By Lisa Manterfield
Have you ever been around people who behave as if you can’t possibly know anything about life because you don’t have children?
I’m sure that all of us have heard the old chestnuts, “You wouldn’t understand; you don’t have kids” or “I didn’t understand until I became a mother” (which implies the same thing) or even “Only a parent could know how this feels,” as if being childless strips away all capability of empathy.
And then there are those situations where you just feel invisible, when the conversation about children and parenting is swirling around you and no one even bothers to make eye contact with you because what could you possibly contribute?
These instances make me think of the wonderful “Mr. Cellophane” number from the musical “Chicago.”
And even without clucking like a hen,
Everyone gets noticed now and then,
Unless, of course, that person it should be,
Invisible, inconsequential me.
Personally, I’m done with feeling insignificant because I don’t have kids. It took me a long time to get to this point, but now I hold my ground in conversation. I contribute when I can and simply listen and nod when I can’t, just as I would if I found myself in a conversation on any other topic on which I’m not an expert.
I also keep a list of amazing childless women in case I ever need to remind myself that we don’t need to be parents to make a difference. On my personal list is Amelia Earhart, Dian Fossey, Julia Child, and Juliet Gordon Low, who started the Girl Scout movement. If you need your own role models, Jody Day has put together an outstanding collection on Pinterest.
You’d be hard-pressed to call any of these women insignificant. I remind myself of this when I find myself allowing others to make me feel like less than who I am.
So what do you do when you start to feel like a Ms. Cellophane? Do you feign boredom, try to hop in with an intelligent anecdote, change the subject, or do you slip away and hope no one notices you’ve left?
I have certainly felt this way before.
Now if I am going to talk to a mom I know, I just start with asking “how are the kids? or “I saw a cute pic of your little one on facebook” I remember that I have some choice about where the conservation will go, and I can leave the conversation if it is bothering me.
I also LOVE to think about all the childless women who made a difference. You are so right: “I also keep a list of amazing childless women in case I ever need to remind myself that we don’t need to be parents to make a difference.” These are remarkable women and remembering them helps me remember that I am a woman of value and I will continue to make a difference in this world!
Sometimes I zone out, sometimes I pay attention and nod and smile along, sometimes I ghost out of the room. My husband and I ended up in the room with all women at a recent get-together, and he finally got to experience how the conversation becomes all about kids when most of the women are mothers. He looked at me and said “want to go outside and see if the guys are talking about something other than kids?”
The thing that really bothers me when a group of mothers talk about their children is when all they say is how wonderful, perfect, smart,etc……their children are. Sometimes I think it would make me feel better if I heard mothers talking about the problems they have with their children, or how difficult they are. When I hear how wonderful their families are, it makes even more depressed.
Sherry, I suspect that they’re doing the “competitive mother” thing, and are too embarrassed to talk about the problems and difficulties. Either that or they’re living in denial!
But yes, it doesn’t make our situation any easier.
Totally agree with you on the competitive mom (love it!) thing.
Totally agree, Mali — we generally only hear about the good stuff, when life is rarely like that for any of us. It’s like whenever we visit family members with big houses & fancy cars… I comfort myself with the knowledge that they are most likely up to their eyeballs in debt. 😉
I am the only women in my group that doesn’t have children And grandchildren. Just two weeks ago at brunch, I had to listen to the same ole stories about their kids and grandkids. I find myself just zoning out and staring at the wall….thats all I’ve ever done… What else can I do? I think one women finally noticed and asked how my puppy was doing. Usually I would take my mind to the next planned vacation and that always helped me redirect my negative thoughts, however my husband is now disabled and travel isn’t an option right now…. Maybe next year…. But that’s what I said last year too….
It depends on how vulnerable I’m feeling. Most days, I zone out because the vast majority of kid stories are repetitive or boring, which makes me question the conversational skills of those people. If it’s a rough day (which, I’m happy to say, are happening less and less), I’m sure my open-book face falls and I have to work harder to keep up social niceties.
But I have to wonder when there are so very many topics of conversation, even if you don’t know someone all that well, why it almost always comes back to kids.
Having said that, though, I am lucky that I live in an area where a lot of women my age (late 30s/early 40s) don’t have kids and we just get together and talk about almost anything else. It’s usually when I’ve been spending too much time on Facebook or in new social situations where it becomes a problem.