Parents not upsetting people who can’t have kids

[PlumPudd]

Read this article in the Guardian with interest, about the need for people with kids to be very conscious of the pain people without kids around them might be feeling, and how friendships can break up when one person is able to have kids and the other can’t.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/06/new-parent-friend-children-baby-grief?CMP=fb_cif#comment-158514602

As someone with one kid and a second on the way, and some old friends / a sibling around me who don’t have kids (some who want them but haven’t found a partner, one who is struggling to conceive), I do try to be careful not to constantly talk about mine or say things like “gosh you went to the theatre then had a lie in the next day, I’m so jealous.” Even though I am very jealous. Also try to not always suggest meet ups with them at the park with baby in tow (though most meet ups do have to be like this as it’s just when I have more time to meet and gives partner valuable alone time to cook, read, be a person rather than a parent.

However, it is also legitimately hard not to sometimes talk about your kids or bring your baby along to a meet up, because when they are young, they consume your life in a way that is sometimes good and sometimes bad : exhausting!! I’d love to be able to chat to friends about the books I’m reading, the day trips I’ve been on, the exhibitions I’m going to visit, what’s going on in politics at the moment but since having a baby the time I have to do any of those things has literally shrunk by about 85%. You also do start spending a bit more time with other parents because they also care about objectively boring stuff like sleep schedules and catchment areas, and they also don’t mind hanging out in awful kid friendly cafes and soft plays.

Curious to hear views about what parents and those who want to be parents can do to accommodate each other’s lives without causing hurt.

Fair enough, sorry if it hurt, perhaps any kind of lighthearted remark isn’t right for this topic. I’m not trying at argue that you are wrong, just that I didn’t mean what you were saying I meant aka “you’re lucky not to have to have gastro”. It was just meant as a comment about the awfulness of gastro, nothing more.

When I called you out on it, you didn’t apologise. You continued to explain what having had to meant for you with no hint that what you’d said was wrong.

I hope you’re sincere in realising lighthearted wasn’t right. This reads like a non apology apology though .

This is such a good thread, and it’s so nice that your thinking of ways to be sensitive to your friends feelings OP.

As a childfree person I would say don’t feel you have to avoid your friends/ family without children. When my brother and his ex had theirs I loved being around them and still do. Your friends may like to interact with your children as a sort of ‘auntie’ figure in their lives too. The only thing I would say is just avoid insensitive comments (which I’m sure you would anyway) . Things like “when are you having your babies?” Ect can be really awkward questions. Or not validating their feelings, like if they say they are feeling tired, saying “you don’t know what it is to be tired till you have kids” or assuming that your childfree friend and their spouse isn’t a family because they don’t have children. But don’t feel like you can’t talk about your children to them, or have to shield them from your children.

Why do you feel you're due an apology?

I also had many moments of silently resenting friends who were able to just have sex and get pregnant, and who didn’t have to save, then go though invasive medical procedures many of which failed.

so did I. I so envied people who could go to bed with their nice warm partners, have a lovely time and just let nature take its majestic course while I was having to have loads of injections and blood tests and invasive internal scans. Seemed so unfair.

You really can’t see it from my posts and the op’s responses?

Honestly this place sometimes drives me mad.

No.

I give up.

It's the same for anyone with a difference.

Respectfully, there is no way you can compare having a child with a disability to someone having a child dying in pregnancy or at/post-birth. There is just no way. Life and death is not that kind of difference, ever. And this doesn't take away from your hardship and struggle. You can't compare your situation to a long struggle to have a child in the first place and being left with empty arms either. These things do not belong to the same category of "people with a difference", no.

What an insensitive thing to say to a parent of a child with a disability. A parent, if they have a life altering difference may have had to make huge sacrifices and had their life changed forever.
Maybe practise what you preach. A lifetime of dealing with disability is a form of grief and a lonely path.

I struggled to conceive for 10yrs couldn't have ivf as partner has a daughter to a previously relationship. My friend popped kids out for fun (6 kids) it never bothered me being around her and the kids what bothered me the most was the questions of when are you going to have kids, your getting older now your body clock is ticking , my kids are the best thing that ever happened to me. I'd brush it off with well I don't want kids, because I could be doing with the pitty party that would come after I'd told them we was trying but with no success. These are the things that people need to stop saying. Luckily for me after giving up trying and coming to terms with the fact I wasn't meant to be a mum we managed to naturally conceive are beautiful daughter at the age of 36. But if someone's not got kids by a certain age don't feel the need to lecture them how they should start thinking about having kids. That stuff cuts with a knife when you've been trying for years.

And here is the thing. This deeply offends me because you have a child - and three of mine are dead. You cannot compare this. These situations aren't comparable, it's literally life or death.

I walked in these shoes for a long time before having my child and believe me, I would have died to be a mother to a living child, even if this came with challenges you are describing.

I don't walk in your shoes, but you clearly don't walk in mine either. Your post is the insensitive one here. It may well come across ungrateful that you have a child to those who can't, to be blunt. And accusatory in tone as if I was minimising your experience and difficulties. I am not, but do not ever compare this to having your child die because you're tone deaf and beyond offensive.

I find your post pretty offensive as well. It's not top trumps, you don't get to tell others that your pain is worse than theirs, that's not how life works.

I am not the same person.

I am saying both are a loss and you don't get to minimise someone else's grief.

Well then, practice what you preach too and don't compare the incomparable.

I don't deny your life is hard or that you grieve what should have been, but this is hard in a very different way.

It's not a grief comparison or a competition. Life and death aren't comparable, that is literally the only binary thing seemingly left in this world. And it is not offensive or minimising to say that.

You don't get to decide what is comparable, you don't get to decide what other people feel or should feel. You have no idea about their life.
Stop playing such a sick game of one-up manship

You can disagree with me, but that won't change my view in the slightest. It's absolutely not a game or a competition to me, the topic is way too serious for this. And I can only guess it's a sensitive one for you too, for a different reason, hence the response.

Okay but I am saying sorry now for making a remark that was lighthearted, and you’re saying I’m being insincere. Perhaps the fact that I started this thread as a way to hear other peoples experiences, and that I’ve explained that I have struggled, firstly to even be able to try to get pregnant and then secondly to get pregnant, means you could give me a little bit of the benefit of the doubt and take my word instead of assuming I’m lying?

I still think that the meaning of my broader comment - aka that people with kids can have low moments and talk about that and that people who want kids can envy even those low moments and that that’s also fine and that it’s hard to understand each other’s perspectives - was okay. I’m not apologising for that, but I am saying sorry for including the lighthearted remark about the awfulness of gastro, and that you being so upset by it has made me realise that I shouldn’t have said it, even though it wasn’t intended to be upsetting.

For me, having gastro is pretty bloody scary because if I can’t keep my medication in my system, I have seizures, and the last two times I’ve had a seizure I’ve severely injured myself, been unable to speak properly or understand language for weeks (which feels like being an animal) and had to be off work for months. Also if I have a seizure while in the later stages of being pregnant there is a good chance I will injure or loose the baby. Making a joke of it is my way of trying to cope with the fear and the horrible reality.

I think the thread is getting derailed somewhat.
@SheeWeee and @PurplePansy05 you both feel very strongly about your different situations and that's to be expected.
However I think you're both trying to compare apples with pears here.
I've not been in either situation and I think they both sound very difficult.

My df had lost both his parents by the time he was 21, I can't imagine that either.
What i do know is my df never felt the need to trump someone else with his grief and perhaps you two shouldn't either.

Pp is misunderstanding the woman with a disabled child. She was saying that she experiences a similar relationship as child-free with people who have non-disabled children - not that it's harder.

You can choose to live your life in misery and being the worst off out of everyone. Or you can choose to work through trauma, accept it and be happy.

I'm literally saying that comparison is ridiculous and its not ok to compare yours with anyone elses and tell them you win in your sick game, so no, I am not comparing anything at all.

Oh, come on @SheeWeee was just responding to a particularly tone-deaf post, particularly lacking in empathy. I was glad she did tbh (alongside another poster) And it wasn't comparing apples and pears, not to my view anyway. This isn't top trumps and no-one should be telling others their grief is worse.

I have suffered with infertility for over 3 years and I am finally pregnant on my 6th go at ivf.

i didn’t really get the rude comments of when are you having a baby as I was very upfront about ivf with people. It is an effective way to stop the questions.

What annoyed me most was when I was passed a family baby and the parent explained to me how to hold a baby 🤨 and then when I got it to sleep I was told well done.

i had more experience with babies than the parents! So patronising.

also I wasn’t allowed to babysit as I didn’t have my own children.

@Chloefairydust, just thought it was an interesting article and wondered what others thought about the topic. Despite the fact that it hasn’t been straightforward for me and partner to have our kid or get pregnant, the fact that we have has made me doubly conscious of the people around me who don’t have kids and might want them and how they might be feeling.

So much of life seems to be down to blind randomly assigned luck. Like whether you find a partner or not, which has wide ranging impacts outside of the obvious. Lots of single friends for example feel they will never be able to afford a flat or house of their own without a partner to share a mortgage with and will forever feel without a secure home, no matter how hard they work or what they do.

Life is random and unfair.

I don't have DC but my brothers both do. They don't know the reasons why I don't. I so wanted to be an aunt to their DC but in both cases their wives held me at arms length because I don't have DC for their kids to be cousins with. The two SILs both had plenty of siblings who also had children, and I was more or less ignored. So it was doubly painful - no DC of my own, and made to feel outside their kid-centred worlds. I did not really get to have a close relationship with my nephews and niece as they grew up. On one occasion I was told quite bluntly by SIL that her DC would prefer not to come to me for an outing but to her sister and sister's DC. Maybe my SILs just assumed I would not be interested in their DC, or perhaps they just didn't bother with me as I could not contribute anything child-related. Either way it was and is really painful.

I don't think it is even personal, just completely thoughtless and insensitive.

My sister can't conceive for medical reasons, but she's very lucky as she seems to have a London tribe of women friends who chose not to have children.

She and they all work in the film and music industry - it's so competitive and London is so expensive, but so alluring, that these women just weren't prepared to risk giving it up, and decided they'd rather keep going and be the best they could.

She's an amazing auntie and we and our teens love her visits and hearing about her international lifestyle and experiencing her ridiculous energy and enthusiasm.

She's also beautifully dressed and groomed (and a size 8). I feel about 70 in comparison!