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.

This is not true. Women get far more negativity (hence why there is no male equivalent of “spinster”.)

I need to come back and read this thread fully. I’m 43 at the moment, and just noticing this. As someone else says it seems to be a conversation stopper, like you’re excluded from the normal conversation cos you don’t have kids / grandkids to talk about. It’s the first time I’ve experienced it really, it worries me a little what the rest of my life might be like.

Ive never noticed it at work (NHS). In fact I couldnt tell you who has kids as nobody ever mentions it!

Wow. That is an extremely insulting and narrow view. I would struggle to understand anyone who thinks that having children is so “wholly encompassing” that women without children are somehow lacking in life experience. I couldn’t imagine making such a sweeping generalisation about an entire category of women. This attitude strikes me as both smug and vacuous. Don’t flame me, I’m just giving my honest opinion.

This is what I mean the assumption that people are more naive / less knowledgeable just for not having had children. When there is a vast pool of experiences in life from which we can learn.

Having kids does not make you more knowledgeable or worldly in general. Nor less naive nor ignorant.

It merely gives you one experience some others don’t have: raising kids.

(Also why the caveat of “by choice”. Whether by choice or not it’s still a life experience they don’t have.)

Was once told that being childless and thinking you know about life is like living on bread and butter and thinking you know about food!

Or she would have liked both but fate had other plans and she accepted that.

Apparently having children means you are more knowledgeable and your opinions have more value on everything and every topic on the planet - child related or not.

This.

See also fat women, thin women, muscly women, tall women, those who volunteer for the Red Cross front line, those who work 50 hours a week, those who choose not to work and enjoy “me time”.

the only winners are the men who get to run the country whilst women are too much infighting and sabotaging their own success

It might not be typical, but this man's rude reaction early on saved you dealing with someone nasty

I don't treat any of my older colleagues differently according to whether they have kids at all. Some that I don't work closely with I don't even know.

Thank you x

You make some good points, particularly the one about asking people why the DO have kids.. now, I think that's a more pertinent question to ask people.

That's not what I meant when I said it earlier. I believe that people who have not have children have not really had to impact their life or their decisions by having to put someone else first. They can mostly put themselves and their needs first. My SIL didn't have children and had no understanding of why you might do certain things for your children.

I’d politely disagree with that @slinkiemalinkiey - I don’t have children or a husband partly because I spent much of my twenties and thirties caring for parents with cancer. I put them first and lost the chance to have a family of my own. What some people forget in this debate is that not all things are equal.

When I was writing that I did question myself about people who cared for parents but decided that yes while they made need caring like children it wasn't the same in my mind. I think it's maybe because you have the responsibility for creating a person and that is a different thing in this context but yes it's not black and white.

Yes and it works both ways. Sometimes it's easier to get on with a fellow parent. Other timed I'm left out of an office conversation about karaoke because I rarely have free evenings.

More stupid assumptions being made about people without kids. I’d be just as left out as you in a conversation about karaoke and I don’t have kids.

@slinkiemalinkiey caring for an elderly parent has a lot in common with caring for a child I think but in reverse . You do become the parent in that situation as your parent loses more and more of their mental faculties.

It's not a stupid assumption and sorry I didn't mean to offend carers - I appreciate its a huge responsibility. Also there are exceptions and people who just don't like karaoke. My point is that none of the people in that conversation were parents. There are conversation different groups in society will be left out of or feel they have less to say.