The perfect small talk question has been discovered.

It’s so easy to put your foot in it when you’re making small talk.

Pose a question like:

“So what do you do for a crust?”

You could cop clangers like:

“I’m just a stay-at-home mother.”

“I just lost my job.”

Yikes.  Moving on valiantly to the next group you try:

“So do you have kids?”

Only to get unexpected answers like:

“My husband and I have done six rounds of IVF and now we’ve lost hope.”

“I think the world is overpopulated and having children is irresponsible for the environment.”

Awkward. I find pretending to faint is the only acceptable way out of these conversations.

So on this week’s Just Between Us podcast Dr Rebecca Huntley, Wendy Squires and I come up with the PERFECT small talk question that will ensure you don’t get an unwanted or  answer. You’re welcome.

Also this week….

Keeping on the manners theme we’ll also discuss chivalry – when it comes to dating in your 40s, have feminists made it hard for men to be polite on dates?  If a man opens the door for you, are you offended or do you like it?  How are they supposed to know how you feel?  We’ve chatted to some young feminists to get their point of view and we’ll speak to a bloke to hear what he thinks.

Then we talk about the insensitive (and just plain rude) things said to women who are childfree.  Both Wendy and I are childfree by choice, so we’ll reveal some clangers that have been thrown our way. Dr Rebecca has some interesting insights into the research around this growing sector of the community.

We might lose our manners a bit when talking about men-only clubs. One of Victoria’s top male judges has said elite, male-only clubs are guilty of breaching women’s human rights by enforcing a century old ban on female members. Preach it sister! I mean, mister.

And after all of that we’ll wrap up with a couple of things that have made us smile this week.

So it would be impolite to not listen right?

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We guarantee you'll feel 47%* smarter after listening.

(* percentages may vary, or not apply at all, but hey worth a shot!)

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