Mainly because we don’t have any. But my dear regular readers, you already know that. So what’s with the post title Britgirl?
Well, the other day I did a couple of new things. One was that I joined Cocomment. I remember asking a fellow blogger Range some time ago about Cocomment after being impressed with it on his blog.
He had comments he made on other people’s site in the side-bar of his Wordpress blog, using Cocomment. I thought it was neat, and made a mental note to check it out. And then Wordpress launched “My Comments”. Great, I thought, no need for Cocomment – and started using it.
Trouble is, I discovered that it seems to only track comments I leave on WP.com blogs. Maybe I’m missing something (or maybe I’m only commenting on WP hosted blogs?). So, I thought, might be worth still checking out Cocomment because I wanted to see comments I’d left on any blog I posted on. I was forgetting to go back and visit. Signed up and I’m already a fan.
The other interesting thing was that I came across a blog called Alas, a Blog (I think via Blogher) where I (without really intending to) posted a comment to an article called “My Children Bore Me To Death. I have to say this quite an interesting blog for the sheer number of articles and breadth of views. The comment I posted was on being childfree in a pro-natalist society; comparing it to simply being criticised because you had said your children bored you.
I wasn’t sure of what kind of responses I would get (if any) but the responses I did get were very interesting. And revealing. It brought home to me again that there are many women out there who are childfree and who go through exactly the same crap I do, as many childfree people do, when it comes to the Inquisition and opinions of some parents and of society at large. Note emphasis because: a) I know not all parents are anti-childfree, and b) those that are are just waiting to leap down my throat and tear me off a strip for supposedly hating all parents and their offspring.
I am fortunate in that as a childfree person I have support, both in terms of my husband, and my No Kidding and other childfree friends, whom I can call up and say “hey, fancy going for a drink, watching a film, or a bite to eat? Comfortable in the knowledge that I’m not going to be asked, if I have kids, when am I going to have them, how many I have, why don’t I have them, and what the hell did I mean I am Childfree? Not everyone has the same support, and judging from some of the responses, being childfree in the society we live in, as we know, can be very lonely.
There were also some fairly predictable comments, that proved, at least for me, that what we experience from those who cannot accept women being childfree is totally and completely real.The impression that we sneer at parents, that we present our childfree-ness as a challenge to parents, that we flaunt it. Yes, the ignorant views are alive and well.
The other part of the conversation I found interesting was the flak that even parents receive – from other parents!
Rather than me talking about the comments, though I’d like to invite you to actually read them yourself and see what you think. Because now that I have Cocomment (which by the way I am still figuring out) I can link to the conversation thread right here.
I think being able to share experiences and learn something new like this is one of the greatest things about blogging. And worth talking about.
Read My Children Do Not Bore Me To Death .
Note: Click the profile icon which (expands and collapses the thread) to see my post and the replies to it.
