Sam Walsh
One of the main things I’ve heard throughout the 15+ years I’ve considered myself to be a lifelong Non-Mum (that is, after I had the crushing news that I would never be a mother followed failed IVF) is that being a childless or childfree woman in society means you’re invisible.
I’ve experienced it on so many occasions: those awkward moments when someone (usually another woman, because men don’t tend to judge or be judged around parental status in the same way) eagerly enquires if you have children. She’s obviously expecting that you’ll answer in the affirmative and then you’ll continue the conversation by comparing notes on your offspring: genders, ages, names, schools…it’s so easy to connect with the other 82% of women who have kids when you instantly have this common ground.
But there’s nothing more excruciating than wanting to chat to and connect with other women, striking up a conversation…and then being asked the heart-stopping question you knew was coming but was dreading all the same: “Do you have kids?” or even worse, the assumptive: “How many do you have?” Such questions, so casually and breezily delivered, feel like a flying kick in the guts to an involuntarily childless woman. No matter how many times you psych yourself up it can still knock you for six, depending on how you’re feeling at the time, and the environment you’re in when it hits.
Having worked in a female-centric industry throughout my career (beauty retail) you can imagine how often I’ve been asked this question - by managers, colleagues, and the thousands of female customers shopping with their children in the many shops I’ve managed over the years. I cannot tell you how many uncomfortable silences I attempted to fill to spare the feelings of the other party, at the expense of my own.
When you’re serving a customer it’s even more difficult, as you have to remain professional and maintain the polite rapport between you as you respond to her innocent line of questioning without betraying your discomfort - and all this is playing out in public on a busy shop floor. Awkward!
I can handle it well now, having had so many years of practise, but in the early days of my fertility journey it was all I could do not to burst into tears. I’d hold it together long enough to finalise the sale before nipping to the loo for a cry.
These days, I welcome the question, as it gives me an opportunity to speak openly about the dangers of asking it! After so many years of swallowing down the lump in my throat and stumbling over my response, I can now detach myself from it sufficiently to give a succinct answer, something like: “No, no kids, we gave up in the end after years of failed IVF.”
I find that type of direct response conveys the associated heartache without the need for elaborating further, whilst simultaneously gently letting the other person know their question has stirred up deep emotion…emotions which I may not always be in the right mood or environment to have churned. (It’s not easy to eat or drink at social gatherings whilst choking on a lump in your throat!) Don’t get me wrong, I know their intentions are innocent, and I don’t want to make them feel bad, but equally I feel I’d be doing childless women everywhere a disservice by simply laughing it off and not giving any indication of the associated risks of asking such a personal question about the capabilities of a stranger’s reproductive organs.
So what should we ask instead? You might be wondering. What’s considered ‘safe territory?’ Well, an open-ended question about who I enjoy spending time with, or what I enjoy doing in my spare time is a far safer option. I may not have children, but I’m sure there are a ton of other things we have in common. We’re both humans, first and foremost, after all. Ask me about my pets, travel, musical interests, recommended reads or latest box-set binges and my eyes will light up and away we go…
