To ask, honestly now, do some people see and treat 50 year old women differently according to whether or not they’ve had children?

[HolisticApp]

By ‘children’ I mean this includes kids over 18 - so not necessarily women in the throes of ‘family life’ as it were.

I can't speak about being in my 50s and child free but I had DS at 35 and noticed a difference immediately. It was like joining a secret club and I found I suddenly had easy conversation inroads with the directors and executive team. I'm a director and exec myself now and try really hard not to be exclusionary in this way. I suspect this will change (or is changing already) as more people don't have children but certainly in the recent past there was a feeling that you're not a proper adult if you didn't have kids. For men too actually there used to be a definite premium attached to being a stable family man.

Thank you for being honest. How do you feel about women childless boy though choice though? Because if you think children are the sole purpose of life do you view their lives as pointless? Would you pity them or just avoid them?

There is research from the U.S. suggesting that married men with kids are more likely to get promotions and pay rises. More anecdotally I’ve seen men on social media attest to this happening almost instantly.

not sure if the same applies to married women/ kids though!

You see I can’t get my head round this because any difference between women over 40 I totally judge on their personalities not whether or not they have children ..

But I’ve had my own fundamental life experiences that have shaped me. I left an abusive marriage, I found my best friends body after he killed himself, I’ve had a major health scare, have radically changed careers after the suicide of mt best friend and my divorce because I was burnt out and couldn’t face the classroom anymore. That change in career came with me moving 300 miles away to escape said abusive husband and starting from scratch again. That came with years and years of little money - often choosing between getting to work and eating. I climbed up the ladder and am now senior in my field. I am also now a carer for my elderly father.
Im sure that many parents will try to play top trumps ans say ahh, but it’s much more difficult with children blah blah blah but my life experiences, and the ones of all childfree people are as important as those of parents. None of us are the same person we were when we were young. It’s insulting to assume so of a section of society that you knkw nothing about.

See them differently, how? And compared to who - women with children or other men without?

Of course some people trest you differently. There are arseholes in all walks of life.

I'm in my 50s and childless, I get more pissed off at people assuming I must be Mrs, and in certain stores, if I need to ask my husband. I'm sure if I had ever gained s husband, I'd still be capable of making decisions about household things without him. I don't think anyone has treated me differently for not having children, but I work in a male-dominated industry, so I am different anyway, which most of my colleagues are fine with, but you get the odd one who isn't quite sure how to behave. I have suggested they don't start emails with "gents" if they want to include me, and I've also pointed out that it's either okay to swear in front of everyone, or that they apologise to everyone, not just me. I do not shrivel up in horror at people using swear words just because I have ovaries.

It depends on the scenario whether they wanted them - pre having kids late at 40 I was desperate for them…either no partner and then ironically difficulty conceiving them. I felt pitied and a lesser woman but that might have been internalising my own pain. You never no if a child free woman is by choice or not… I would say personally I treat them like any other woman I know of that age but may make a concerted effort not to reference children as if they would have loved kids it may be very painful. I lived with that pain for over a decade

Yes I think they are treated differently.

Women who have children are also treated differently.

Women who are single parents are also treated differently.

Older women, women of colour, all treated differently.

There are huge societal expectations and judgements of women for a variety of reasons.

Women should support each other, not fall into the trap of blaming each other for a patriarchal society that is constantly trying to box them in, wear them down and silence them.

I agree.

I get more pissed off at people assuming I must be Mrs, and in certain stores, if I need to ask my husband

Yes, but this describes both married and unmarried women getting the same shitty, patronising service though, surely?

Be that as it may, we won’t necessarily notice the specific ways in which childless women are treated differently since we’re not on the receiving end of those particular aggressions.

Yes, this.

The unifying condition of women is that their decisions live under the microscope and judgement of both men and other women - in a way that men's decisions tend not to be.

Gosh, you're so right! Had never thought of it that deeply, before.

Yes - it's an age thing, though, rather than anything. When I was younger, it would be, "Miss? Mrs?" Now it's just "Mrs?" I've always been "Ms" but that never seems to be asked. And I now seem to be old enough that it's assumed there is a husband, which wasn't the case when I was younger. Which is weird, because many women my age who married have got divorced, so there should never be an assumption that someone is married.

Meh, I don't think that you need to spin off into standpoint relativism. It's just arguing over which flavour of bollocks you are subjected to and creating unnecessary division when it comes to women with and without children.

I mean, I opted for ms when I was 18 and stuck with it when single and married and it has never been an issue.

I worked in a very all consuming, traditionally male industry. No one ever talked about their kids at work. I would say most of the men had children but didn't talk about them, and the women either didn't talk about it or didn't have them.

Having kids was definitely seen as more of an uncool negative than a positive. A lot of the younger women said they didn't want to have them or were holding off for career reasons. And many of the higher-up women didn't have children.

But mentioning kids and babies would definitely be seen as a bit 'uncool' in the workplace...it wasn't the kind of place where you'd find pictures of people's babies and families on their desks.

You might observe what happens to others. Surely if you saw someone being treated negatively in the workplace, you wouldn't stand back thinking, "that's racist/sexist/otherwise discriminatory, but it's not me experiencing it, so I can't comment"?

(Although when I tried to raise issues about bullying, I got lots of private support,but no one prepared to speak up officially, so maybe most people do just stay silent.)

No one ever assumes you're Ms though, and some have definitely raised an eyebrow when I say it. (Actually, my preferred option is no title, but that rarely is a choice on forms.)

EXACTLY this.

I wish more people would understand that just because they only want to focus about how negatively they are treated, the actual case is that they dont know any different from the other perspective.

If anyone raised an eyebrow at me I never noticed. I just don't think it's a problem and have no impetus to engineer it into one.

That doesn't make sense. Read the title. Do some people see and treat 50 year old women differently ? It's asking people for their opinions !

I've been meaning to change from Mrs to Ms, but don't know whether I cba with all the identification paperwork etc.

The title is laborious. Why the age 50? To answer it I have found that people in my line of work are not as empathetic in their role before they have children as to afterwards. Did I treat them differently? No. It obviously doesn't apply to all jobs and careers though.