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. 🙄

Oh, another good one is "I am not able to bear children".

You can leave people to interpret that however they like, but I don't use it in case it will trigger something in the nosey questioner.

Why stop there! So many rude and inappropriate questions

how much do you earn
do you own or rent
what results did your children get

I could go on!

I don’t regard “do you have siblings? Or “do you have a pet?” As remotely rude

After one occurrance of "... and I had a big brother but he was killed by a car" I decided that asking about siblings was a risky as asking about kids and spouses.

If someone asked me about pets the day after mum's dcat was pts, I'd have been bawling my eyes out.

Most people already regard questions about money as rude. I've seen people ask "did your DD get what she wanted?" on a-level results day.

The list I gave was of questions that NT people seem to regard as reasonable but actually aren't once you consider bereavement.

There’s being thoughtful and polite

and then there’s spending life walking on egg shells

Totally agree..in fact it really boils my piss.
It's absolutely your choice and no ones business whether or not to have kids. I would never judge, anyone who does is an arsehole.

I'm autistic so every social interaction is walking on eggshells. Having a short list of things I don't ask about is preferable to having someone crying because I cannot handle tears, I have to leave. It's better than the conversation terminator of "...but he died" because I don't know how to recover a conversation from that.

Quite simply “I am so sorry for your loss, I really am”

I thought that was only for recent deaths?

"My husband died ten years ago" is just as awkward for me to come back from.

Same for me but I have gone in the opposite direction. I think I have put so much effort into learning rules already, and so people should budge a little for me too.

“I am really sorry to hear that”

The problem with alexithymia is that I feel a big bad feeling that makes me not know what to do or say next, but I don't know what it's called, and I'm ptetty sure "sorry" isn't its name, and I really don't like lying.

Oh ok

I had to look up alexithymia, so apologies if this isn't helpful. I would say that saying "I'm sorry to hear that" is one of those things that's a polite conventional response, and doesn't need to be an expression of your (general you) feelings. It's oiling the social wheels, so to speak. Nobody expects it to be more than that, or thinks it's a lie. One says it of people one's never even met or heard of.

I reject completely the rote-learned insincerity of neurotypical culture, as exemplified by the type of polite conversational response described above because it has been weaponised against me.

When experiencing sensory overload in a customer service job a couple of decades ago (so pre-diagnosis) after my supervisor forgot to send me on break, my ability to mask to customers failed and someone complained about me. My boss pulled me off my checkout and took me into meeting room and asked me "how are you?" and I gave the rote-learned lie of "I'm fine, thanks". He then told me off for being rude to customers. When I said "I've been here since X o'clock and not had a break, I'm dehydrated and my feet hurt and it's making everything seem loud and bright" he retorted "really? because you said you were fine five minutes ago". He used the "polite lie" rote-learned behaviour against me in a disciplinary context to accuse me of changing my story dishonestly. That polite lie endangered my job. I promised myself that day that I would never tell any polite lie ever again.

I don't want to be told "use your common sense to know when to lie and tell the truth". I tried using my "common sense" to interpret "how are you?" as the insincere conversation opener that NT people use it for 99% of the time and got burned.

That was a rotten thing for him to do, and I’m not just being polite when I say I’m sorry you went through that. I wasn’t trying to say “use your common sense”, though it obviously came across that way. I was trying, unsuccessfully, to be helpful, thinking from your post you genuinely didn’t know; I apologise for offending you.

If one man asked another if he had children there wouldn’t be the follow up question “didn’t you want any”.
There lies the difference.

No man would ever follow up the question.

ever.

no man.

fact

My husband has had some dreadful comments from other men. CF men aren't immune.

Have you seen the American conservative reaction to some woman who made a ticktok and had the temerity to be single abs child free at 29? It is crazy, Matt Walsh reacted to her abs his crazy followers started trolling her. Why do they feel the need to do this?

@OutsideLookingOut I posted on the other thread about this. Men who believe in conservative family values believe that a woman should be at home looking after her man and her children. A woman who seems to be refusing to do that is a threat to them. It’s much worse if she seems happy about it.

Same thing happens to lesbians. Right wing men don’t like women who have no interest in fulfilling their needs (which they describe as family values to make it sound better).

I think a lot of why people stop talking at that point isn't usually disgust or judgement but it is sheer laziness. Children if you both have them is an incredibly easy small talk topic. People love talking about their kids and so it's really easy to keep the conversation going. It reflects really poorly on the speaker that they don't bother trying to continue the conversation once their 'go to' reaches a dead end.

fulfilling their wants (which they describe as family values

FTFY. No one needs sex.

So I have children and am also currently visibly pregnant, so I get a lot of conversation starters about my own children / what number pregnancy is it etc.

I responded to one of these recently by asking the person who asked me about my children, if they had children (just in a friendly chatty way). She did not. So as to not awkwardly and abruptly come to a pause in the conversation I think I asked whether that had been a choice? And she explained that she had once tried to have children, but had quickly moved on and decided she didn't want children. I genuinely don't have any problem with people choosing not to have children, I think it's great that people have the choice and I would want my own children to choose freely. We then began to talk about being child free, and other things like holidays and career etc. I was glad we did because I felt self conscious that I had rather gushed about my children and how much I was hoping another child would be a good thing (for me). I really didn't want to leave the impression that I thought it was sad or lesser that she didn't have children. Then I worried a bit that I'd overdone my expressions of solidarity with her choice to not have children and may have come across as insincere. (!)

The point of this rambling is that it is not only people without children who can be awkward or worried about saying the right thing. And that there are people with children who don't have any kind of problem re child free, they're just maybe overthinkers or a bit awkward. There's no very established social script for how to respond to child free disclosures (as opposed to the generic and somewhat meaningless but polite "oh how old are they?" "Oh how lovely" "How sweet" etc that people can say when discussing someone's children). Discussing children superficially is very easy, everyone knows what to say so you don't have to be particularly socially smooth.

I guess "good for you!" or similar would be a simple way of responding, though I'd hate to think of it being taken as sarcastic or dismissive. Would be interested to hear what childfree people would actually like to hear back, if their choice to be child free comes up in conversation? I'm personally interested in life journeys, so I do find people's various reasons to be quite interesting, but also wouldn't want to be intrusive or nosy.