His sperm and my eggs don't like each other.

At 43 and happily married for 12 years (together for over 20), I have heard these 2 questions a lot:

"Have you any children?"
 "No"
"Why not?"

Now I have answered the last question many ways, usually with a forced smile.

"We are working on it."
 "There's still time yet."
"It's just not happened yet."

Now I realise these questions are not designed to cause offence, but if you are childless, not by your own choice, those 2 questions in combination can stir up so many emotions.

"Have you any children?" I take this pretty normally, as it's just a polite conversation point, but in conjunction with "Why not?" it can be interpreted so many ways, depending on my outlook that day. On a bad day the 'why not' can sound like:

• Are you strange, do you hate kids?
• What failure!
• Are you defective.
• Explain more, I'm nosey.

Since I turned 38, the cut off point for IVF in my area (which I went for, but wasn't allowed until my blood sugars were 'perfect', which as any other Type 1 diabetic will tell you is near to impossible), I've felt the likelihood of becoming a mum ebbing away, and it becomes harder each day to give a jovial response, so I find the easiest way to curtail the ensuing conversation is to have a standard response ready that generally stops any more Spanish Inquisition style questions.

Mine is:

"Why not?"

"His sperm and my eggs don't like each other."

Believe me, a quick mention of downstairs plumbing issues stops them in their tracks.

I don't sit around wallowing in my childless misery, most of us don't, but I do have bad days when the little things can get to me, so…….

I would like to share a couple more phrases us childless types hear over, and over, and over again, but would prefer not to.

"Stop worrying about it, it'll happen once you just relax." 
Oh really! Could you produce your medical board certificate, so I know that you are qualified to diagnose my stress induced infertility.

"It must be great not having kids, you can go out without having to plan around the babysitter." 
My 46 year old husband and I just love getting on our glad rags and heading down to the bars and clubs to hang out with all our other childless pals until the wee small hours, where all we do is chat about how 'great' it is not having kids.

Wait a minute, do we have any other childless friends?
Errrm, not many. So unless we always want to go out by ourselves, living the obviously charmed, never monotonous, life of constant coupledom, we also have the same problems as you because we have to plan our lives around your babysitters, your school pick ups, your school plays, your kids parties and your kid's illnesses.
Yep, so great, really great.

"With you not having kids I bet you can afford great holidays/new cars/ a big house." 
Actually you'll find that most of childless couples aren't rolling in the cash or living the high life in Monaco. If they haven't spent a small fortune chasing the IVF baby dream, they'll probably be trying to stash money away in pension plans, or some other way to make retirement a pleasant experience when you won't have children to look after you.

And finally the one that truly makes my blood boil! 

"You don't understand, you're not a parent."
OK I know becoming a mother will most definitely change your outlook on allsorts of subjects from education to a serving a balanced meal, but What The F***!!!,
Do you think that we live in an entirely different universe from you?
Do you think our personal inability to create a little bundle of matching DNA makes us idiots?

A lot of us are, or have been, aunties, uncles, godparents and babysitters, and all of us have been children, so I really think we can have a reasoned understanding of all your parenting trials and tribulations without you throwing out the parent's grande finale of 'cutting-you-off-a-the-knees' statements.


All I ask is that whilst you go about in your 'blissful' child-full lives please think before you say something that may upset to a childless couple who want children.

Remember they really know how lucky you are.

43 and past it!

OK I have been feeling a bit 'past it' lately, as all I see around me is stories about 14 year old geniuses, and 19 year old app developers that have just had their inventions/ideas bought out for millions, sometimes billions.

Logan's Run killing machine 'Carousel'

If you look at the media you could be forgiven for thinking that we are living in the business world equivalent of Logan's Run, in which when people reach the age of 30 they must undergo the ritual of 'Carousel' where they are 'Renewed', or as we would say wiped out.

There really is a dearth of mainstream articles about anyone over 30 actually succeeding in business, if they weren't already already a success before that age.

So if I was influenced solely by the media I would conclude that if I haven't created a successful business by now, I'm never going to.

This ageist media coverage isn't just happening in the business world, it's pervasive in the media world at large. I mean, don't think of having a mega successful career in the entertainment industry if you are over 30 (unless you were previously famous and now on the comeback trail) as no-one will write anything about you. This all leaves me feeling like I should be on a scrap heap somewhere sat amongst other outdated business bits like dot matrix printers or tape answer phones.

But then I found this image:

I love it, it gives me hope to carry on………...but then again if I was over 50 I may have a few reservations that the only people they have picked out to represent that age group created their businesses over 50 years ago, in a completely different age of business.

So at 43 (yes that old!) I reckon I have another 7 years until the next round of business 'Carousel' tries to skupper my plans, and by then maybe there will be a better mix of reporting showing that the world isn't just created by 18 year olds.

But then again, is that a pink porker in the sky?

No more mini-mummies!

To all my friends with children who may recognise themselves here, I am not talking specifically to you or about you, and I agree with your right to bring up your children however you will, but I must air my views on this subject before I pop!

After yet another female pre-schooler has passed by my shop pretending to be a mummy, whilst pushing a mini version of a pram sporting a wrapped up plastic baby, I am dismayed!

It's 2014 women can be anything, do anything. They can be astronauts, engineers, entrepreneurs, round the world sailors, prime ministers, the list goes on and on. Just one of the aspects of a woman's life (if you are one of the lucky ones) is the ability to give birth to a child, and to help send that child off into the world, a couple of decades later, to hopefully make the world a much better place.

So why, oh why, do toy companies, and the people who buy them, in effect, pigeon hole girls solely into the mother role.

I worked in Toys'R'Us for a while and the girl's aisles are predominantly pink and pastel coloured, full of prams, dolls and homemaking equipment such as a mini replica of a Dyson or a plastic kitchen set up, but look a couple of aisles down to the boy's aisles, and you will see strong colours (yes even the word 'strong' that describes the colours is a powerful word) such as blue, red and black, and the toys aimed at them are tool benches, action toys such as Scalectrix or robots and building toys such as Lego or Meccano (admittedly Lego do have a range of 'Girl's Lego' but have a look at what kinds of things they are and you'll find Cinderella's Romantic Castle or a Play House, and what is the dominant colour, oh yes PINK!) .

So, even by the age of 3, if you look at the equality issue through their toys, girls don't stand much chance of breaking out of the 'little woman' pink and passive mould. That said, I don't think there is actually anything inherently wrong with the toys themselves, as long as they are not made exclusively for one sex. Wouldn't it be nice to see little boys pushing a pram and learning about caring skills whilst he's looking after his little doll, or little girls wearing tool belts whilst building a Meccano skyscraper.

If we, as a society want true equality, which is currently a nice theory but not exactly working in reality, then we have to start in the earliest years. We need to stop limiting choices to both sexes. I have a friend who told me he thought his three year old grandson was a bit 'strange', and he preceded to give me a look to go with that statement that left no doubt what kind of 'strange' that was, just because he liked to play with his sister's dolls!

If we let little boys play with dolls and toy vacuum cleaners, and let little girls play with hammers (plastic to begin with) and build scalectrix tracks more often, we may develop a future world where boys and girls turn into caring fully rounded individuals with a curiosity for life and no limitations on what they should become.

(I love that this Design & Drill Centre on http://www.brightminds.co.uk/design-and-drill-centre/p133 shows a little girl having fun with a 'building' toy, and there isn't even a hint of pink.)



If you go away from this with anything, let it be that 'All toys are unisex', and, when you next find yourself in a toy shop, think about picking a non-gender specific toy or one that flies in the face of conventionality, after all you may not have grown up in an equal world, but wouldn't you like to grow old in one.