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?" 😮

Almost certainly! 😱

HMOs? Dorms, surely. It's all we lifeless husks deserve, after all.

I can't post, I'm too furious.

I hear there are empty nightingale hospitals free. I'm pretty sure we can all pile into them. Who cares where we want to live and where our families are located it's not like we are real people with real feelings and real lives anyway

I just laugh at those threads and think thank fuck I don’t have kids if that is what it does to your brain cells!

There was a comment on a thread about someone moving to Cumbria - about how the villages are full of old people who don't have children so the schools closed. I know I shouldn't have responded but I asked where, in that case, we're allowed to live and do all the people move out once their children are grown? as someone else pointed out, it's generally the retired people who keep village community activities running.

Yes, we're now being told that it's a wildly inefficient use of resources for us to be occupying homes by ourselves

In that case the same goes for parents buying big houses with more bedrooms than children and huge gardens where you could cram a bungalow for someone to live in.

Whose resources, incidentally?

No, seriously, it’s galling.

No doubt the same posters would be enraged that I own a three bed townhouse and live alone with my dogs.

we all make choices. If someone wants to complain that they’re financially worse off than their CF peers because they had kids then they need to make that connection for themselves.

News just in: kids cost money.

Also news: having children is a choice and as kids have always cost money since time immemorial, you chose to cost yourself money.

It’s also where they ignore all the things that are paid for out of our taxes that benefit them and their children but have zero benefit to us but no, we should continue to pay out for those things and expect nothing back.

If they seriously wanted to take away SP from the CF people, then we should be able to opt out of paying taxes. So less money for child benefit. Tax credits. Schools. NHS.

This could actually be fun as a funny little exercise.

It’s also where they ignore all the things that are paid for out of our taxes that benefit them and their children but have zero benefit to us but no, we should continue to pay out for those things and expect nothing back

This side of the equation always, always gets ignored.

I actually had a friend get quite upset with me that DH and I have a large 4-bed house and her cousin with two children was struggling in a 3-bed semi and couldn't afford to move.
I mean what did she want? Me to offer to swap with them for free?

Yep, it does.

I think acknowledging the way that CF folk also fund a lot of the services they get benefit from spoils their wet dreams of taking everything away from us.

It’s interesting that they act like we give nothing to society because we didn’t have kids. Yet, we pay a bunch in taxes that fund essential services for their children and them. They spend 18 years of their childrens lives often taking out of the system with things like child benefit, using the NHS, tax credits and other benefits.

CF folk are often entitled only to the bare minimum in benefits. Yet it seems these people think we’re the drain on society and the problem and not them.

i don’t mind my taxes paying for those things but I sure mind being told I’m worth less because I didn’t shoot out a couple of kids.

CF folk are often entitled only to the bare minimum in benefits. Yet it seems these people think we’re the drain on society and the problem and not them

I see the same sort of comments about people receiving state pension -'make them pay tax!' Er, if our income is over £ 12, 570 we already do, thanks. And that really comes as news to people.

I obviously have no children using the local school provision, and was born in a different country so don't have elderly parents using social care. My huge council tax bill literally just gets me my bins emptied.

You're welcome, everyone.

So many people just want an opportunity to bemoan older people having anything.

Forgetting, of course, that one day they too will be older and in receipt of such things. Wonder how they’ll feel when the younger generation blames them for everything that is wrong in society?

also, add to that people who don’t know or understand how tax works.

Same here and you get that ‘look’
This “power-mad” career woman is me, who has saved many many children’s lives, and watched them bloom over the years. I am absolutely sure that if I ever had children my career would have been curtailed, due to the pressures of work.
My greatest moments are when I do a final discharge and say in the nicest possible way, to the parents and child. It’s been a pleasure knowing you, but you must be relieved to never have to see me again.

Yes, the 'look' is unmistakable isn't it 🙄
The age I am now, I'm not really bothered, but 20/30 years ago I could have done without it really.
I'm sorry for you that your career maybe prevented you from having children. I know for some dedicated career women I've worked with over the years, it's been an almost impossible choice for some of them 😥

I have the same problem - had a uterine tumour when I was 18, had surgery but unable to have children after that - and worse still, never married.
Every time I got asked why I wasn't married with kids, and I explained that I couldn't have children, it was a complete conversation stopper. There would be a really uncomfortable moment followed by them saying how sorry they were.
I actually hate people feeling sorry for me, but on the other hand there was a certain amount of schafenfreude in seeing them squirm! It usually stopped me having to explain the unmarred bit too, so there was that bonus.

Whereas I am actually one of 'those power-mad career women', then I had a baby at 40, and 11.5 years on, I'm still one of those power-mad career women. Parenthood has had no discernible impact on my involvement in my work, which seems to disappoint a certain kind of person terribly, the type that could not get over me not planning to have a child, and that for many years could not get over me only having one child by choice. Ideally, from their POV, I should have turned into a human marshmallow as soon as I felt a kick, and been too sad to leave my baby to return from maternity leave...

@Turquioseblue I'm sorry that you had to go through all of that and not be able to have children 😥
I was married when TTC but it made things worse in a way, both for me and my (now ex) husband. In fact I felt sorry for him when the inevitable 'have you got children' question arose, but to spare his embarrasment I freely admitted it was me with the problems. I got beyond being embarrased by it really 🙄
I agree with you though about the schafenfreude, especially from other women - if anything it made me feel slightly better about it all 😎

I have a relative - he and his partner live in a three storey five bedroom townhouse with their one child. Yet DH and I ate the selfish ones for being a childfree couple in our three bed semi.

Yet DH and I ate the selfish ones for being a childfree couple in our three bed semi

When I finally retire (about three/four years time) Plan A is move out of London and upsize to a place with a bit of a garden and at least 2 bedrooms, ideally 3 so I can line one room with books floor to ceiling. Take that for a 'wildly inefficient use of resources, ' CF bashers.

On our road of 12 4-bedroomed town houses, only 2 have children living in them full time, and one more has one at weekends. From a social pov I don’t think that’s good- they’re family houses that families can’t afford to live in- but it’s lovely and quiet and civilised.

Well it's me and DH and the dog in a 5 bed 4 bath property on half an acre... one bedroom is our bedroom, bedroom 2 is the walk in wardrobe, bed 3 is my office, bed 4 and 5 are in the side wing and are guest bedrooms/Airbnb.

I like to keep some space between us and the families.

Someone is now positing the “interesting idea” of childfree people getting no state pension and/or parents getting a bigger state pension for raising taxpaying citizens.

In my fantasy world all of us childfree people will up and leave this country for somewhere where we are not constantly bombarded with bullshit like that. Then who will work Christmas so the mummies can see their children unwrap presents.

Yes, I'm feeling mean.

I'm back in my substantive role following a lovely secondment and already the fighting about Christmas leave is starting. Well, I'm having mine and I don't care about the imagined impact it has on some random child I'll never meet because for the last decade I've worked 8 fucking Christmases and I'm done.

Can you tell I'm feeling annoyed today?

Good dailiesque Stand your ground

Were you hoping that the secondment would turn permanent, @daliesque? That happened to me earlier this year, it’s shit