Respect People's Choices — or Don't Be Surprised If You're Not Invited to Thanksgiving!
As anyone who has chosen to be childfree knows all too well, some people simply cannot keep their opinions about our choices to themselves.
The holidays tend to be a particularly fraught time for those of us with family members — or entire families — who can't resist policing our reproductive decisions.
In a recent post on Reddit's “Am I the A------?,” a 31-year-old man said that he and his wife Lily, 30, are hosting this year — and they really don't want his brother, 29, to bring his new girlfriend Lindsey, 27.
Although she's "been polite at family events," the man said that his wife feels like Lindsey "has made some passive-aggressive comments" about the fact that they don't have kids.
“For example, at a recent BBQ, Lindsey said it was ‘selfish’ that Lily and I weren’t planning to have kids anytime soon," he wrote, adding that the s-word came up again at a family dinner.
"It made her feel like Lindsey was judging our life choices,” the man explained.
...With Thanksgiving coming up, the man said that his brother asked if he could bring his girlfriend to dinner.
"I told him I'd prefer if she didn't come," the man said, sharing that he "explained that some of her comments had made Lily feel disrespected, and I didn’t want that to ruin the holiday."
The man's brother is angry, and his parents say they feel caught in the middle, and he is nonetheless keeping a hard line, saying he's just defending his wife. As well he should!
I'm sure no one will be surprised to hear that we at Zero Kids Zero Regrets come down firmly on his side.
No one should feel obliged to play host to people who feel like they have the right to disrespect a life decision as fundamental as whether to parent — and, particularly at this moment in which women's reproductive healthcare is under relentless attack, judging any woman's relationship to her own body and her reproductive choices is simply vile.
Don't expect to get invited to family holidays if you can't respect someone's family decisions.
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