Worst comment you've had as a child free woman

[derekdied]

I'll start. Someone I had literally met about fifteen minutes previously. One of her first questions "do you have kids?" Me "no.." her "oh could you just not be bothered with the responsibility?" 😮

Most of MN posters dont want their children to be carers as their careers. What they actually mean is they want other peoples children to clean up after them when they are old. Whilst berating childfree women on the assumption they want the same.

Unless posters are specifically bringing up their children to encourage them into the role of carer when they grow up they are being hypocritical anyway.

Yes, we need people in order to have a future, I get that. I pay taxes to help support those people into adulthood. That's my contribution. I don't need to fawn over other people's kids, give medals to their parents for selfless contributions to society, or have any myself

Yes. Thank you. This.

Reverse the highlighting for the correct meaning, folks. I meant to emphasise the bit about paying taxes and did the reverse. 🙄

Yes, more than someone to wipe my arse when I'm old, I want voluntary euthanasia. And I hope we have it by the time I'm that age. We all have to die and I wonder if it would be less taboo if we didn't treat it as something to be staved off at all costs, even when all independence is gone.

I do think the people who come out with this sort of thing are bitter and envious because they had kids on autopilot (“it’s what you do”) and they didn’t think hard enough about whether they really wanted it.

I'd also be interested to know whether the population of dog owners contains more parents than non-parents. Because every single person I know with a dog also has kids. Most single childless people I know either have a cat or no pet at all (because weirdly(!), people who don't want kids as they don't want to be tied down will often not have dependant animals, either).

And yet the stereotype that we're all breathlessly adopting dogs to satisfy our sad desperate secret need to have kids continues...

Here’s some stats;

Ten million or 34% of UK households share their space with a pooch. In families with children, at least 77% have a pet which is a 12% increase over 2021 based on the PFMA survey. Ten million, 34% of UK households, own a dog, compared to 28% (8.2 million) owning a cat.

In the UK 18% of women are childfree at the end of their fertile years. So it must be that the majority of people with pets also have children if I’m understanding the stats/maths correctly.

Anecdotally of all the childfree friends/family etc I have, one has a cat. Of the parents I am friends with/related to etc they all have multiple pets from fish to horses and many things in between.

As a child we had many family pets, now I’m grow up (well old 😂) and childfree I don’t have pets.

If I'm ever asked why I don't have children one if I want them after saying no I don't have them I always say "oh you can't get pregnant the way we do it" which often puts an end to it.

I've never had much pushback against saying I don't want children really. But recently me and my husband moved for his work so I joined some clubs. In one of them I was asked "do you have children" and I said no and the response was just "oh" and I can't explain how it made me feel, like some sort of weird anomaly in this group of women who had met for a common purpose that had nothing to do with childrearing. I still feel funny about it now and I can't exactly put my finger on it. Maybe it was the awkwardness of a situation I don't think is awkward?

I remember a work formal dinner I went to some years ago, and being so excited as I was a bit newer in my field and I was on a table with some really accomplished and experienced people from lots of different sectors.

I was on this round table with 9 others and the men soon formed a boys club. No worries, I thought, I’m excited to talk to these women and share inspiring stories.

All they wanted to talk about was their kids. I was enthusiastically asked if I had them and when I said no, that was it - they treated me like I wasn’t there. I tried a few times to bring the conversation onto ANYTHING else but it didn’t work.

I still think about what a waste of an opportunity that was. Not for them, presumably, but for anyone wanting to talk about something other than potty training, sleep schedules and developmental milestones.

"oh you can't get pregnant the way we do it"

I don't understand this?

It's a joke about deviant sexual practises, designed to shut people up. 😄

I've just posted a pushback to a comment on the feminism board implying that someone must be childless because the someone doesn't get why women are upset by men in women and children's changing rooms. It really is never ending, the sticks people find to beat us.

Fascinating. On the last couple of threads on the topic I’ve posted about my experience being groped as a 9 year old in a swimming pool changing room, by a boy of 9-10. His mum was there but not watching him. I gave up swimming (my favourite hobby) as a result.

Each time I was roundly told by mums of boys that I’m overreacting, that boys aren’t predators, they’re with their mums, that boys are in more danger and that if this means girls can’t use their own spaces then that’s on them and they need to campaign for better ones.

I’ve long thought that being a parent doesn’t make you care more about kids - only your own. These threads and the one you mention are evidence of that.

I remember once on a thread about roll on/stick deodorants vs sprays posters were saying that the former take too long to dry. I posted that mine was usually dry by the time I’d brushed my teeth and put some body lotion on was told that I must be childless if I had time to do all that in the morning!

Thank you for doing that. Such a dim comment, and on the FWR board too FFS.

And totally agree on the wasted networking opportunity fitzwilliamdarcy. I work in HE where there are quite a lot of women without children, so conversations tend to be more work/career-focused at events like that, thankfully.

The first time I heard "You never know love until you have a baby!" I didn’t realise it was a dig at me for not having kids so I responded “I’m so sorry. That must be really traumatic” because I assumed that she’d had a horrible loveless life and had to have children to fill a void caused by a terrible childhood.

That was a conversation between two baffled people who really didn’t understand each other.

That's actually a brilliant comeback 🤭

“You’re tired?”

The incredulous look/ question because you can’t possibly be exhausted without having children in your life.

I'm so sorry that that's happened to you. I went through similar at school.

Boys may be at risk from adult men, but they pose a risk to girls, as we both know. The solution is family changing rooms for mothers with sons, not allowing the boys into the female facilities.

I concur that parents only care about their own kids. I think only the child-free can truly have an unbiased and fair approach to safeguarding, because we are the only people who can consider all children as equal stakeholders.

In my work annual appraisal meeting, my manager opened with, “so what’s your plan B if IVF doesn’t work?”

Bloody hell, @Decaffe . Tell me you pushed back on that and are going to raise it in your comments? that's the sort of crass comment we used to get in the 70s (not about IVF but generally, if you were a woman in the workplace).

From a " friend" -"No man will ever love you if you don't have kids"

From my mother- who is a large part of the reason I'm childfree "You're selfish"

Then the usual...you'll change your mind, you'll regret it, not a real woman, all women are meant to have kids (from a 17-year-old), you're going against nature, you must be a very cold person ( I'm not), you don't know tiredness, you shouldn't be stressed because you have no kids (even though I'm a postgrad student and teach), you'll die alone blah blah blah.

I'm a neuroscience student and I conclude that none of these people have brains.

From a " friend" -"No man will ever love you if you don't have kids"

I've met guys who don't want kids. They aren't unheard of.

Well yes, this is a thread full of stupid comments people have had re their CF status, so it's not a surprise that it doesn't make sense

I think the issue is there are no tax breaks for people with children so people look at a someone on 60k and imagine they are absolutely loaded which is probably true if you hadn’t got kids but if you have then often not

Corker on a recent AIBU thread. How you all doing today my fellow absolutely loaded ones?