I have a daughter. I was 35 when she was born, I am 38 now. It was a difficult pregnancy that almost ended catastrophically. I should not have more children.
But even if I were younger, or healthier, I still would not want to have another child. Yet people find it in their hearts to nag me about having another one. A lot of people have told me “One child is nothing”. Well, TYVM! My standard long answer is to tell them that a lot of women go nuts when they have more kids than they can deal with, when she drowns them in the river, and/or jump off a bridge people immediately say that she should have not have them. I am one of those women, I’d better not have another child.
My brother and SIL are 34 now. They ache for a child. They have spent a lot of money and effort at having one. Not long ago they had a miscarriage after years of trying, yet some people still ask them when they’ll have a child. If it were me it would never happen as I’d be in prison for murder.
Some people can’t mind their own damn business.
50 years?! Things will be rosy again in 50 years unless there’s another massive baby boom before then. I’ll be elderly in 50 years, and there aren’t nearly as many in my generation as there are baby boomers. I know baby boomers would like to think there will still be a lot of them in 50 years, but it’s unlikely unless a lot start taking a whole lot better care of themselves than they do at present.
As for the OP, I like to whisper “The state asked me not to” when asked when I plan to have kids
Around here, they have to charge you. Citizens arrest and all.
Could be…it could happen. I don’t know you, you could be a badass. but I used to restrain people and put them down like that for living and that never happened before. Point is, if you really shove people like that you committing a crime. And you are going to run into someone who is going to react badly to it and they will be within their rights to either hurt you for it, or detain you and send you off to jail.
So you’ve never been in a situation where you’ve got 5 people inches behind you and some jackass stops right in front of you and the doors of the subway are about to close? Please, the hysterics about this are getting a little thick. What you’re essentially saying is that I should inconvenience the five people behind me for the one asshole in front of me lest I have to put up my hands rather than trying to contort myself into the side of the stockade like a good little steer. You’re in Ft. Worth you know what it’s like for the steers in the stockade. You know how they pile up on each other. It’s kind of like that on the subway. So when the jackass in front stops you either put up your hands and help him resume his inertia or you take the brunt of his inertia as well as all those behind you. Try to comprehend what I’m saying rather than just spout some ignorant bullshit.
The only people who ever make an issue of it are wannabe Gangsters. It’s not like I’m throwing old ladies to the ground or something. I’m just pushing people on the train, or off of it if they can’t be fucked to recognize that other people are occupying the tiny little space with them.
I’m OK with both of the above questions, in and of themselves. It’s the indignant and judgmental freak-out that often follows when the answers are “no” that I have a problem with. Sometimes the reaction isn’t judgmental, but rather the exceedingly annoying attempt to change your mind.
There really isn’t much of a point in asking a co-worker if he or she has kids, anyway. They’ll inevitably start talking about them without any prompt.
I used to work with a lady who had only one child. When the little girl was still very little, some nosey parker asked her if she wanted her mother to give her a little brother or sister.
Answer: “She can’t. She doesn’t have a uterus.”
End of inquiry. (My friend is an RN & straightforward in her language.)
I suggest you use the response I received once when I was giving a fellow chorus member a ride home after rehearsal, we were making polite conversation as two middle-aged women getting to know each other, and I asked, innocently enough, “Do you have any children?” (If she’d said no, I would have moved on to another topic – I’m certainly not going to ask why! I’d have asked about pets or something!)
But her instant response? She burst into hysterical tears. Turns out her only child had been killed in a car accident** two weeks earlier.
So if you want a conversation killer, I suggest you do that, burst into tears and describe your poor child that died a horrible death. Trust me, even the rudest person is going to have a hard time asking any other questions. I certainly couldn’t – all I could do was offer sympathy and let her talk – she felt bad about getting so upset with me when I’d asked what she agreed was a normal, innocuous question under the circumstances, but I appreciated that she had just been through an awful trauma, so I understood why it had happened.
But it’s still the best conversation-killer I have ever run into.
**And I’m pleased to report that the accident her son was killed in caused the state to increase the training required for young drivers, and to limit the number of passengers they had at any one time (six kids had been crammed into the car; four of them died.) So she used her son’s death to help other parents.
Do that 20, 30 times, and you do tend to get a bit tired of that conversation. Even without a judgemental freak-out, there’s almost always a change in how you’re viewed after you spill the beans that you’re a blue monkey (not a nice, normal brown one). Childfree by choice people tread carefully around this subject - that’s a learned behaviour.
Ain’t that the truth. The hundreds of pictures around their cubicle are a good tip-off, too.
It’s been my experience that this is by no means limited to children. Women can be extremely catty to and about other women, about any topic, especially Look At That Dress I Can’t Believe She Would Wear That In Public, and She Has On Way Too Much Makeup, and That Tramp Is Having An Affair Well I Never, and the always-popular Dear God That Woman Is All Skin And Bones Real Women Don’t Look Like That. The way to raise children is just one of the many delightful topics that women tear each other down about.
It’s not limited to women, either. The worst confrontation I ever had was with a male coworker. He bugged me everyday for about a week with the familiar “you’re so selfish bit” until I finally said, “Well, I think if you’re well-off* enough to adopt an orphan then it’s selfish to make your own goddamn kids” and he never bugged me about it again.
*By all appearances he was well off and worked as a project manager for one of our bigger contracts.
I dunno, it makes me giggle to think of some of these snoopy biddies yodelling up some poor girl’s valley–“Oy, is there a babby in there yet, eh? Why not then?”
