I went to a lunch today to celebrate a colleague's 50 years of being a very successful and influential professor. There were many of her past students there and I ended up sitting next to some of the more recent PhDs. One of them is 35 and about to go through the tenure process.
So, she finds herself in that situation where you start to consider your life decisions -- what you want to do you haven't done yet, what happens if you don't get tenure, children, etc.
She said she doesn't have children yet and asked if I do. I said no, and she immediately, without dropping a beat asked, "Do you regret that you never did?"
Can you say, "ouch"?
I know I'm not a spring chicken, but for all of my life I've been told I look too young for whatever it was I was doing. But now, for the first time, someone has assumed--without knowing anything about my age--that I must be beyond child bearing years.
Can you say, "WTF?"
I hope that this intelligent and beautiful woman gets pregnant easily and when she wants, as I have a really bad feeling that if she faces IF like I am she will remember this conversation today and feel bad about it (wondering if I am childless b/c of IF and not choice).
I'm surprisingly not as upset over this as I kind of feel like I should be.
Yeah. Ouch. I'm not sure I'd read that as her making an assumption that you were "too old" to have kids so much as asking if you have regrets about how you've worked out the work vs. family issue. But, yeah, clearly childlessness by IF not by choice was not on her radar...
ReplyDeleteBut the things people say without thinking.... Last week one of my mom's friends who ADOPTED had the gall to say to me "so I hear you're having another one," making it sound like I'm pregnant and it's a done deal!