No, We Don't Have Kids

Yes, I am married. 

No, we don't have children. 

Stop asking. 

I can't count the number of times that inquisitive strangers have expressed dissatisfaction with this situation. Hearing that I don't have children seems to disappoint almost everyone who bothers to ask. 

Why do relative strangers care whether or not I have children?

Why does the random co-worker with whom I find myself making small talk at an office function frown upon learning I am childless? 

Does she think the world perilously unpopulated?  Does she think I'm so remarkably brilliant and strikingly attractive that failing to pass on my genetic code would work to the detriment of humankind? 

Why does the middle aged guy in the elevator abruptly end our conversation upon hearing that I have a two-person family?  Are his conversational skills so limited that he can't think to ask a question on another subject?  Is he so self-centered that he finds me of no conversational value if I can't pass along child rearing tips? 

Perhaps it is all of these things.  Perhaps it is just the part about being brilliant and good looking. 

Or maybe people seem disappointed in my childless answer because they "compassionately" assume that I must have wanted kids, just like they did, only failed to produce them somehow.  

Don't get me wrong. 

I have nothing against people who have, or want to have, kids.  It's just never struck me personally as a particularly good idea, knowing my talents and limitations.  I can't even keep a plant alive (sorry, Kelsey. I tried. Harder than you know.)

I come home from work every day mentally drained and physically exhausted--it's all I can do to feed my cats.  We have little to no spare money left over every month after the bills are paid as it is. 

Of the six or seven various conflicting obligations in my life, I'm generally scandalously neglecting, almost to the point of criminality, at least two of them on a rotating basis at any given time.  I can get away with this now.  There are no criminal repercussions if I fail to get a blog written on time or get the date wrong on a volunteer project. But the same can't be said if I absent-mindedly drop Junior in the dryer along with the towels.

I just can't imagine how life would work if kids were part of the equation. 

The people who fit it all in have a talent that I do not.     

People who don't know me still assume that I must be sobbing myself to sleep every night, hunched in a bedroom corner, over my barren existence.  I'm just not.

Sometimes people mean well.  I get that.  A lot of people really are so wrapped up in their children's lives that they just don't have much of a conversational bank to turn to if they can't swap childcare stories with their conversation partner. 

They don't abruptly cut off conversations because they think they're better than me, but because they have nothing non-child related to say.  But more often than not, those who frown and shut off conversation upon hearing of my lack of offspring give off a very different impression.  Kind of like when someone asks you about your political affiliation and then loses interest when you give the "wrong" answer. 

People assume my life is incomplete because I don't have something that they wanted.  Sometimes they won't even take my word for it that I don't actually want to help populate the earth.  If I had a nickel for every time someone said "someday you'll change your mind" about having kids, I'd have enough money to comfortably raise one. 

Some people take this assumption so far that they say sometimes work condescending lines into conversations like "someday when you have kids, you'll understand why should have voted for Harry McGruber," or whatever other topic it is they are failing convince me of on its own merits. 

Sometimes people try to change my mind, telling me what a blessing kids are, as though a brief encounter with a relative stranger at the office Christmas party is going alter my long-term life plan.


I just don't understand why some people seem to care so much. 

Just like they don't understand why my life doesn't include kids.