The sonographer squirmed uncomfortably, looked up at the screen, down at my belly, anywhere but me. She eventually must have decided humour was the best way out: “No, but I do have some very demanding dogs!” I laughed politely, all the while making a promise to myself. Never. Again. I will never ask a woman if she has children again.
The first time it happened I was at Woolies, loading up the conveyor belt with highly processed, definitely non-organic groceries as the toddler shrieked melodramatically in the trolley. “How old?” asked the woman at the check-out. “Ah…” I began the familiar routine of trying to work out just how long my daughter has been alive (twenty months? Twenty-three? Dear God, have I missed her second birthday altogether?).
The woman smiled knowingly when I finally got there. “I’ve got one her age,” she said, scanning my panty liners. “He’s a dictator.” Buoyed by this comforting disclosure I asked if he was an only child. Her face immediately closed, but her smile remained.
“He is,” she said. “I did have another one, but he died.”
There it was. The brutal, not sugar-coated truth, when I have to admit all I’d been wanting was a pleasant, forgettable conversation with a stranger about our mutually exasperating offspring. I left the supermarket feeling terrible but I have no doubt she spent the rest of her shift feeling far, far worse.
You’d think this exchange would have stopped me for good, but no. On recent a trip to Spotlight to navigate the highly confusing world of block-out nursery blinds for bub #3, I did it again to the woman trying patiently to explain window recesses to me.
“I bet you’ve got a kick-ass set up at your place!” I said, jealously imagining perfectly darkened rooms with perfectly behaved children napping perfectly within. After all, she’d shown interest in my kids and asked me questions about them, she was an oracle on all things blindy-shutty, and she had that mumsy-chic vibe.
You know, that vague, slightly frazzled and extremely exhausted look I typically sport myself. “Oh, I don’t have kids,” she replied. ‘” got cancer instead, and so that door kind of shut for me a long time ago.” Bam. Strike two.
Andrew Daddo’s book First Day is the perfect way to send your little ones off without any tears.
Finally, after gushing about my sonographer’s dogs with embarrassing enthusiasm to mask the awkwardness engulfing that ultrasound room, I knew I’d struck out. I finally got it. “Do you have kids?” would never pass my lips again. My careless curiosity on the breeding habits of other women had been at best nosy small-talk and at worst more hurtful than I care to imagine.
After all, I’ve been on the receiving end of it myself. “When are you going to have your second?” strangers would probe, both as I staggered shell-shocked out of hospital with my newborn son and with increasing repetition over the next few years.
“One day!” I’d respond cheerfully, nursing the uniquely private pain too many of us have felt on the inside. Months and months of trying and disappointment, the beautiful promise of a heartbeat, the devastation when it slipped silently away. “It’s none of your business,” I should have said. Perhaps someone should have said this to me also.
The bottom line, at least for me, is that whether someone has children or not is absolutely none of anyone else’s business. If a woman wants to discuss her children or lack thereof with me, she will. Then—and only then—I will listen with true interest and an open heart. Until that moment, I’ll try to remember to stay mum.
Top Comments
Just my 2c worth regarding children who have passed away. It is not always something to regret, asking about these children. To have them acknowledged and talked about (with appropriate sensitivity and awareness of course). They are real children after all. My mother was recently talking to a middle aged lady she had only just met. The topic arose naturally and the lady spoke about her daughter who had died as a baby. My mother asked her what is her daughter’s name? To which she replied ‘Scarlett’ and said “nobody has asked me that for a long time”. Scarlett is real and loved by her mother forever.
This seems .... a bit silly. Now are we not allowed to make conversation about anything, just in case it inadvertently hits on someone's pain? I can understand rude and invasive questioning being something to avoid, but the question "Do you have kids?" or "Do you have other kids?" is hardly nosy. It's conversation. Should we not ask people how they are or what their job is just in case they are suffering from depression or they are unemployed?
If someone has loss or grief in their life (and many of us do), it's part of the process to navigate around how we frame and talk about it with friends, family and strangers. It's not the responsibility of everyone around us to never ask the wrong question -- it's part of the healing process to figure out how to respond to situations in a way that makes sense to us and helps us to frame the narrative of our story.
I have two kids with disability and part of my processing of their diagnosis has been figuring out how to respond to people's (not rude) questions in public. No one is in the wrong for asking -- but I needed to find a way forward.
I think some questions are ok to ask, others are intrusive. "Do you have children?" or "how many children do you have?" are fine.
However, asking if someone is planning on having more, or asking when they are planning on having (more) children, is unnecessarily invasive. As someone who suffered from secondary infertility & miscarriages while trying for baby #2, questions like this are really hard to answer honestly. It's deeply personal and painful. I have my rainbow baby now, but I am always careful of the questions I ask people because you never know what they might be going through.