If You Do This When You Tell People You Don’t Want Kids…

They’ll Think They Can Change Your Mind

Above: You, in their minds, when you do the “wrong” thing. Image: QuinceCreative on Pixabay

For an upcoming episode of Childfree Girls, we invited a guest who’d emailed us with a request to talk about her path to being childfree. She told us during our recording that she’d grown up assuming she’d have kids but later realized she didn’t want to be a parent.

She then she shared one of the unique circumstances of her life that, she said, had helped shape her decision to not have kids.

“So,” I said, “if that element weren’t a factor, if everything could be guaranteed to be perfect in that area, would you then want kids?”

This turned into a conversation about bingos, because I had apparently (unwittingly ) bingoed our guest, a little bit.

In my defense, she’d unwittingly asked for it — the same way many of us do.

What Goes Wrong

Let’s say someone says to someone who’s just said they don’t like chocolate, “I don’t get it. Why don’t you like chocolate?”

One answer the chocolate-hater supplies might be, “It’s too sweet.” Another might be, “It’s too hard.” Another: “It’s a little gritty.” Another: “It melts on my fingers, and that creeps me out.”