Why do they take it personally?

[BadCider]

I consider myself happily childfree.

I've never actively wanted a baby - I assumed I'd get the 'urge' but never did. I love my freedom, never felt anything missing.

Around 10 years ago I needed surgery and during this, another issue was discovered and more tests were carried out; long story short, if I wanted children then I would need IVF and even then the chance would be tiny. I cannot conceive naturally.

I remember thinking phew, that's lucky I don't see myself as a mother because that would be devastating! And carried on with my life.

I'm active and in a lot of groups/clubs and meet lots of new people regularly, and with work I travel a lot and smalltalk is needed. So inevitably I'm asked "do you have kids" quite a lot. By women.

When I answer "no" then 80% of them follow up with "oh did you not want them?"

I've found a huge difference in reaction when I give one of two answers- either I say "I can't have children" and I'm met with sympathy and 'oh I'm so sorry' the conversation changes and the interaction continues warmly.

But if I say "I didn't want children." Then I'm met with 'oh' and it's a noticeably less warm interaction.

My feeling is that it's taken as a personal affront, they're offended that I made a different choice, they think I hate kids (I don't).

But me not having kids doesn't mean I judge them for having them - that would be so ridiculous, everyone is different, we all enjoy different things, have different lives etc.

I just wanted to vent! This happened last night at a group, and I was getting on well with a woman until I said I didn't have kids, didn't want them, (she asked) and she actually just blanked me after that!

Incidentally, my husband is never asked. 🙄

If you prefer to think it doesn't happen, and deny the op's experience on many occasions, or prefer to imagine the motives are different, please feel free. I'll leave you to it

This 💯

I would consider it really rude to even ask the question, and in this day and age surely women are aware that many other women have not chosen motherhood, or infertile, etc, and it's not a conversational ice breaker.

I'm in my late 50s and would say that at least half of the girls I went to school with have chosen not to be mothers. Some have not chosen that path but it has been foisted upon them through circumstances.

Fwiw, as a mother of five, I get a lot of judgement - I'd say around 50-50 positive and negative, with the occasional dollop of patronizing.

People have a lot of unexamined baggage around family size and women's reproductive choices. Just women's, hardly ever men's.

Which question do you mean? “Do you have children” or “why don’t you”? Sorry if I’m getting confused. The first Q is pretty innocuous small talk (even “where do you live” or “what do you do for a living” might be a sensitive subject for some people but you can’t predict that)

Clearly it happens, but that doesn't mean it's common. Maybe I'm naive bit I don't think most parents are so pig headed that they blank anyone who doesn't have kids.

I think it's that there are a number of childfree by choice people who can be quite vitriolic in giving their reasons why and get quite nasty - so unfortunately people might (unfairly) assume you may be one of that crew and back off.

I find that a number of parents (mostly women) who are vitriolic when I give my reason for not having kids ie I just didn't want them - and get quite nasty so childfree people might (unfairly) assume you may be one of that crew and back off.

I don't mind people asking me why I don't have children as long as they are respectful of my answer. If they are interested I'm happy to go further into why I made this decision.

What angers me are, in no particular order

• the look of horror on their face.
• the quickly looking for an escape as if I've suddenly become infectious
• the comments about not understanding life/love/whatever or, the one that really gets my goat - the suffering of my patients (I'm an oncologist who had cancer and who comes from a family afflicted with a genetic disposition to cancer...)
• the pity looks
• the comments that my partner will look elsewhere
• the assumption that I have lots of sleep - I was a junior doctor nuff said. Plus I'm a life. Long insomniac
• the general attitude that I am somehow lacking and less than in some way

If I knew you couldn't, then it's natural to offer condolences, but if you said no, I wouldn't have that shared experience, so there wouldn't really be anywhere for the conversation to go.

I think this comment says more about the poster than she intended it to 🤣🤣

I think it's extremely rare. I can't remember the last time anyone asked me if I have children.

I can’t believe people are saying this in response to you just saying you don’t want children

I can't see anything wrong in the reactions people are giving you, op. You respond that you didn't want children. What else are can they say? If they showed interest and ask questions, you'd find it intrusive, and fair enough.

They could just change the conversation 'I've got 3 and a dog, have you got any pets?' 'I've got two, we've just got back from a holiday in Cornwall, have you ever been?' Etc.

I can’t believe people are saying this in response to you just saying you don’t want children

I'm afraid they do. There is enough evidence on this thread of how we are treated, let alone our examples from our actual,real,lives.

I am also the daughter of a woman who didn't want children. Shouldn't have had children and regretted having children every day of her life. So it happens, regretful parents exist. However they tend not to share their feelings with other parents. Hint: they can feel more comfortable sharing with us childfree.

The one that gets me is the doubting my competence and my empathy for cancer patients as a doctor. That's got nothing to do with my parental status and everything to do with my training, experience and ability as an oncologist. Oh and the slight fact that I've had cancer myself so will have more understanding than Brenda the nice nurse with 5 kids.

I'm sorry both about your mother and about your cancer.

But how do patients even know if you have children or not? I've been treated for a number of fairly serious conditions, as have my children, and I've never had the faintest idea if the doctor had children or not, nor would i even think of asking or wanting to know.

The only doctors I've ever found problematic are either those who are extremely young and inexperienced, extremely smug and arrogant, or extremely detached and impatient. I can't see that any of those are related to whether or not they have children.

@Superfood sorry, I didn't make it clear, it's not the patients judging me. It is other members of staff. Mostly female and mostly nurses if I'm being honest.

My patients are not interested in my personal circumstances because they, rightly, have more important things to worry about. I don't tend to share with my patients about my own experiences as a cancer patient because it was a long time ago and my experiences are just that, mine, and are different to theirs.

Only once have I shared my story with a patient and that was someone who had the same cancer as me and we had discovered that she had a similar family history. She was asking about the impact it would have on her and her family and so I told her a little bit about me.

I think it's kinder to DS to stop at one. A younger sibling's birth means the first child suddenly going from having undivided parental attention to having very little parental attention because the baby requires so much time. I remember wanting my dad to put my little sister back in my mum.

Oh yes. People like their boxes. You don’t dress a certain way by a certain age, something amiss, you don’t have the kids by a certain age, something amiss, and on and on. A lot of people are quite small minded, I find.

What a shame. I don’t find “a lot of people” small minded that I meet and engage with in RL at all

You are lucky 🙂

I think you’re unlucky

I’m sorry this happens to you. It sounds like an extension of the idea that having kids makes you more caring and empathetic!

And what qualities would those be?

Be specific.

you keep referencing values and qualities but not identifying what they specifically are.

Do you assume that you and your kids are interesting to anyone else? Clue: you and they aren’t.

But the only ‘quality’ a childfree person has that sets them aside from a parent or a childless person is the fact of choosing not to have a child.

I was happily childfree till just before I turned 40, and I can state with confidence that I am pretty much exactly the same person, but with a child.

My values are identical. I didn’t get reinvented the moment I delivered the placenta or anything.

My values are identical. I didn’t get reinvented the moment I delivered the placenta or anything

Well yes, that's pretty much the point posters are trying to make. But that poster seems to be implying that the childfree and the parented have such completely different sets of values that as far as that poster is concerned there's no chance of a meeting of minds - and @CleverLilViper is trying to find out what those values are that the poster holds. It's more likely to be 'I don't understand why people don't want to have children and have no intention of finding out' rather than anything deeper.

Which question do you mean? “Do you have children” or “why don’t you”? Sorry if I’m getting confused. The first Q is pretty innocuous small talk (even “where do you live” or “what do you do for a living” might be a sensitive subject for some people but you can’t predict that)

@PrincessOfTigger
The question "Do you have children?' is the one I think women should refrain from asking.

It's not innocuous small talk. It is gendered and it could be a massive grenade thrown into another woman's life.

Would you ask a man that in a casual social setting?

Why would you assume children might be an experience another woman might have in common with you?

Can you see how such a question would deeply upset a woman who does not have children and did not choose not to have children, in a way that the other topics would not? Women who have suffered multiple miscarriages, women who have buried a child, women who have struggled for years with infertility - or even women who are fed up to the back teeth of others assuming that because they are women, children should be a welcome topic of conversation - would very likely prefer to talk about where they live or what they do for a living or what their hobbies are or even Boris Johnson than address something that affects them really deeply the way the loss of a child or not being able to have one does.

There is a hierarchy of topics that upsets people. They're not all equal.