I am going to start by saying that isn't it wonderful that there are all sorts of different people in the world, with all sorts of different views and opinions? I am not a parent, and so not a grandparent. I made this as a choice, although my husband and i did flirt nervously and half-heartedly with the idea of having a child soon after we were married (because he is younger, and i was 40 when we married, and if we were to do it,we couldn't wait). Thankfully we did not manage to produce a child. I am not maternal, not interested in them in any way, and frankly I do not want to share my partner's attention with someone else, nor do I want to have to put a child first in terms of my time, attention, or financially. He is much the same, although with a different partner i actually think that he would make a good if rather uninvested father. Selfish? Yes, but that is my right, and it is absolutely as valid as the decision to want children and all that they entail. Each choice comes with its own set of pros and cons, and neither is without sacrifices or disadvantages. What i think OP was saying, and what certainly holds true for me, is that all the parents/grandparents think that when we state our preference, it does not have equal, that we are to be pitied, or as some have even said in this thread, we 'protesteth too much'. No. Really, no. And as for a non-parent daring to say that they aren't interested in talking/hearing about your offspring and their doings - well heaven forbid! But why can't we say that? Granted, it is rude to go in with your big feet and state straight away that you don't want to hear a word about anyone's sprigs, but why would you assume that I would be interested in the minutiae of a life I neither share nor want? Are you interested in those boots I just bought myself, which i have been hunting obsessively for months,or that we watched 3 episodes of House back to back on Netflix last night to take our mind of how hungry we were because Thursday is a fast day, or that one of our cute little couple-y things is that we sing along to the closing (but never the opening) music to University Challenge, each with our assigned roles and silly voices, and the challenge is to keep in time over the bit where you cant hear the music? Of course you aren't, and trust me i dont want to subject you to that sort of personal-to-me waffle ad infinitum, even though I have plenty of stuff to tell, and time in which to do it, given that I have no children filling up my life and giving it value.... It is reasonable, and interesting, to hear some details about the lives of new people one meets, including of course their children/grandchildren. I like that. But I would also quite like you to have the same degree of interest in my life, even though it is different from yours in all sorts of ways. I would like parents/grandparents not to feel sorry for the aching gap in my life, because there isn't one. I also don't want to spend an entire evening listening to a group of people talking about things in which i have no interest, and cannot contribute, be it children, or football, or crochet. A little while, sure, but not the whole time, because that is just rude. I am a sedimentary geologist, my specialisation is secondary porosity in oil-bearing sandstones, with a particular focus on turbidites, looking at how the different facies within a sequence differ, how grain size and mineral content affects the primary and secondary porosity, and how diagenetic processes can either improve or inhibit porosity. These factors are very important to the oil industry, as they can inform the decision on where to drill within a sequence.....are you bored yet? I think my point is made.
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