The follow post is one of my most read posts on the blog. I thought it would be appropriate to share today as a reminder to think before you ask someone “when are you having kids?” Especially today, which is a very hard day for those who desperately want their first child or another child. If you take anything away from this post today, don’t ask people about kids today.
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If you’ve read this blog any amount of time, you know Bret and I are not normal in a lot of ways. From sleeping on the floor, to having no real furniture, we are just weirdos. People don’t understand us sometimes, but that’s fine, we’re happy with our life.
Here’s another “not normal” thing to add to the long list of “Jen and Bret are weird” – We aren’t planning on having kids.
It’s something we didn’t expect. Both of us came from big families and figured we’d have a big family too. As we grew in our marriage, God made it clear kids probably weren’t in our future. When we meditate on our life, kids just aren’t in the picture. It is something we have prayed about, thought a lot about, and talked a lot about. Most of the time, when people ask or comment about us having kids, we laugh it off. “Ha ha, oh we’ll see!” It’s a minor thing to us when people bring it up. Something we shrug off like reactions to us sleeping on the floor. Even if we tell them we aren’t planning on having kids, and they follow up with, “Oh you’ll change your mind.” It isn’t a big deal to us.
But then we thought about things in a different light – what if we DID want kids and we couldn’t or were having a hard time getting pregnant? What if we had lost children?
This is when the desire to share this became about others.
We have a lot of people in our world that have struggled to have kids and desperately want kids.
I am writing this for them.
Please take a few minutes to look at someone’s situation from another angle before you ask “When are you having kids?!” Pause and ask yourself if it’s an appropriate question and time to ask. It may have been easy for you and your spouse to get pregnant. You may have several kids. You may not know that the person you’re asking has been trying, desperately, for years to get pregnant. You may not know of the tears, the heartache, the miscarriages.
Think about asking instead “Do you want kids?” or maybe, just maybe, don’t ask about their plans on having kids or not. If you don’t know if they can have kids or not, it’s for a reason. I understand, it’s a natural question. But it’s a really personal one. Trust me, I understand where the questions come from. In our society, there’s a “natural” timeline of steps.
Out of my deep love for those in my life that struggle with this – please stop asking them when they’re going to have kids. Please stop joking that you’re pregnant on April 1st. Please take a minute to think before you speak. And if you still want to ask someone questions like this, go ahead and just ask me.
originally posted 3/30/17
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