It’s a familiar scenario: You’re at a family gathering or out with a group of friends. Everyone’s having a good time, when the topic turns to babies, and some bright spark looks your way and says, “So, when are you going to have kids?”
You could drive a double-decker bus and a Winnebago through the gap in the conversation, and even the birds stop twittering so they can hear your response.
Your face goes cold; your palms start to sweat; you can feel an eruption of emotion rising up into your chest, ready to spew forth and shower everyone in sight. What are you going to say? Do you tell them the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, in all the gory details? Or do you mumble something about “someday” or “maybe” or “We’re trying. Ha!” to deflect the question. Or do you stare dumbfounded and hope that someone steps in to rescue you?
Odds are you’ve tried some variation of all of those tactics at some point. And you know that if you so much as mention any attempt to conceive, someone’s going to jump in with all sorts of “helpful” advice from asking if you’ve thought about adoption or offering her eggs for your use, to regaling you with a tale of someone else’s miracle baby.
Recently, I had a conversation with a reader who offered another option that’s worked well for her:
“We tell people we’ve decided to just travel instead,” she told me. “People want to solve problems. If you make it positive, there’s nothing to solve.”
She said this response immediately defuses the tension and changes the topic. She even found that people envied them their freedom to travel. What a refreshing change from the usual pity.
Another reader told me she’d been to an event where the speaker mentioned at the end of his talk that he and his wife (both well past reproductive age) were childfree. “We don’t have children,” he quipped, winking at his wife in the audience, “but we try every night and twice on Sundays.”
I’m sure no one approached him after the talk to offer advice. Why? Because he didn’t give them a problem to solve.
As you’re arming yourself to go out into the world and face potentially difficult conversations, what are some things you could say to answer these awkward questions without prompting people to try and fix your situation?
Over the past few years, I’ve learned a lot about loss and grief, and the process of coming-to-terms with living without a dream I always thought I’d see fulfilled.
Last weekend my friend and I stopped by a very cute new café that opened in my neighborhood. It has a lovely private patio, big sun umbrellas, and a good menu of healthy food, so we looking forward to a Saturday morning breakfast and chat.
It always boggles my mind when people use their kid’s photo as their own Facebook profile photo. It boggles it even more when they then send me a friend request.
As all of you know, it takes an awful lot of courage to talk about not having children. I know you’ve all been met with looks of confusion, dealt with inaccurate assumptions and unhelpful suggestions, and watched as people have broken eye contact to look almost anywhere else than at the “woman who doesn’t have children.” And those of you who’ve dealt with infertility know that most people can’t even bring themselves to say the word, let alone have an open conversation about it.
By Kathleen Guthrie Woods
Yesterday I accompanied my friend as she underwent a very unpleasant test for a big, scary health issue. My friend is a lot like me: she has no children and her family is many miles away. No one should go through something like this alone, so I volunteered to be, what she good-naturedly called, her “Biopsy Buddy.”
By Maybe Lady Liz
