I am as curious as they get about people and their situations and stuff, but I have learned that there are just some things you don't need to ask. It doesn't even matter how well you know the person, really. Some things are just none of your damn business. Unless someone specifically invites you into a conversation about having kids/trying to have kids/having more kids/the state of families in the world, just stay out of it.
They start obvious, like, don't ask a woman if she's pregnant, or how far along she is. Ever. Don't ask. If she is and she wants to talk about it, you bet she will. And if she isn't but she appears like she is, she probably knows about it already and really doesn't want to talk about it.
Don't ask a pregnant woman if she wants to have more kids. Pregnancy is a mixed bag and even if you're the most mother-earthy type of woman who wants to fill a giant shoe with children, chances are good that she just wants to concentrate on the task at hand.
You don't need to ask someone with one child, or ten children, if they plan to have more kids. I know you are curious. I always am. But you don't know the circumstances behind those kids getting here, and why take the chance that you are scratching off a painful scab? Kids aren't always easy to come by, and sometimes they are here for religious reasons. Either way, just be cool and try to live with the curiosity.
If I had a nickel for every time someone asks me if I'm having another one, I'd be a rich-ass woman. And when I give them my pat answer of "Oh ho, no, she's plenty", 99% of the time I get a tsk tsk. I don't need a damn tsk tsk and I certainly don't feel the need to explain that statement. Because if you really want to know the story, and you push it enough, you're going to hear this:
I grew up in a kind of unhappy, stressed out, dysfunctional family, and I spent most of my child-bearing years trying to undo unhealthy patterns so that when I did have a child, I would be able to raise it differently than how I grew up. So she could have two mature parents and a stable household, yada yada yada. Then I married a guy that I had to spend years convincing that we would be an awesome parental unit. By the time we started trying to have kids, I was in my late 30's and he was in his early 40's, and our fertility was not that great. We had a miscarriage and it was devastating. We went through a year of painful, expensive and incredibly stressful fertility treatments. I had a high risk pregnancy and our child was born with a serious heart defect that required her to have open heart surgery in her first six months of life. She is totally worth it and I would do every second of it over again to have her, but do I want to take my chances a second time, at the ripe age of 42? No I do not. So don't ask, and don't tsk tsk me. We have a chance to be the best parents we can be to an amazing little human, and we are putting all of our energy into the task at hand. That's all you need to know, unless we are in a deep discussion about all things, and in that case I'm all open. Just take my word for it - she's plenty.
We have to be a little bit self-aware with this subject. It is a complicated, private and potentially painful one. I've learned never, ever ask a woman in her 40's or older why she never had kids. Whenever that's come up, more often than not she tried and wasn't able to. Just the one question can represent unspeakable pain for that woman, and it sometimes never goes away. Or maybe she never wanted kids and never wanted to be judged about what kind of woman she is by being or not being a mother. It could be downright insulting.
I'm not talking about heartfelt discussions with your dear close friends. Obviously, that's different. I'm talking about co-workers, acquaintances, friends of friends, annoying distant relatives, or just people you meet on the street. I've been asked some of this stuff by people I don't even know, and I'm pretty sure they don't want the long answer, although they are never satisfied with the short hand either.
You can't really judge someone else's situation. You don't know their journey and how they arrived to where they are today. If you have no kids or one kid or step kids or foster kids or adopted kids or twenty kids or non-human furry kids, or a combination of all these things, it's all good. We're all good. Let's just be gentle with each other out there, ok? We've all got our own difficulties and we really don't need to go about making things worse for each other.
Today's deep thought for ya.
True dat.
ReplyDelete--Jessica