The rude `When are you having a baby?' question

Mercury News ^ | January 10, 2006 | Dear Abby question

[Criminal Number 18F]

I'm curious as to why you think the inability to have children comes only from some deviant behavior--sexual promiscuity, abortions, or homosexuality.

Er, while all those things do prevent childbirth, I don't see where I said those were the only causes. Please address the argument I made, not the one that you'd rather attack, but that I didn't make.

When a couple hasn't got children for biological reasons, there's no reason to assume it's the woman whose plumbing is malfunctioning. Sometimes it's the guy's (I think that's actually more common) and sometimes the couple's stuff individually is working fine but it just doesn't happen.

The biggest single cause of this disappointment is waiting to try for children until the 30s. Both men and women find their reproductive ability declines with age, although for the woman the rate is more precipitous on average. Yet our society teaches young people to avoid children and pursue wealth instead. I just find that peculiar, but it's their right and prerogative as free peoplr.

d.o.l.

Criminal Number 18F

[Madame Dufarge]

I became sterile as a result of an infected appendix that spread to my fallopian tubes when I was 19 years old.

I got married a year later, and have been married for 38 years, childless but not by choice.

I understand that "Do you have any children?" is a natural question, but there's always that pregnant (no pun intended) silence where you're expected to explain why.

If you're a private person, this is unbelievably intrusive and I've never learned, after all these years, to deal with it comfortably.

Damning all childless couples as "selfish" is thoughtless, at best.

[Thinkin' Gal]

I never ask a woman if she has children. This is because IMO there is no need to ask. If I am acquainted with someone well enough to discuss the matter, then a) she would have already provided the information (mothers love to talk about their children), or b) she has her personal reasons to remain silent, and thus it is not my business.

I have friends who wanted children very much, but were unable to have them. I know this not because I asked, but because after I knew them for a while, they freely volunteered the information.

The nosy, insensitive questioners seem to have presumptuous personalities anyway. If not this question, it would be something else. They presume that they have a right to be given an answer to any question they ask, just because they ask. Talk about an overinflated sense of self-importance. If you don't answer them to their satisfaction, then you will offend them.

In my experience, this trait is much more common in liberals. They don't have a lick of sense, and even less tact.

[rhetorica]

Those things were the only things you listed--as if a woman can't have children it is because she is somehow immoral.