Tuesday, December 6, 2011

"So, are you ready to have another one?"

The little guy celebrated his first birthday a week or two ago. (Yes, one day I'll post about that too... maybe it will be the same "one day" when I finally upload all the pictures that are sitting, worthless, in my camera, on my memory card where nobody can see them.) Now when people ask how old he is, I respond "one year old." And you know what happens? They ask me one (or both) of these things: "Is he walking yet?" Ok, normal milestone kind of question. I'll accept that. But by far the more popular (and, to me, shocking!) question is "How many kids are you going to have? Are you going to stop at three, or go for more?", or, more bluntly put "So when are you going to have another one?" ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! He is the third baby! Some very respectful families are completely content with three (or possibly even less) children. And secondly, since when is it so prevalent in our society for everyone to have babies less than two years apart?! Goodness. Give me a break, please.

Have you gotten questions like this, too? Does anyone else find this line of questioning somewhat disturbing? Is it ok to ask a stranger, or someone that you don't know well, about their family size/desire to have more children/TTC and/or conception plans? Would love to hear your thoughts.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Having recently had a baby, it is odd how often the topic of baby #2 comes up, but the real conversations that surprised me were those that came up when we were visiting churches a few years ago. We'd be getting to meet people in a church and would get the usual questions... 'How old are you guys? Are you married, how long? How many kids?...'
(All acceptable and normal questions for people wanting to know what social programs they can tell us about) The odd part comes in to the responses we would also receive...
'Oh, no children? Can you not have children?' SERIOUSLY? And this kind of response came more than once. It amazes me how blunt people will be with their expectations and their response to you not meeting what those expectations.

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