Today I was at a work event out in the community. I was staffing our agency's table with a co-worker who works in another department. I don't know her well and while we were chatting, she asked the usual get to know you questions. As soon as she asked, "How long have you been married?" and I answered, "5 years," I cringed inside knowing what would come next. "So, do you think you guys will have kids?"
I know that people don't ask this question to be rude. I know they are just asking it because most people have kids, especially people who have been married for as long as we have. For the first 4 years of our marriage, I answered this question by saying, "Not today!" or "Not right now." because we wanted to have kids in the future, but didn't know when. Once we started trying to have a baby, I usually answered this question by saying, "Probably in the future." Now, 15 months into trying, I've started to wonder what the best way is to answer this question in a casual setting: "Hopefully?" "We'd love to have children?" "Who knows?" "We can't?" "We're working on it?"
Maybe there's no perfect answer to this question. If a close friend or family member asked this type of question, I might answer honestly and tell them that we have been trying, but haven't had any luck yet. But this question really seems to come more from the casual acquaintance or complete stranger. Often it seems like this question comes up in the first 5 or 10 minutes of meeting someone. I really feel like asking someone if they are married and then if they have kids are both completely normal questions, but asking them if they are planning to have kids is just crossing a line to me. This question bothered me before we started trying to get pregnant, simply because I thought it was rude, but now it's like getting punched in the gut. It's like people assume I'm crazy for not wanting kids....if they only knew how badly we wanted them...
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