Would you cut off someone that lied about having a child?

[Spenning]

In my workplace a colleague aged around 50 has lied about having an adult child. She has no children at all. Would you cut her off if she was a friend -or try and understand her behaviour and forgive her?

I know of people that do this so at work so they aren’t treated as the childfree/childless colleague that can be expected to work the worst shifts, or otherwise shortchanged because they don’t have children.

That was my first thought.

I would feel sorry for her. She might have had a child or she might have always wanted to have children or she might feel excluded being the only one not having children.
@Spenning Please try to make her feel accepted and included. Whatever reason she had for lying is a very sad reason and nothing you should judge her for. She must feel so embarrassed the poor woman.😥

Exactly. I mean, I’d worked with a colleague of whom I’m fond for about two years before I realised she had adult children — she’s my age, and as she’d never mentioned having children still living at home, I’d had no idea she’d had two children in her late teens, who were long grown and living overseas by the time I knew her. It made precisely no difference to our working relationship either way.

How do you know this for sure? There are lots of circumstances (death, adoption, estrangement) where this could be a misunderstanding on your part and not necessarily a lie on hers.

Fake child/person she invented

That would make me feel uncomfortable, yes.

I would obviously continue to work with her as normal but distance myself on a social/friendship level.

I once met a bloke where he and his girlfriend had created an imaginary child together. They celebrated her 'birthday' and everything. Bit odd, but hey ho, not hurting anyone.

Why would you cut her off for this? She's obviously troubled in some way but is she a pleasant person to be with, did you like her before this, has she threatened or abused you in any way?

I'd need more context...how much detail had she said about this 'child' and often has she spoken about them, and how did you find out she doesn't have a child?

Edited to add: my gut reaction would be to try and understand why she's done it...partially because I'm nice, but mostly because I'm nosey lol

In the case of your colleague do you know why she has done this? If its for practical reasons to avoid having to work certain holidays etc., that's one thing, but if its not for that reason, its an odd thing to do that I would imagine comes from quite an unhappy place. If this has recently been 'discovered' then she may feel really humiliated by it.

I agree with what Kelsey Graham said, ' To judge someone without first hearing their story is one of the greatest evils.'

Depends. I worked somewhere that gave preferential treatment to parents, first dibs on annual leave, they were the only ones allowed time off at Christmas and in August, and they were always allowed to leave promptly at the end of shift- whereas the rest of us would have to stay until the work was done. I would have happily started to drip-feeding in some imaginary kids if I had planned on staying there long-term.

I would avoid her

Depends on the circumstances and why she did it.

If it was someone inventing a whole load of details and backstory about a child and giving them a name and constantly talking about them, I'd think that person was probably deeply unwell and while I wouldn't 'cut them off' I would certainly be maintaining a safe distance and having a little chat with them about why they lied and suggesting that they got some mental health support.

If it was someone trying to come up with an excuse for needing time off and they said 'It's my son's birthday' or something, and then people said 'Oh, didn't know you had a son, what's his name, where does he live' etc and they just panicked and answered the questions, and the whole thing spiralled and they had no clue how to extricate themselves from the subterfuge because how can you suddenly say 'Oh yeah, that son I mentioned? I made him up to get a day off' then I'd find that fully hilarious and would absolutely want to be friends with them.

Why would your first port of call be anything but trying to understand?

It's clearly an odd thing to say, there must be something behind it.

Same - my brain wouldn't instantly go to 'cut off'. There are so many permutations here. Some might be very sad and difficult. Some may not of course. But face value judgements are rarely solid ones.

Yeah I’m not going to shun or shame her. I once worked with someone who was allegedly a liar and fantasist - allegedly saying she was having an affair with a man whose wife had cancer - but my colleagues all saw through it.

We took a bus journey together once and I just spoke to her the same way as I’d speak to anyone else and when I spoke to her she certainly didn’t say anything sensational at all. The worst ‘crime’ she committed perhaps - 🤣 - was that tbh her conversation skewed a bit towards ‘boring’ but she certainly didn’t come across as fantasist or liar when I spoke to her first hand - and I don’t believe in listening to gossip!

Why? I couldn’t give a damn why anyone chooses to lie. Why should I have curiosity about it? If someone lies I give them a wide berth in future. Liars are dangerous.

If it hadn't affected me in any way (she hadn't been asking me to do something for her so she could see the fictitious kid or something), I'd tell myself she wasn't having mental health issues (or a dead child, or a child that was taken from her) AT me, and let it go.

How did you find out she was lying?

How do you know there is no child? Maybe she had the child adopted? Or a mental health condition etc ?

If she’s just your colleague, it’s not your business or worry how many children she has or not. 🤷‍♀️

Wouldn’t you find out in this case why she lied before giving a wide berth? What if she did have a child and no longer does?

How did you find out she doesn’t have an adult child OP? Do you know she definitely doesn’t have one?

I read a post about a woman lying that she had a child because she was sick of coworkers who were parents getting days off/early finishes/being allowed to take time out for strike days etc. She was fed up and made up a child, so when she got older, she presumably had to keep up the lie.
More seriously, sometimes if someone has lost a child to miscarriage or stillbirth, they still consider themselves a parent. While I would never tell a lie that the child I lost was "on holiday last week" or act as if they're still on earth, I do sometimes hesitate when asked how many children I have. No one wants to say to a coworker or virtual stranger in response to the usual query about your fecundity, "Hey, I have a son and a daughter, and another who died", but equally, saying you only have 2 seems like ignoring the stillbirth as if they don't matter.
So I would say it would be awful to treat her badly or cut her off.

Honestly, OP, I would reserve judgement. You have no idea what went on on her life years ago. Maybe she gave up a child for adoption. Maybe she had miscarriages. Maybe she was coerced into having an abortion. Maybe she did have a child who died. In any of these circs, referring to her adult child to a stranger lets her remember her child.

It's also possible that she lost access to a child and doesn't want to tell people that, so you are unaware that she does in fact have one.

Or, it could be that people really judge childless women and she doesn't want that judgement at work.

If she's a friend, you could say "Oh, I didn't know you had a child!" when you overhear her saying it, and see what she says.