I’ve finally reached the age when people have stopped asking when we will be having children. It’s become obvious that we aren’t and likely soon can’t, even if we changed our minds about it. While it’s very refreshing not to be constantly asked about future baby-making plans, I am now beginning to face the attitude that because we don’t have children and won’t be having children that somehow there are things my husband and I cannot possibly know or understand.
I may not have experience with my own children, but I haven’t lived in a completely childless void. I have known children. I have interacted with children. I have taught children. I have even loved children. In fact, considering the child psychology classes I have taken, I likely know more about what’s going on inside a child’s head far better than their parents do. Yet I continue to sense an attitude from people who have had their own children that there are things so far outside my ability to understand that I can’t possibly have an opinion on them. “You don’t have kids! You can’t possibly understand!”
My understanding of things is vast. I do not have to experience something to understand it, to have opinions on it, to have feelings about it. I no more have to experience having and treating cancer to understand it than I have to have children to know what it would be like to deal with parenting or a sick child or a child in trouble. I find it tedious and annoying for people to proclaim otherwise. I may not have hands-on experience with the daily rearing of children, but I am educated, well-read, have a wealth of life experiences both with and without children involved, and I have a keen imagination and a great deal of compassion. I have found these things often lead me to be able to understand situations I have not personally experienced.
So in the past, it was tedious and annoying to be asked with stunning regularity when I would be procreating, and now, because I have chosen not to do so, it is tedious and annoying to be told I can’t possibly understand what child rearing entails or how to live or deal with children simply because I haven’t carried a fertilized egg to term and spat out a baby. It’s insulting.
To paraphrase George, “They hate you for your freedom.”
It’s just sour grapes from the dumb, ugly people who produce all the dumb, ugly babies and want you dragged down to their level. Those who have given birth to and reared productive, happy children seldom engage in such rationalization.
It’s as if they think I didn’t a lot of thought into deciding not to have kids. We probably put more thought into not having any as many people do deciding to have them. Sure, my reasons at 18, when I declared I was never having kids, were somewhat silly and juvenile, but I did revisit the question throughout my life and my reasons were different at every age. In my 20′s, I was too unsettled and poor to give what a kid would need. In my 30′s, too busy getting ahead. When I saw 40 on the horizon, the risks the baby would have health issues (or I would) outweighed any ticking of the biological clock.
I mean, it isn’t like we didn’t talk about it and consider it many, many times over. We do still have the same urges, feelings, and societal pressures on the issue of baby-making as everyone else, but we didn’t just say “Oh, we’re married! Let’s make a baby!” We studied all the ramifications and made decisions every step of the way. It’s a lifetime commitment, a change in lifestyle that effects every aspect of everything, and it isn’t like a cat that even though you love tremendously you can pawn off on friends or family if something comes up and you can’t take care of it anymore or can’t afford it. I wish more people would think about it as much.
I think you’re right. It’s just the people I know, and it probably is a little jealousy. Being childless doesn’t make life easier. It’s just different from having kids. Most of the crap is still the same, and the things that are different are things they have never had to consider either. Who do we leave our stuff to? What happens to family heirlooms? Family photos? How do we pass on our knowledge and personal history? We don’t have automatic answers to these questions. The answers are going to require thinking outside the box.
We do want to pass on who and what we are; our worth both tangible and intangible. I guess that is kind of what I am doing here with my blog … passing on who I am to whoever wants it. And eventually, I imagine, we will find people to give those things that mean the most to us when the time comes.
Well, anyway, had the straw that broke the camel’s back conversation this morning and heard “You don’t have kids! You can’t possibly understand!” one time too many. Simply put, I informed my friend that I have 20 years of life experience on her and that having a baby doesn’t immediately grant anyone vast amounts of wisdom or hidden knowledge. We’ll see whether I still have a friend later.
What annoys me is when people get special treatment over me just because they couldn’t work out how to use a condom properly. I don’t mean time off to take children to the doctor, I mean I’ve had employers always prioritise leave for people with children even if it’s nothing to do with the children.
Children are a luxury and these people who think they should be allowed to work what hours they like because they have them would work all hours to get them back if they were gone.
I can’t even tally the number of holidays and extra hours I have had to work in my life, owing to not having kids. “Oh, hey! You wouldn’t mind working on Xmas Eve, would you? You don’t have kids!” Because, as we all know, people without kids don’t have families or celebrate holidays or need time off for any reason.
I never, not once, ever got to take a vacation during the warm months, because … the people with kids HAVE to take their’s now since school it out. That really used to chap my hide.
Have seen my fair share of discrimination of the childless in the workplace.
Well that was the argument that seemed to work for me. People who demand special privelidges because they have children don’t appreciate their children otherwise they’d work all hours every day to keep them and 24/7 to get them back if they were gone.