to find childfree comments on parenting forums insensitive?

[HazelMember]

I’ve noticed this a lot lately. Someone will post saying they’re struggling with their DC. Maybe they’re exhausted, dealing with behaviour, feeling overwhelmed, trying to keep them entertained with school holidays. childcare stuff.

Someone pops up with “this is why I’m childfree” or “so glad I dodged that bullet”

I just don’t get the need to say it. Nobody is asking you to justify your life choices. It’s not a debate about whether having children is worth it.

It would be like me going onto a forum for people who can’t have children and saying “well I’ve got three and it’s amazing”, it is just completely insensitive to the situation and adds nothing.

I’m not saying people can’t be childfree or be happy about it, obviously. But there’s a time and place. When someone is clearly struggling, it comes across a bit smug and lacking in empathy.

First class imo @KimberleyClark, am very pleased to be in the childfree club, don’t care what anyone else thinks. I’m sure most parents feel the same and quite right too. Each to their own.

I agree people CAN sometimes talk bollocks about something if they haven't experienced it themselves.

However, in the main part people have made a positive choice to have kids, the most selfish choice you can make when you think about the planet, etc. (I made it myself - I have a daughter).

So in a way, if people have kids and are moaning about how tough it is, perhaps the child-free DO get a bit pissed off by that? Or just feel genuinely glad they don't have any?

It's not at all like a parent going on a child-free forum and saying 'oh thank God I have loss", as many on a child-free forum may have infertility etc - so that would be a deeply insensitive thing to do.

Some people may have kids because they were raped/had an unforseeable contraceptive faolure and were unable to access an abortion, but for the vast majority of people in the UK, it's a positive choice, so not really the same thing at all.

Sorry, my post should read "thank God I have kids" not 'loss"

I think it’s wonderful that they’re happy that they have kids. I’m constantly thankful that I made the right decision for me in not having them. All good.

I wouldn’t crow about my childfree state on a thread where people were talking about how tough parenting was, though, and I’d be very unimpressed with someone came onto the MWC board to tell us what we were missing out on.

I was in a coffee shop at the weekend & the people sitting next to me had a very vocal baby. Happy but noisy. I commented on how cute she was, we had a brief chat & they left smiling. So it’s absolutely not an ‘I hate kids.’ Simply that I was never meant to be a parent.

I feel the same. I like children, I have great relationships with my nieces and nephews and with my friend’s children. It’s not a slight on anyone if I say having children was not for me.

I like children too, love to see them happy. I adore my nephew, who is a delightful young man in every way. But I’m at peace with not being a mother, as much as if I had chosen not to be one. As @Onleemoi says saying that is not a slight on parents.

I wonder if the people who do get somehow offended by people not having children etc are somehow not happy with their own choices?

I have children but have plenty friends and relatives who don't for a variety of reasons. It literally has no impact on me, I don't give it a second thought nor do I feel a need to badger them or question them about their choices.

Of course some people do, we've even seen on this thread someone berating another poster that they should be thankful to her because her children would be paying their pension. It's madness. What possess people to act this way?

In my experience (happily childfree till I decided to have a child, who was born just before I turned 40), a certain type of person who sleepwalked into marriage and 2.2 children or whatever because that’s ’just what you do’, and probably mostly socialises with similar, gets quite triggered by anyone who reminds them, simply by not having done the thing they thought was well-nigh compulsory, that their life was also a choice.

It’s psychologically easier for them not to think of it that way, to think of their choices as non-choices.

The same people who couldn’t handle me being childfree were the ones who kept telling me after I had DS that I had to have another because it would be ‘selfish’ to have an only child.

I conclude that someone having a life that looks ‘easier’ or more pleasant, whether that’s no children or one child, is triggering for people who prefer thinking everyone’s like is the same broadly similar trudge.