Radio 4 Woman's Hour on childfree women

[bagfish]

Woman's Hour on Radio 4 yesterday and today had two programmes about childfree women. One was the usual format with interviews of "experts" and people who have opinions and the one today was a 45 minute phone in

Comments

[bagfish]

Which bit would annoy you, or the whole thing?

Having seen a couple of friends (and my aunt) go down the infertility treatment route, I can well see that it must be even more horrible to have the intrusive questions about "why haven't you had children" because in these cases, it's not exactly for lack of trying and I know from friends how painful it is :(

I agree with you that it seems to be all about conforming, as mainstream society (as exemplified by the radio troll yesterday) seems to think that all women of whatever persuasion should have children as we are ambulatory wombs, therefore it is our reason to be /sarcasm. In my case the assumption that I should have children is irritating and the question intrusive, in the case of my friends dealing with infertility, it's incredibly hurtful.

Most of the people I know who don't want kids as a choice don't push their views onto others and challenge their choice, I just wish society would have the decency not to challenge my choice with incredulity, and that was one of the reasons why I enjoyed yesterday's phone-in as it was nice to hear from other people who feel like me - there's little exposure of childfree-by-choice women in the baby-centric mainstream media.....

[kissmeforlonger]

I think I'd get very exasperated by the incredulity, because honestly, someone doing the interviewing ought to have enough sensitivity and life experience to know that people have different reasons for making the choices they do (or living with their lack of choice). It is one thing to ask probing questions, and quite another to sound genuinely surprised at the choice before they've even found out why.

I didn't have kids because I was never with a man who wanted them - I'm grateful to be an egg donor with proven fertility as it does help deal with it. There are issues with that of course, but I look at people who are suffering unwanted infertility and going through intrusive treatments and it is real anguish - to be asked such stupid questions is downright thoughtless.

People don't talk about infertility much either, and I think that's why some can be so thoughtless. There's a lack of awareness. A colleague brought his new baby into work the other day (by invitation - gah!). It didn't seem to have occurred to anyone that it might have upset one of our staff who doesn't have kids with his wife. It was difficult for me, but an awful lot worse for a colleague in her early 30s who wants kids but her bf doesn't. She was very upset but couldn't say so... can't admit at work to wanting kids. And people were asking why she didn't join in with the cooing. Gah!!

[bagfish]

Oh, your poor colleague.

I get a little irritated by people bringing babies in if they expect me to coo over them as I don't do cooing, because I'm not a baby person! But it must be agony for someone who is in your colleague's situation. New parents are too quick to think that everyone wants to see their new baby and will be happy for them and there's no thought people might be feeling pain for themselves because of infertility or relationship incompatibility.

I suppose this might be taken as an intrusive question after everything we've discussed above, but have you made peace with yourself about not having children? Please don't answer if you don't want to, I know this is a difficult subject....

[kissmeforlonger]

No, it's fine. You are FAR more tactful than my family believe me :-)

I have more or less made peace with it. I went through a fairly tough patch early last year trying to accept it. As I'm single though and have been for the best part of the last 6 years, that does limit options and has meant I've had to think about what is really right for me. Put it this way - I accept reality, but am not over it enough to consider adoption.

I've thought about families a lot over the years and strongly believe that people shouldn't be manipulated or forced into having children they don't want. It's not good for anyone. There's a huge taboo around not loving/not caring for your kids (understandably) as it's considered such a huge insult. So you can't really call someone on being unsuitable to be a parent, or not loving their children, without them being forced to deny it.