when it's your own. I don't have kids - infertile - but a part of me has always wondered if the family carries some kind of gene for terrible parenting. My sister is childfree so we'll never know.

I always baulk when I hear parents say this - partly because I'll never know and partly because it assumes that all parents are fundamentally decent parents.

Why do people always badger a woman about their fertility? The person could be distraught after failed IVF treatments or maybe they had cancer and are unable to have children etc. MYOB! Your aunt sounds like a broken record which is really hard to laugh off. This “it’s always different when they’re your own” is some culturally embedded claptrap: once you have them you’ll be happy to look after them.

Yes it's different when they're your own. It's more relentless. Other people's children you can give back.

As my mum used to say when anyone tutted about a tantruming toddler in the supermarket - "you have no reason to complain, you can walk away. It's mother has to take it home with her"

Oh that's brilliant!

It really IS different. I remember looking round the maternity ward and wondered (not consciously , this was one of those unbidden thoughts that can wander across your mind) how can any of these mums be happy with those scrawny squalling skinny rat babies when they look and see MY beautiful extraordinary baby.
Then I realise what I had thought and went and understood why people are so daft over their own children. I just hadn't understood how fundamentally biological this is.

@WinterGold I don't agree that it's a generational thing. My mum is mid eighties and always counselled me against having children as child-rearing is all a bit shit and takes away your freedom, to paraphrase. I have to say I think I would have come to that conclusion by myself in fact. So anyway, I don't think it's generational. And you come across plenty of younger people who also think child rearing is the be all and end all of life.

Despite now having 2 of my own, I was never maternal in the traditional way and used to find it excruciating when ex colleagues used to thrust their babies into my arms to cuddle and laugh that they would somehow ‘convert’ me.

I can identify with that, totally! People who think you must be dying to hold their squirming bundle and get very hurt if you don't make the 'right' coo-coo responses. Even having my own 2 I was never all that enamoured with other people's, luckily my circle generally were of the same mind, 'Yes, very nice dear, where's the corkscrew'!

It's not different when it's your own. Boring drudgery is boring drudgery. Loving your child will not make the relentless negatives any easier. There are plus and minus to both having and not having. But I don't believe the negatives miraculously disappear because you love your child.

@MrFsAunt - thank you. I can see that seeing beloved relations in your own child would be marvellous - a friend and I recently spent five minutes laughing and cooing at her daughter playing with a drum set because she concentrates she looks exactly like her maternal grandfather doing the crossword.

I’m beginning to think I’m odd - I love my friends’ and family’s and even strangers’ babies but the thought of my own makes me shudder. ‘It’ll be different when it’s your own” - yeah right, it’ll be bloody annoying having another dozy insomniac with small brown eyes about - plus screaming, oh wow, what a gift.

There are many women that gave into the pressures of having kids and made terrible Mothers. You don't owe this woman an explanation. I think you need to avoid this woman if she just won't stop annoying you about this. There is absolutely nothing wrong with not wanting children.

I agree with pp, other people's babies are way better than your own, you can give them back when they become unpleasant

I don't think there's anything wrong with saying firmly 'you're not going to change my mind, now, did you watch the Australian Open'. But if you see her regularly I guess she probably is angling for some more local grandchildren. I wonder if she spends her life trying to convince her kids to move closer to her?!

‘It will be different when it’s your own’

It isn't always though, is it? It's a massive gamble and this is another human being we are talking about here, not an accumulator at William Hill.

I chose not to have children. A combination of not actually wanting them and having a chronic illness which can be hereditary. There's no way in this world I'm bringing up some poor sod to be a young carer, riddled with arthritis themselves. That would be selfish AF.

Are we still having biscuits because I'm about to put the kettle on...

Maybe she thinks you would make a great Mother?
My Uncle and his wife are absolutely not going to have children but my elderly Great Aunt can’t accept that and always says what a shame it is because they would make wonderful Parents.(Her words).

@Avarua

Not a single day goes by that my kids don't being me joy. But my dog does too, so I can appreciate that people might like to parent dogs more than kids. There's magic in the 'parenting' instinct: deep caring about the needs of someone/something that's dependent on you for love/ food. It'd be a shame to miss that experience.

I don't feel any regret or upset in missing that "experience".

@Pandora64

It’s all different- they’re literally made of you so it all feels meaningful and important and you get actual tearful joy from them doing their first regular human things - everything’s a miracle.

Does this still apply if you really dislike yourself? Or will it actually cure your self hatred, seeing yourself in a cute baby?

Asking for a friend.

Not a cure, definitely, and it's quite a dangerous idea, that having a child is some pathway to healing your own demons. It's like conceiving a child to be an organ donor for their older sibling.

But I would say that for anyone who aims to be a decent parent, it's definitely a kick up the arse to both (1) sort out your self-hatred issues so you don't pass them on and can model healthy self-esteem and (2) realise that while you made him/her, your baby is their own person.

Otherwise you end like like my mum, whom I love, but who has spent her entire life apologising for my achievements, because she thinks it makes her look like she's got 'ideas above her station.' She hasn't quite figured out that I exist in my own right.