BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids It's starting ...

Ingilbert,
My Dad made an equally laughable comment 6 months ago after my girlfriend and I split up. His comment was "You should not have gotten a vasectomy. You should have kept your options open because you might meet a woman who wants a family and won't want to adopt." This comment comes from a man who did NONE of the grunt work in raising his 3 sons. My mom is the one who baby-sits the grandkids when they visit us if the parents want a night out.


Mike

Quite apart from the fact that if you met a woman who wanted a family and didn't want to adopt, she wouldn't last past the first date ... but I guess he doesn't get that either!

Mike, I can't imagine why your dad WOULDN'T want you to have kids. I mean, he had all of the glory with NONE of the work! Why wouldn't he want your life to be as great as his has been? What was the downside for him? (sarcasm here) Your mom did all the work, and he got to take credit for siring wonderful children!

Cindy

lngilbert, thank god you're missing out on those stories. I'll never forget one day when we were having lunch with some friends who had a three month old and the mother starts talking about having to "milk" herself after having forgotten to take the breast pump with them. My husband was sitting there just looking shocked and sickened. When we left, he just couldn't get over the fact that a person would feel comfortable discussing that with people other than their partner. Needless to say, that lunch reinforced our childfree decision.

What is it about pregnancy that prompts some people to discuss totally inappropriate and private matters? One of my work colleagues went through his wife's medical appointments in such detail, it was embarrassing - I felt it was disrespectful to his wife and totally inappropriate. I wondered whether he was getting some perverse thrill out of relaying the detail to his female audience. And because he was talking about pregnancy - did that make it okay?
I didn't think so - so he was told to stop.
Are pregnant women not entitled to some modesty and privacy?
This same colleague invited about six people into the birth room - I'm sorry but I think childbirth is a very private matter - not a spectator sport! I would have thought a woman in labour needs a calm and private space not an audience - this man even invited both sets of parents! Giving birth with your father and father-in-law in the room! Apparently his wife was fine with it...
I think I must be from another planet...

That's uncalled for, especially when people are eating.

There is a group of women who I use to do volunteer work with. It was quite fun until they started bringing their newborn children along and would then breast feed them, without the least attempt at modesty. Keep in mind these are all highly educated women. This happened more often with this group than you would believe possible. After seeing one too many nipples being thrust into baby mouths, I stopped volunteering. I just got tired of feeling uncomfortable. I mean get one of those covers or something, not everyone wants a full view of this. The entire lack of profesionalism even for volunteer work was another issue entirely.

Back to your post though, apparently having children removes any sense of what is and is not appropriate for table discussion? One of my friends was upset because she spent all afternoon preparing a fabulous dinner for a girls night. Then 1/2 of the friends show up with uninvited babies and proceed to tell childbirth stories for about an hour. The stories were quite graphic. I believe I was on the fence about kids at the time and this was a big influence in moving to the CF side. Of course my poor friend was so upset that she invested all of this work and the evening had such a terrible outcome. Needless to say I don't think she had another dinner with the same guests invited.

Sorry I took so long writing my post. "That's uncalled for, especially when people are eating," is in reference to Malamutes own me's lunch experience.

Why don't I tell all the details of my bowel movements today, in intense detail to these women while I'm at it?

Why do I get the feeling that those women would say "Ewwww....gross!!! How dare you say such crass things in public?" if I were to do something like that?

I would put breastfeeding in the same category as performing various sexual acts. It's ok to do them, but do it behind closed doors where no one can see or hear you!

Well, my friend emailed me my SIL's announcement that she sent out a few weeks ago ... here's a bit of it:

"To all of you I have completely neglected to call this summer, I apologize. This whole "morning sickness" thing is such a sham!!! They should call it "all day, don't get off the couch, smell anything, see anyone, talk to anyone, or you'll think you're going to die" sickness - it would be a much more accurate name. However, I'm just about out of my first trimester and leaving all of the goodies that go along with it behind, so I'm feeling much better."

I think I'm getting a bit of that "all day" sickness right now.

I don't know how these people share this information. Maybe it's something about how our society glamourises the whole thing and the "mommy-worship cult" but really there needs to be a limit. By nature, I'm a really private person and could never imagine just whipping out a breast or discussing my sickness with a group e-mail. It just seems a bit tacky, let alone the possible disinterest of the people reading it.

I'm wondering if a possible retaliation is to describe in detail how great my weekends are, the latest projects that we're embarking upon and what a great relationship I have. That way they should feel just as disgusted because my life is meant to be so much less than theirs because we don't have children - ooops not going to play your game anymore. No longer will we temper how great everything is just to make it seem like we are missing out - let's tell them in great detail how much more fun our lives are.