Ten Questions to Ask Someone Instead of “When Are You Going to Have a Baby?”

1. “So, just how often are you having sex these days?”

2. “Would you mind describing your last period real quick?”

(Fun follow-up: “Yikes!”)

3. “Which irreparably broken part of you are you most afraid to pass down to a child? The shame and negative core self-belief stemming from the intergenerational trauma caused and then forever unacknowledged by your ancestors, or the maladaptive coping mechanisms that were borne of this shame and that have proven to be unshakeable for you through numerous rounds of therapy, or both?”

4. “What medications do you take?”

5. “How much money is in your checking account right now?”

(Fun Follow-up: “Yikes!”)

6. “As the climate collapses around us, ensuring that our planet is uninhabitable for future generations of human beings, are you most ashamed of your failure to eat vegan or of all of the compostable straws you felt self-congratulatory about ordering but then just threw into city trash cans to be sent to landfills anyway?”

7. “How many miscarriages have you had?”

8. “How ’bout abortions?”

9. “Which of the following do you think is more responsible for the cocktail of intense fear and grief you are feeling at this moment in your life: your inability to reconcile the idea of motherhood with the infinitely tangled web of complex medical, emotional, financial and existential realities of your life? Or the knowledge that the choice of whether and when to procreate — what is, for you, the most complicated and fraught decision you will ever make regarding your body, your identity, and your place in the world — is, for the rest of us, simply fodder for fun and casual small-talk at parties or in grocery store aisles, and you are going to be asked about it at least once a week for the foreseeable future?”

(Fun Follow-up: “Yikes!”)

10. “Why are you crying?”