My friends will tend to try to “out-mommy” each other, then say I can’t possibly understand because I don’t have kids. For example, I’d posted on FB a comment about a new in-shower moisturizer, and called the product “a solution in search of a problem.”
A friend with one, 8-year-old child said, “Moms don’t have time to primp!” And other moms chimed in. No! We’re busy!
And I said to my friend, really? Your children are 8-12 years old and all are in advanced classes or gifted. Are you seriously telling me your children are so in need of care every second that you don’t have time to put on moisturizer after a shower? They need your eagle eye every second?
Still, no, I’m sooooo busy! You don’t know, you don’t have kids!
I suggested some of that is their own expectations and reminded them that when we were 8-12, our moms were also busy. Raising us, dad working all the time, or they were divorced. Mom not only expected us to keep out of her hair when she was in the shower and putting on makeup or doing chores, but also when she was studying for college. And more, to keep our younger siblings entertained. Mom did not just live for her kids.
Oh, it’s different now. I could NEVER leave my child alone!
Subtext: shut up, you don’t know anything because you don’t have your own children. Never mind my own adventures in full-time caretaking with a family member’s kid because kid’s mom was a junkie (which I was surprisingly good at). I don’t know crap because I never birthed a baby.
When I had to put my dog down, I was a wreck at work the next day. I finally confided in a coworker who said “I’m so sorry. I know what that’s like. I had a bird once, and I was so sad when he died…”
I was immediately ticked off at her, thinking what a stupid thing that was to say, how could she possibly understand what it’s like to lose your sweet dog? How can a dumb bird possibly compare? Clearly she couldn’t possibly understand, given that she’s never had a dog. Fortunately, I kept this to myself and just thanked her for listening.
I found out much later that this bird she mentioned at the time was a cockatiel that had been her constant companion for 17 years, ever since she was a little girl.
I think all these people who assume that non-parents could never possibly imagine the intensity of the attachment to their children have very little ability to empathize with a situation that’s outside their experience. It’s actually possible to completely love and adore someone who doesn’t share 50% of your DNA. So it’s actually possible for the childless to empathize with a parent experiencing a tragedy involving their children.But people with kids probably wouldn’t get that.
Yeah, birds live a really long time. We have always wanted a parrot, but by the time you’re old enough to properly afford the care, you can’t get one, because chances are it might outlive us, and then who will take care of it?
I try my damndest never to say “I know how you feel” because of course the truth is, I don’t. Even if we had the same experiences. In my office at one point, every single woman had lost their mom. And we had shared experiences. But none of us were the same.
One had lost her mom when she herself was 17.
One had lost her mom when she herself 50, but they were best friends and called each other every day.
I had lost my mom at 35, but we didn’t have a good relationship so my grief was as much for what could have been as what was.
Another had lost their mom at 97 to Alzheimer’s.
So no, I don’t know what anyone else feels. Saying that is a dangerous thing to say. And I might have been worthy of some scolding if, you know, I had said it.
It’s been an interesting discussion and I’ve enjoyed reading everyone’s posts.
That’s the way I’m taking it. She may have thought you would think she was weak for being upset and she was saying “this may not make sense to you…” I agree it still didn’t need to be said.
Now that’s just completely unfair. People with children exhibit a wide range of attitudes toward companion animals, just as the childless do. As for me, I’ve had pet cats my entire adult life, and loved them fiercely. I’ll concede - and I’m going to guess that most animal-loving parents would agree with me - that my relationship to my animals changed a little when I became a parent. Certainly I’d drag my child from a burning building first, before my pet. But I assume most child-free people would drag a sibling, SO, parent, or even an unrelated baby, from a burning building before a pet.
Yes, I’d say you’re a person who probably does have a firm grasp on both mind-states… and you’re definitely in the minority.
I don’t think it’s common for parents to think their situation inherently superior, it’s just that the ones who do and are noisy about it get inordinate amounts of attention. Yes, most parents treat me just fine. I don’t think most parents have to time to worry about such things, especially then the kids are young.
Then, when your siblings get to be the “sandwich age”, caught between kids and aging, ill parents, suddenly the Childless One is the hero because we don’t have kids and can go rescue the parents or sit for our siblings when they’re doing that or otherwise take on those burdens in life more easily than they can.
One thing that does cheese me off is the “you don’t know what responsibility is until you have kids” or “you aren’t emotionally mature until you have kids” or some varient that basically implies you’re irresponsible and feckless. Nope, it’s not a given any more than having kids magically makes you a responsible adult. We certainly hope the response to having kids is a mature one but, alas, we all know cases where it is not.
Yeah, I feel kind of differently. I’m a childless long term married guy. I hear my co-workers talking about kid issues and I feel that I could never fully understand what they are going thru. I empathize, but I could never really know. I don’t offer up my opinion because I simply feel my opinion wouldn’t be worth as much as a person who is a Mom or Dad.
Well yeah. It’s basically everyone. When’s the last time you heard someone say, “I became a parent and there were no surprises. It was precisely as I expected it to be and my emotions were entirely predictable”?
The thing is, no one ever says that because that’s simply not how it works. The experience of parenthood surprises pretty much everyone. The fact that this is so most certainly does not suggest that the surprised parents were exceptionally clueless beforehand. They were just normal.
No, it means that, because they are a parent, they had an immediate gut reaction, as they immediately connected it with their own child. They didn’t have to empathize.
And, frankly, it’s always true that people who have had an experience will understand more than someone who hasn’t. We try as much as we can, to get as close as we can, but we’ll never know what it really feels like unless we experience it ourselves.
Heck, even those parents don’t know exactly what it feels like. But they are closer.
I mean, do you think you know what it’s like to be a trans gendered person? I don’t. I’m doing my best to learn, but I don’t. I definitely think Una understands more than I do, and that she hurts more when she hears about the bad things that happen to trans people than I ever will.
Yes, obviously. It’s on Anamika who took it as some sort of major insult when none was clearly intended. And on her for being unable to stop and think about why she might say it and try to understand.
I don’t have a child. If someone said that to me, I might have said that I do understand somewhat, but it never would have occurred to me to take it as an insult. I wouldn’t have wound up with the other person feeling they had to apologize.
In the same way you were polite but clearly upset, she probably was apologetic but really thinks you got upset over nothing.
Like I said, what she said is true. You don’t understand–and neither do I or any other child-less person. “Understand” in this context doesn’t mean “intellectually grasp.” It’s like when people think Dopers are stupid when they say they don’t understand the appeal of <insert thing here>.
Depending on what you mean by this, I contend that it is either trivially true or obviously false. It’s true that I can’t know what it’s like for you to have a child. That’s true whether or not I have children myself. It’s perfectly possible however, for me to have a deeper understanding of what it is generally like to have a children, than say, a person with an atypical experience of parenthood. Even if you have had a typical experience yourself, it’s possible that my imagination can conjure a more accurate representation of that subjective experience than can your memory. Also I don’t accept that there is a type of understanding other than ‘intellectual understanding’.
I didn’t get the sense that Anamika felt it was a major insult, more just a thoughtless thing to say. We speculated that for some people it might cause a lot of pain, but mostly it’s just sort of annoying/minor rude/thoughtless/whatever.
A lot depends on the delivery - tone of voice, body language, etc. You don’t get that in text.
I have noticed, mostly from facebook, because I don’t hang out at the mommy sites, that this generation of parents think they invented parenthood. And nobody ever did it before. It is tedious.
I get this from people sometimes. Oh you never had children… Well, I raised my neice until she was 16. I didn’t give birth to her, but I was, for about five years, the sole responsible adult while her mom and grandmother were out skankin it up. I do know. So fuck you.
Anaamika says she was a little annoyed, not majorly offended. I think that’s a reasonable response, even though I think the lady was trying to explain herself, not slight the OP. For all the lady knows, Anaamika wakes up at night worrying about someone, too.
I’m a non parent who nodded along with **WhyNot’s **post. From the time I started taking care of a much younger sibling, a previously unused part of my brain turned on that literally ran a script non-stop in the background that asked “Where is she? What is she doing? Is she okay?” Another low level section would answer those questions, and if it didn’t have the answers, it got pushed into the forefront as something that had to be dealt with now. I’ve learned how to work around it, because it won’t be possible, or healthy, for me to track all the movements and moods of a 22 year old, but it’s still there. Maybe if I were a parent, a completely different script would turn on. Who can really know?
People shouldn’t go around telling other people that they don’t understand, even if it’s true. This was touched on earlier, but I also think a lot of parents have damaged the message with statements that are the parental equivalent of “As a man with sisters, I was outraged to hear about that woman whose husband beat her up.” It makes it sound like you lack empathy for other people’s pain unless you have a specific loved one that you can imagine being in their place.
