people talking about their babies. when friends have babies and you don’t

Who Can You Talk to About Your Childless Life?

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Do you have anyone with whom you can comfortably share your thoughts and feelings about not having children? 

I really didn’t have anyone to talk to when I was in the thick of it. My husband felt guilty. My therapist just didn’t get it. My best friends were having babies. My friends with older children thought my stepchildren were enough. 

I met people who had chosen not to have children and were happy about it. Their attitude: What’s there to talk about? I met parents who said I was lucky and that they wished they had not had children. 

In many situations, when I admitted I was not a mother, silence fell, followed by a quick change of subject.  

None of which helped me. I’ll bet you know what I mean. 

The graphic above is from the World Childless Week website. You can see that you’re not alone in needing someone to talk to.

Can you discuss your feelings about this with your partner? Do they sympathize, get angry, or simply refuse to talk about it? I know some readers have to read this blog in secret for fear of their partner’s reaction. Your feelings are never going to be the same when one of you has a uterus and the power to give birth and the other does not.

It’s not easy finding someone who truly understands the situation and lets you feel your feelings. People who have kids are busy and distracted. They may have gone through a childless period before, maybe not, but now it’s all about the kids. We can’t blame them. 

Your own parents not only come from a different generation, but they have a vested interest in becoming grandparents. If your lack of children is physical, it may be easier to discuss than if your partner is unwilling, but they may still push you to adopt a child or get involved with other people’s children. Or to dump the unwilling or unable partner. 

It’s so easy to toss off suggestions when you’re not in the situation. Just adopt. Freeze your eggs. Teach, mentor, do volunteer work with kids. 

But who can you really talk to? Who is willing to ask you what happened and how you feel about it and maybe even say, “What can I do to help you with this?” 

Do you have anyone like that? My best friend, mother of four, grandmother of many, comes close. She gets it, sort of. But most people don’t. 

Outside the childless community, it’s just not easy to find someone who can listen and understand and not try to fix your situation. Or blame you. Or make a wisecrack about it. They’re not cruel. They just can’t feel what you feel. 

So where can you find someone who knows what you’re going through?

We are lucky to have Jody Day, founder of Gateway Women and Katy Seppi, longtime host of the annual Childless Collective Summit. Katy has taken over management of the original Gateway Women and renamed it The Childless Collective, but Jody Day is still extremely involved in the childless community, focusing more these days on older childless women. Both Katy and Jody are actively working to bring people who are childless not by choice together online and in person. Visit their websites to see what they’re up to. 

This month, Stephanie Joy Phillips is once again hosting World Childless Week Sept. 16-22. It’s all online, and I encourage you to participate in some or all of it. Activities include speakers, panels, webinars, and testimony by hundreds of women. Their stories may sound familiar. You may finally feel like somebody understands. Even if you don’t attend the events, do look at the terrific resource page.

I’ll be joining the “nomo crones” panel on Thursday, Sept. 19 during World Childless Week to talk about friendships between parents and nonparents. That should be a lively discussion. Have you ever lost a friend when they had a baby? Oh yes, me too. Register here for our chat. It will be recorded, so you can still hear it if you can’t make it to the live session (noon PDT).

For two years, Karen Malone Wright brought childless and childfree women together at the Not-Mom Summit in Ohio. It was so great to be in a room full of women who would not be pulling out baby pictures and asking how many children you had because we were all in similar situations. 

How do we find people to talk to in our real lives? I guess we keep our ears open. When you meet someone else who doesn’t have kids–or whose children don’t have kids–mention that you don’t either. Ask if it was by choice or by chance, and if it’s the latter, ask if they’d like to go for coffee and talk about it. They may shut down like a slamming door. But maybe they’ll smile and say, “Yes, I’d like that.” It’s worth a try. 

So, do you have someone to talk to about your childless situation? I welcome your comments. 

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When All They Can Talk About is Their Kids—and You Don’t Have Any

Sue Fagalde Lick left out of mom club, mom club, people talking about their babies. when friends have babies and you don't , , , , , ,

The beauty salon is a dangerous place for childless women, not just because of the sharp instruments and the danger of a horrible haircut or a tragic dye job. Been there, but that’s not what I’m talking about today.

Since the stylist I had for years cut my hair so short just before my father’s funeral that I felt bald, I have been seeking the right person. It has been a journey. In this journey, I have repeatedly found myself in the land of MOMS. Yes, capital letter MOMS.

There was the Vietnamese woman who wielded her scissors like a chainsaw while talking at her teenage daughter in Vietnamese. There was the heavyset woman whose kid was hanging around for lack of a babysitter and required a lot of attention. Okay, stuff happens. I understand. But their focus was on their children, not on my hair.

The stylist I dumped most recently was late because of a ride situation with her kid. Okay. Things happen. Then she kept leaving me mid-cut to text with her husband about her kid. Not so okay. She barely paid attention to me. But I liked my haircut, so I went back.

The next time, she spent the whole haircut talking with a co-worker about their kids and their baseball teams. All I got to say was, “Just a trim, not too short.” Yeah, I’m just another old lady getting her graying hair cut, but I’m a person. This time, my haircut wasn’t that great, and she applied so much “product” I couldn’t even get a comb through it.

Moving on, I tried the salon next to Safeway. I think I may have found my person. I love my hair. But I will probably lose her in a few months because she is hugely pregnant with her second child. As she cut my hair, her belly bumped up against me. I didn’t mind. It was soft and somehow comforting, and I thought it would be really fun if I felt the baby move. I didn’t. I asked about her children. One at home, one in the oven. Naturally, she asked about mine. “I never had any,” I said. In the awkward silence that followed, I quickly changed the subject.

Some types of work are dominated by young mothers. Managing hair is one of them. The stylists can arrange their schedules around their children’s needs and hang out with other young mothers doing the same. It requires some training but not a four-year degree or 60-hour work weeks. That’s all good, but we have nothing to talk about.

I have also encountered the mom-centric talk with the hygienists at the dentist’s office. Mine is super-involved with her kids soccer team. I usually hang out with people closer to my own age. If they are moms, their children are grown up and usually living somewhere else. Yes, they sometimes get busy with the grandchildren, but most of the time we are living similar lives. The beauty salon is a different world.

How about you? Have you experienced places in your day-to-day life where you find yourself surrounded by moms or dads talking about parenting and making you feel left out? Where? How did you feel? Did you try to fit in? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

Photo by cottonbro on Pexels.com

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When Your Friends Talk Nonstop About Their Kids . . .

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In the Jan. 6 episode of the new Sex and the City series on HBO Max, Miranda’s professor, Nya, and her husband have been struggling to have a baby. Their attempts at IVF have failed and they are taking a break. It’s a painful subject. The last thing they want to talk about is babies. But when they go out to dinner with another couple, their friends can’t stop talking about their children. Every time the professor tries to steer the conversation to other subjects, it always comes right back to the kids. It turns out their friends are pregnant with yet another child. More baby talk. This parent couple, totally clueless about what the professor and her husband have been going through, keep bugging them about why they don’t have kids yet and how they won’t know real love until they have them.

At The Childless Life Facebook group recently, a long discussion centered on the problem of not being able to talk to your friends once they have children. Suddenly, former best friends have nothing to say to each other.

Ah, the mom club. Their lives are wrapped around their kids, and yours isn’t, so it becomes difficult to have a conversation about anything else. You feel abandoned and left out. Dads do it, too, but not as much.

I still remember when the moms in the church choir would gather to talk about their kids and school stuff and I was suddenly outside the circle with nothing to do but sort sheet music. Some of these moms are now obsessed with their grandchildren, so it’s still not a good fit, but others have come out of the mommy cloud.

Not long ago, I had a great exchange with a female friend about football. Did you see the game yesterday? How could he have missed that kick? Etc. Yes, girls can talk about football. This friend has children, and she’s about to move away from here to go live with them, but they’re all grown up, and she has plenty else to talk about, especially when her Kansas teams are playing. Maybe the key is just to wait it out. Someday the kids will be gone, and your friends will rediscover that there are other things in the world.

But that’s a long time to wait. Meanwhile, what can you do?

  • You can just try to be interested in your friends’ families and join the conversation as much as you are able, even though you don’t have your own children to talk about. Talk about your nieces and nephews or other kids in your life. Remember your own childhood. Smile. Pet the dog. Excuse yourself to go home early.
  • You can seek out other childless people with whom you share other interests, whether it’s a book club, yoga class, softball team, writers group, or whatever. They might have children, but you have this other thing in common.
  • You can keep trying to direct your parent friends’ attention to things other than babies, to remind them that they need to hold onto the person they were before the little ones took over their lives.

I understand how children can become the main thing parents think and talk about and how they would gravitate toward other parents. I was that way about my puppies when Annie and her brother were small. Annie s still a central concern, and I enjoy a good conversation about dogs. But the best way to be a friend is to take a genuine interest in your friend’s concerns, whether it be babies, cooking, or working out at the gym.

If you’re at the age where most of your friends are having babies, try to be interested in their families, but also insist that they listen to you when you talk about what’s on your mind. Maybe they don’t even realize they’re obsessing until you point it out. Or maybe you’ll need to find other friends until the kids are at least in kindergarten.

How do you deal with friends who can’t talk about anything but their children? Do you have any advice on how to handle it? I welcome your comments.

***

Good news. The pathology report on my dog Annie’s tumor said she does not have cancer. It’s a bloody ugly thing and we’re still dealing with the big collar, but after the vet cuts out the tumor, we should be able to go on with our lives. Thank you for all your loving comments of concern last week.

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Baby Talk on LABOR Day

Sue Fagalde Lick Labor Day, people talking about their babies. when friends have babies and you don't

I had dinner at a friend’s house last night to celebrate Labor Day. She and her husband have just welcomed a new grandchild and their first great-grandchild. Between phone calls from the new parents, they talked about the babies, showed pictures and went on and on about family matters. Meanwhile, I cuddled their calico cat, Sophie, in my lap, loving the feeling of her purring against my legs, even as she coated my navy blue slacks with white fur.

My friend knows I don’t have children and wish I did. She knows I max out quickly on baby talk. After the first hour or so, she declared a moratorium on talking about the kids. Although babies still drifted into the conversation, we did discuss many other subjects throughout the evening. The food was good, the house is charming, and the cat is adorable. These people are good friends.

They have health problems and money problems. The best thing in their lives right now is those new babies. So who can blame them if they’re flashing photos, talking about them all the time, and making plans to visit? As a friend, it seems right for me to climb out of my pity pot and share their joy. The babies aren’t mine, but they are still a gift to the world, which includes me, too.

Still, I’m glad they had a cat to cuddle. When I got home, I let my 77-pound dog climb into my lap and we watched “Bachelor Pad” on TV together until we both fell asleep.

Did Labor Day take you into the world of babies? How was it?