BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids please act whenever you see it

Hi.
This week my husband had a vasectomy. Great news as weve always been CF thinking people.
But, the pre op literature was filled with these 2 phrases:
''ensure you dont want to father ANY MORE children''
''dont play with your children in the evening post op -take it easy''
I find this offensive and I told them - they assume all patients have had kids and dont want more. they dont consider the CF. Now they are going to make amends to the literature so it was worth it.
Also, Ive had a few letters published in mags and emails read over the radio when Ive heard us called 'childless'' of similar. Ive written letters correcting them and talking about the CF and they've been published.
What Im saying is, wherever you see it, act to put the discrimination right!
Lise

Good for you!

I think is is funny that for a cf woman to go in and say I want my tubes tied that the doctor laugh and says you will change your mind. then you tell them all of the health reasons why you cant have kids and then all the reasons you just dont want kids and they start talking about all the medical advansments they are comming up with these day and not to worry you can have a child of you very own when CLEARLY
I D O N O T W A N T A C H I L D O F M Y O W N ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !
So then they turn and say that I am too young to have the surgery blah blah blah so you remind then what you dont have periods and have been told that you have gone through menpause and all this so it is like my body is 65 nd there for to old to have the sugery but they could do a hestorectome.... well then they blah blah blah some more until you want to get up and take the spectrum and shove it so far up their... that they think your a proctologist but at lest ow you would know with out a doubt that they are really and truly full of it!!!

so you remind them that it is your body are you can do anything you like to do with it (except maybe put your foot up his-her ..till you have to have them say AH to tight your shoe!) and then you get the blah blah blah again about how they are the MMMMMMDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD and THEY KNOW BTTER bs.....so you walk out before you do what you havebeen thinking about doing for the past 20min! gown and all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

sorry bad day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tonight I was watching a saved episode of Oprah that made me think of the CF group.

Oprah had on a woman who was part of a plural marriage, she and her twin sister AND another woman were all married to the same man. I have seen this woman before on other shows trying to raise awareness about how wonderful their life is. Of course the man they are all three sharing a bed with has never shown his face.

Here is the kicker. Between the three wives, they have 22 children. I just don't get it.

I wish people would step back and take a more reasonable view on having children. I just don't see what they get out of having a GANG of kids like that.

You guys get harassed because you don't want kids. I have had women (not from a religious point of view) tell me I am hurting my daughter raising her as an only child. Where are peoples minds at?

I was just staggered by the thought of having 22 children. NONE of them could be getting qaulity time with their Father (maybe thats a good thing), none of them get qaulity time with their Mother. How sick and confused is that kind of family?

I know this may be anecdotal, but it seems that the families with one child tended to have that child be more snotty, less caring, and have a less sharing attitude.

That is, having "only one" is a bad thing -- you need to have two or more so that the child learns how to care, share, etc.

About the 22 children, I can't imagine a real life 'cheaper by the dozen' situation, much less double that!

And yes, I just don't get it.

In Lisa's defense, I know many people that have only children and adults who grew up as only children, and I don't think that's entirely true. Sure there are some cases of awful only children, but I've always thought that most only children were more thoughtful and insightful. They can be taught caring and sharing through community activities, play with friends and school. I have a friend whose little boy (only child) is one of the few children I'd be willing to have a clone of. It's a combination of parenting and personality. There can be great only children.

Lise-congratulations on your husband's vasectomy. Sometimes I wonder if my husband and I will ever go that route. It would deffinately make our lives easier. I can't see my husband agreeing to do it untill 40 though.

I'm sorry if it came across that everyone who was an only child was like that -- not at all. That is what I experienced a few times. Odds are that a lot of people I run into now were only children, who had good parenting to guide them. I would tend to put the blame, if I wanted to do so, on the parents raising of the child in question.

I was just stating what I saw in my past, as a reason why people might think that way without having a religious viewpoint.

I agree that can be the case but my daughter isn't like that. She is a caring and VERY helpful child.

I just don't understand how people can have SO many children.

I'm glad that your daughter is a respectful, good person. That is a reflection on the time and dedication you put forth in raising her. Once again, it is the people that do not know your own particular situation that make assumptions.

As far as why people have so many children, I don't know. I was one of three -- and I think that was one too many. How someone can handle 4, 5, or more at once, I literally do not know.

One guess from a male POV is that guys like to be seen as superior in "manly" ways. Note that I would venture that the man talked about below is not someone you know as a BF, fiance or husband. But knowing myself as a guy, I can say that these tendendcies ARE within me, just outweighed by my logical, more advanced, less animalistic brain.

Either be it in the choice of cars, materialistic wealth, strength, or virility, guys, left to their own devices, love to boast. Perhaps some guys may see children at the truly visible result of their manliness -- an expression of how their seed truly is more powerful, more manly, than the seed of the other guys who don't have children, or have fewer children than other guys. Of course, since the woman takes care of the children, he doesn't care about her workload. Thusly, he gets boasting rights that he is the proud father of 2/3/4+, while the mother does the brunt work. Why should he bother with diaper changes, etc? That is woman's work!

The other less macho guys may want to think about being that "manly man" but aren't, so they dream of the day when they can finally say, "I am a man! I am a father! My manhood is strong!" Those men have the preconceived notions of all Kodak moments. Thusly, they end up after the baby has arrived, of feeling the aftershock of "Why the heck did I do this?" Living for the Kodak moments means that there is a hell of a lot of NON-Kodak moments betwixt them. All I have to do is look at what trouble *I* caused my family when I was growing up. Those events I know would drive me out of my mind.

My views on child raising are of course influenced by how I was raised. My parents were older when they adopted me, I always felt like an outsider and didn't feel like I got enough attention from me. My own sister has said to me repeatedly that she doesn't know why they adopted me.

My feeling with parenting is that a child DESERVES good, quality time with their parents. In my case, its just me. How on earth can you do that with so many children? Maybe I have a higher standard of what a child deserves but financially how do you supply a child with what they deserve when you have a WHOLE baseball team to take care of. It just seems insane.

You all have seen those stories where crazy old women get so many cats in their house they can't take care of them AND the house smells, Animal Control comes and takes the cats away. She meant well in the beginning but lost control. I think that way of some parents when they can't stop themselves from having SO many kids.

I think because my daughter has gotten so much adult attention AND is so independent, she is different then alot of kids. She has never had a temper tantrum, she communicates about how she feels rather then screaming about it or throwing some kind of fit. She also does alot of work around the house.

I was watching a HBO show the other night, Tell Me You Love Me. In it there are several couples, one is an older couple, the wife is a therapist and treats the other couples in the program for different reasos. The therapist and her husband are Child Free although they don't use that terminology, it was discussed that they CHOOSE to not have children.

Of course one of the couples has not had sex in more then a year, they are terribly disconnected emotionally. They have 2 kids, one boy who is 6 and one girl who is 10. Of course the Wife is now saying she wants another child. She was bemoaning the fact that their two kids were getting so old. So in my opinion she is wanting to have another child because the ones she has are becoming more independent, her husband leaves her feeling unloved...so she wants to create another child so someone will love her. How insane is that? But I imagine way too common.