Why we stopped asking women about their baby plans
In a bold move, Stellar magazine will ask a woman one particular question as it can send her into a spiral of depression if she is struggling with the issue.
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It was an innocent enough question; asked with nothing but the best of intentions.
“When are you going to have a baby?” she fired across the cafe table as the waiter cleared our plates and prepared to take coffee orders.
“We will… one day,” I assured her, as my lunch companion turned to the mutual friend sitting next to her to enlist her support in this mission to hustle me along in my seemingly tardy path in doing my bit to repopulate the planet.
A few jokes later about how after almost four years of marriage it was time for me to discover the joys of obstetrician appointments, 3am feeds and a crash course in The Wiggles, the conversation mercifully moved on.
It’s the sort of chat that takes place in cafes, living rooms and workplaces across Australia every day as friends, families and co-workers quiz their younger/unattached/childfree counterparts about their relationship prospects and subsequent plans to breed.
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And it’s never-ending. Singles are constantly set upon by kindly but nosy relatives at extended family gatherings, querying as to when they are going to finally meet someone.
Meanwhile, the loved-up are pestered over their timeline to enter the holy state of matrimony. The freshly married are pressured to procreate imminently. And bleary-eyed but elated new parents are quizzed over their plans to bring baby number two into the world.
For better or worse, it would seem to be human nature. Only sometimes it really is for worse.
What my two well-meaning interrogators didn’t know that day as they rolled their eyes at their supposedly career-obsessed friend was that I had in fact spent most of that past year either being pregnant, or recovering from a pregnancy loss.
Having decided the time was right to start a family, my husband and I had been fortunate that I fell pregnant immediately, only to miscarry in the first trimester. After being the given the green light by our doctors to try again, we miscarried again eight weeks later.
It was an extremely difficult time, both physically and emotionally, and I was still quietly struggling with the heartache even as I found myself lightheartedly fending off questions over coffee about when I was going to finally join the local mother’s group.
For the record, I know I was one of the lucky ones. Despite those early false starts to motherhood, I meant what I said when I assured my lunchtime inquisitors it would happen — and so it did. Only 10 months after that conversation, I would be in the maternity ward nursing my firstborn.
That was 10 years ago now — two babies and a decade later since I was inducted into a world of which I had previously been blissfully ignorant. A world wherein the birth of a healthy baby seems a painfully elusive dream and wherein even the most innocuous of questions can cut deeply.
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As I have since learned, despite feeling isolated in my grief and fear at the time, my husband and I were in fact far from alone. According to conservative estimates, one in five women will have a miscarriage — and then there are the countless couples struggling to conceive in the first place, with infertility affecting around one in six Australian couples of reproductive age.
So, knowing all this, surely it’s time to shift the conversation surrounding these issues.
Over the past year, we have come to a decision at Stellar — the Sunday magazine I have edited since its launch three years ago — to no longer ask high profile women if they are intending to have children, or to ask celebrities about their baby plans.
It’s a position we have slowly evolved to over time — and yes, of course there are caveats, such as when a woman we are interviewing brings it up herself unprompted or if her turbulent or unconventional path to motherhood happens to be an integral part of her story.
And I’m the first to admit that exclusive pregnancy and new baby shoots and interviews will always feature in Stellar, because celebrating milestones and capturing key moments in life is an integral part of a magazine like ours.
But as a rule, it felt like the right time to draw a line in the sand when it comes to unsolicited questions about a person’s path to parenthood. Whether it’s infertility issues or pregnancy loss, the last thing a couple dealing with such difficulties needs is a stranger prying into areas that are between them and their doctor.
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And what of the growing number of Australians who have no interest in having children at all? Should they be made to feel inadequate and put on the defensive by having to politely fob off questions about their renovation plans for a nursery?
It’s a regrettable but unavoidable truth of life that none of us really knows what our fellow humans are going through at any given time. And so it is, despite nothing but the best of intentions, that all of us will unwittingly inflame the most painful of issues for our acquaintances and loved ones without even realising.
If you are one of those people currently in the depths of despair over a seemingly unattainable dream to have a baby, then please know you are not alone, and that you have good reason to hope.
But please also know there is no “right” or easy path to parenthood, and that there’s a responsibility on all of us — inside the media and out — to stop asking innocent but potentially hurtful questions that suggest otherwise.
Sarrah Le Marquand is the editor-in-chief of Stellar magazine.