ABC LIFESTYLE: Childlessness can cause a ‘deep existential crisis’. What you say about it matters.

Sometimes we receive genuinely thoughtful, empathic and loving responses to our childlessness, and we are so appreciative of these, but childless women have also told us their experiences are often not well received.

Examples of these responses include

• problem solving comments – “you can just adopt”, unsolicited advice “have you tried...” or miracle baby stories “my cousin tried…” or “I heard about…” and the often painful “don’t give up!”;
• comments that can diminish the difficulties and possibly heartbreak – “aren’t you lucky!” or “you dodged a bullet!” or perhaps “parenting isn’t all it’s cracked up to be!”;
• comments that diminish us – “you’ll never know true love” or “childless people are selfish” or comments that claim access to universal human qualities based on parenthood status – “as a mother…” or “as a father…”
• comments that diminish our lives – “your life has no purpose” or comments that idealise our lives “You get to sleep in and have all that time and freedom” without acknowledging the price of this freedom or the impact on us;
• sometimes it’s telling us “parenting doesn’t matter” or “it’s better for the planet”;
• sometimes it’s dismissing our desire for motherhood – “just being a mother lacks ambition” or “there’s so much more to life than motherhood”
• sometimes it’s claiming a religious or spiritual intent to our childlessness “Some people just aren’t meant to be parents” or “It’s all in God’s plan”
• sometimes there’s pity or we’re told we’re selfish or not real adults,
• often it’s an awkward, uncomfortable silence, topic change or shutting down the conversation.

These comments can happen when we speak about our childlessness, and sometimes when we don’t.  They can happen in interpersonal level, in conversations about us, in social situations, workplaces, intimate connections with family and friends, in the media and in political discourse.