"Do you have kids?" asked the retired judge who was mediating one of my cases yesterday. I happened to be sitting next to him. As he went around the room asking everyone else the same question, I realized that he was only trying to break the ice. Ease the tension. Establish some common ground. Hours later, I was having a few drinks with my client who asked, "Wait, you're married? Why don't you have kids yet?" Ouch. It stings every time.
Last year, I attended a meeting and met the speaker beforehand. She said that she usually introduces everyone from the group that hosts the meetings by stating some fact that was interesting or fun or quirky about them. She wanted to know what to say about me and my coworker. I laughed and said, "How about I grew up on a pig farm but my husband is a vegetarian?" Legitimate fun fact, right? My coworker couldn't think of anything and the subject changed to their kids after awhile. I sat in silence. At the meeting, the speaker introduced us. Before reciting my fun fact, she said, "I don't know... this is all she gave me..." But she waxed on and on about my coworker, who truly didn't "give" her anything, because my coworker was busy with a bundle of energy two-year-old! Not a very quirky or interesting fact in my humble opinion. But the speaker didn't care - it was common ground.
Sometimes I get mad. How dare they ask me about children? Don't they know how offensive that question is? No. Of course not. To them it's small talk, to be sandwiched in between the go-to questions that everyone asks in my city: What neighborhood do you live in? Which baseball team do you follow? Should they be required to run through a series of internal questions while making small talk? "Maybe she can't have kids? Maybe she's homeless? Maybe a relative died in a tragic cotton-candy accident at a baseball game?" I suppose that would be asking too much.
This is why I admire our infertility community. We live in an everyone-has-this-experience-so-I-can-talk-about-it-at-cocktail-parties world. Watching people treat a miracle as the mundane. Constantly wounded by the common ground questions. Yet we find answers. We spare their feelings or we advocate. We don't wound back. (Though I'm often sorely tempted.) We have our coping mechanisms. We may go cry in the bathroom later or just plan a scathing blog post (ahem). And we learn from it. I don't ask people if they are married or have kids. I don't presume that everyone important to them is living and healthy. I still ask about baseball though - surely one in eight couples doesn't suffer from that.
