BellaOnline Forums Relationships Married No Kids What do you want to be asked instead?

I think nonverbal response is just as important as verbal response when you are dealing with someone that just told you that she does not want to have children. In my experience, people rarely question my motives for not having children, but I will get either a smug or uneasy look from other women. Michelle, you are absolutely great and supportive on this forum. I wish other mothers would at least attempt to understand that us CF women are good human beings, that we also have dreams, goals, and ambitions ... it's only that having children isn't one of them.

I just realized that no one in my life ever asked me if I wanted to have children. Everybody took for granted I did, and they acted and talked like it was just a question of time.
So hard to say? "Do you want to have children?"

Amen to that!! Sometimes I get soooo tired of my mother-in-law injecting "you'll understand better when you have kids" into half of her conversations with me. And it's always when we're talking about some annoying thing that I have to put up with. I have always wondered, since I was a kid, how people talk about the nuisances of having children and not think twice that they are discouraging me from having any? I guess they think I will senselessly get caught up in some emotion about motherhood and become pregnant. Sorry everyone -- I'm not that dense. I'm one of those that think a matter over thousands of times and at every angle before acting.

[quote=beth_m] I have always wondered, since I was a kid, how people talk about the nuisances of having children and not think twice that they are discouraging me from having any? I guess they think I will senselessly get caught up in some emotion about motherhood and become pregnant. Sorry everyone -- I'm not that dense. I'm one of those that think a matter over thousands of times and at every angle before acting. [/quote] I totally hear you on this one! I'm guilty of doing a similar thing though... I told my dog-loving brother I couldn't believe his fiancee at the time didn't want dogs. He was offended. Oops. It was kind of like asking "the kid" question.