The Real Reason Parents Insist On Talking About Their Children

Living a Child Free Life can have its challenges. You will get bombarded with people talking about their children. Your friends, coworkers and even acquaintances will talk about their children, they’ll show you pictures of their children, and every time (even after the 100^th picture) they expect you to react in a way that says how cute their children are. Honestly, that doesn’t bother me much (well a little I guess), but it got me thinking about why parents act this way. Why do parents always insist on talking about their children?

It goes back to even before a baby is born. What do you always hear people asking the pregnant mother-to-be?

Is the baby a boy or a girl?

How is the baby doing?

Is the baby kicking?

Have you decorated a room for your baby?

What are you going to name your baby?

Firstly, do the people who ask these questions really care or are they asking them just because they don’t know what else to say? If she says yes, the baby is kicking, then what? Are we supposed to say that’s good? I mean it’s a human inside of her, what did you expect to happen?!? That would be like me asking my doctor if I trim my fingernails, will they grow back? YES! That’s what’s supposed to happen!

Secondly, If the pregnant mother-to-be is lucky they might get asked how they’re feeling. At this point, even before the baby is born, the attention is subtly being turned away from the mother-to-be and towards the unborn baby.

This is what I like to call Stage 1 of the mother-to-be losing her identity as a person.

The baby is born. Enter Stage 2. At this point everything is about the baby. Books and classes tell the new parents they need to pay constant attention to the baby or else it will self-destruct and vanish into thin air. The parents now sacrifice their time, career, hobbies and freedom to solely focus on caring for their new baby. Will the new parents sit down on the couch with a glass of wine and talk about their day and current events or gossip? Nope, because there’s a new baby that’s taking that attention.

It’s at this point that human interactions become very curious to me. When a family member or friend comes to see the baby, because apparently they’ve never seen one before, all eyes are on the baby. And I mean all eyes. It’s remarkable to me that when someone comes to visit the baby they don’t even look at the parents. I swear I’ve seen a time when someone visiting the new baby literally didn’t make eye contact with the new parents the whole time. They just look at the baby for hours on end. This is remarkable to me because at this point the baby can only crap itself and move ever so slightly. The parents are being ignored more and more and the baby is getting more and more attention.

Stage 3: The baby begins to grow up and is starting to crawl and walk and eventually run. Have you ever seen parents with a young child in a mall? The parents have to push around a stroller because the child would get too tired walking around by itself. (And of course we don’t want a tired child because that will lead to whining and crying!) But then the child will want to get out and walk. Of course walking from one store to the next store will now take an hour rather than 2 minutes because the child will wonder around and feel the need to explore things. Parents think this is cute. The rest of us think it’s annoying since the child will try to chop block you at the knees or put its sticky hands that have been in its mouth on you. Stage 3 is all about being on the child’s agenda.

“Push me in the stroller!”

“I want to walk!”

“You need to carry me!”

Similar to Stage 2, Stage 3 takes away precious time from the parents to enjoy a full and rich life. Do you think they enjoying carrying a whining child through the mall while they shop? Or have to make a stop to get ice cream so the child can get most of it on their face, part of it in their mouths, and spill the rest of it resulting in…you guess it…more crying.  But it’s ok. The parents will snap some pictures of their child on their phone and take a quick video from the 0.01% of the time the child is behaving and post it on Social Media to make everything appear as though everything with their life is spectacular. (More on this later.) The parents continue to lose their identity with the amount of time they need to dedicate to watching their child.

Stage 4 the child is getting older and is now involved with school activities and events with their friends. We’ve all see the parents that get way too involved in their child’s activities. I know you can picture the child playing on a basketball team and he gets knocked over from an opposing player. The parent in the bleachers will stand up and start screaming, literally screaming, at the referee for not calling a foul. The parent is so rooted in their child’s activity because they don’t have their own hobbies anymore to be passionate about. Everyone needs something their passionate about. (I’ll argue later that your hobby is a place where you should spend money in large sums.) You can be passionate about traveling, knitting, exercising, music, sports, or gaming – it doesn’t matter, you just need something to be passionate about. Parents choose their child. They have to choose their child because that’s all they have. They need to live vicariously through them and their passions because they don’t have anything else.   

The child is now turning 18 and the parents are starting to have some new realizations. This is Stage 5. This can be tricky for parent because what they’re realizing is that things will be drastically different soon. Their child could be moving hundreds or thousands of miles away and out of their day-today life. The parent won’t be allocating 100% of their time caring for the child like we saw in Stage 1. The parent won’t be making sure the child doesn’t hurt themselves in Stage 2. The parent won’t have to follow the child’s agenda that we saw in Stage 3. The parent won’t need to be a chauffeur and cheerleader for their child so they can attend activities during the weekday and weekends. The parent is now starting to realize the child will be on their own and out of their day-to-day life. This is very scary for parents because their whole life is changing. This is when you’ll see parents try to cling on for as long as possible to their child. They’ll try to convince them to go to a local college rather than go to a premium college four states away. They’ll know in their hearts the premium college is the right decision, but they selfishly want their child near them. The parents are scared because they don’t what to do with themselves and all their extra time. They’ve lost their hobbies, they’ve lost their sense of sense, and they’ve lost their own identity.

That’s the real reason parents insist on talking about their children. It’s because they’ve lost their own identity. Their life had become so intrenched in everything that has to do with their child that they’ve completely forgotten who they are as a person. They’ve allocated so much time to raising their child that they’ve completely forgotten who they are or what they’re about as a person.

I wasn’t willing to make that sacrifice. I wanted to have my own identity and live a Child Free Life.