Someday

A couple weeks ago I was meeting for the first time with a new advertising representative with whom I would be working regularly during the course of my job. My previous rep from this media company had retired and a new person was recently assigned to my account. After we had wrapped up our business discussion, we started making small talk. She had moved to the Midwest recently so she was telling me a little about where she lived before and I told her a little bit about the area to which she had just moved. After a little while she looked around my office and her eyes landed on a family photo. This conversation followed:

Her: Is that your family?

Me: Yes. That’s my mom and dad. That’s my brother, his wife and my nieces. That’s an old photo though. The girls are older now.”

Her: (scanning my office looking at other pictures) No kids of your own?

Me: No.

Her: You’ll get there someday.

Me: (after the shock of the statement wore off a little.) Eh….maybe.

“You’ll get there someday?” Really? It is 2016. How is a statement on my reproductive choices an appropriate thing to say to me, someone she had just met 20 minutes earlier? Answer – it’s not.

Can we stop putting people in boxes like this? Can we stop making assumptions and asking personal questions to which we have no right to an answer? The woman that made this comment to me had – and still has – no idea if I want kids at all. She assumed I must, because – hey, I’m a woman. Let’s take away the fact that this comment was unbelievably unprofessional. It was presumptive and it was insulting. I, a complete person with a variety of skills and interests, was being turned into one thing and one thing only – a potential mother. What if I was absolutely against having children? Her statement was not-so-subtly sending the message that I was making the wrong choice. What if I really want kids and I’m not able to have them? Her statement would have been painful and cruel.

I keep thinking (or maybe hoping) that these kind of conversations will quit happening. But they keep popping up. So I guess it’s time to put this out there in writing. Women are more than their reproductive systems. Yes – it’s a wonderful thing that women can have children. The miracle of life is certainly an amazing thing. It can be the most rewarding thing some women have ever done. But not all women are destined to walk down that path. Nor should all of us.

Looking around my office, there are plenty of things this person could have chosen to comment on during our small talk. There are the framed advertising awards that actually would have had some relevance to the relationship this ad rep has to me. There is the Outstanding MBA Student of the Year plaque that hangs on my wall. There is the college flag from my alma matter that hangs from my office ceiling. There are the marathon finisher certificates that are displayed on my bookshelf. Heck – there is even a humorously tall stack of unopened boxes of Girl Scout cookies on my desk that would have made for an interesting conversation topic. Yes, there were plenty of ways she could have chosen to try to get to know me. But the only thing she wanted to talk about was my family – or lack thereof.

I have many women in my life that are amazing mothers and they are proud to be. But you know what else they are proud of? They are proud to have worked their way through college. They are proud to have completed triathlons. They are proud of being business owners. They are proud of helping to bring a grocery co-op to the area. They are proud to have their photography displayed in art shows. They are proud of being able to lift more than their body weight. They are proud of volunteering at their church. They are proud of the young people that they mentor. They are proud to have raised thousands of dollars for cancer research. They are proud of all of these things and more.

You know what they aren’t proud of? Living in an age that despite all these amazing things, the topic that many people still ask them about is their plans for having a family. Hasn’t the time come when we don’t assume every woman – or man for that matter – dreams of parenthood? Haven’t we become enlightened enough to realize that traditional family roles aren’t necessarily the model that everyone bases their lives off of anymore? Maybe not. But one thing I have to believe – we’ll get there someday.