Sonja Roos
‘Have you got kids’, it seems like an easy enough question to answer, doesn’t it.
A few years ago, before life happened it was an easy answer, it was a simple, “Not yet” an answer full of hope for the future but now, we had to drop the “yet” and just say “no”, relinquishing the hope that we once held onto like our lives depended on it.
Relinquishing the hope, changed me, but it didn’t change the heaviness of the question. It has been a couple of years that we have been childless not by choice and the question whether we have kids or not, is still one that I don’t always know how to answer. I don’t want to be rude but I am also not willing to be vulnerable with those who don’t deserve it.
So how do you answer?
You would have thought, giving a simple “No’ would suffice but this answer seems to invite further questions or even worse, unsolicited advice especially from woman who have been so indoctrinated by society that they cannot comprehend someone not having children, feeling the need to come to the rescue to help you comply with societal norms. So even though I know that “No” is a complete sentence, others have missed the memo.
My husband is pretty good at just saying “No” and shutting it down. I on the other hand have never been successful in doing that. Maybe it really is because I am a woman, and like I said, society expect us to have kids at some stage.
About two years ago, I went to a one-year old’s birthday, being mistake number one. I have never met any of the people there. Sitting there minding my own business, this total stranger asks, “how many kids do you have”. I was taken aback by the question, not because she asked whether we had kids, but she had assumed that given my age, I should have kids, and inquired how many I had. I tried giving a simple answer “No, no kids”, which prompted a follow up from her being, “why not”. It was as if her brain could not compute the situation. I proceeded to tell her briefly “why not” to just get her off my back and to my amazement she nodded her head and proceeded to tell me how great kids are and what I am missing out on. I just wanted to scream, “read the room lady” and punch her in the throat but I didn’t as when all is said and done it won’t make a difference.
Sometimes people’s comprehension just peak, they have no emotional intelligence, and you won’t be able to help them understand with all the crayons in the world. Sometimes it is easier to just let things be.
This also applies to those individuals, mostly woman, who love to tell you, “Don’t worry there is still time” when you tell them “No”, like they are holding out hope for you to join the little group you will never get to be a part off.
I have only met a handful of individuals who I told, “No” and have accepted my answer or asked a follow up by broaching the topic further by asking if they can ask something personal. Those people are my people, and the winners of emotional intelligence, giving me the option to share or not.
The thing is the majority of people are clueless about things they have not experienced. Perception and actions are after all formed by your own experience of the world. Even though I really want to judge people who ask the question, I can’t really fault them (at least 80% of the time) because I too used to do the exact same thing before life taught me an unwelcome lesson. A lesson that these people were lucky enough to not have learned.
The question sends a tiny sting of pain to my heart sometimes, reminding me of what we lost, and I do feel that people need to be a bit more sensitive with the subject but at the end of the day, I can only control how I act and react. I don’t think to say something really sarcastic or rude, even though I want to a lot of the times, is going to achieve anything. Sometimes, for me, it is just easier for the words and thoughts of the clueless to rain down on me, even if it hurts, realising that it will only create a puddle of water on the floor that I can step away from if I choose to do so.
So to answer the question, “Do you have kids?”, “It never worked out for us that way but we have an amazing life without them too”.
I don’t owe anyone more than that unless I want to, and that should be enough.
