Why Do Some Parents Condescend and Belittle Non-Parents?

“You wouldn’t understand” is both infantilising and reductive!

Are we all on a quest to be understood?

Do you believe that understanding can only be achieved through a shared life experience? Or, can understanding be obtained by recognising that human emotion is universal?

Sure, you may not have experience with a specific situation, but your body likely knows the associated emotion.

We all know how happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, and surprise feels. Yet, sharing similar experiences doesn’t always yield a greater understanding.

The human experience comes in different flavours. Bereavement, separation, illness, and other adverse events impact us differently. We may project our own feelings onto another in a bid to show empathy. But we can never truly understand how life tastes for another, even if we have endured something similar. The same goes for positive life experiences.

Do humans harbor an innate need to feel understood?

And if so, do any of us truly understand each other?

I asked my social media followers about situations when the “you wouldn’t understand…” statement is used and in what context. The answers were expansive.

• Between the privileged and underprivileged.
• Between genders.
• Between people in different jobs.
• Between people in subcultures.
• Between the healthy and those battling chronic illness.
• Between those in different financial positions.
• Between those of different races, religions, and ethnicities.
• Between those with addiction and those without.

But one answer came out on top. All agreed that none of these other situations carries the same diminishing effect and air of superiority as when some parents say “you wouldn’t understand…” to non-parents.

True, maybe at times non-parents don’t understand, but this does not make them inferior to parents. Yet, when some parents utter these few words to non-parents, the words have an alienating and exclusionary intention and effect.

Communication is the glue for building connections. Those three little words, combined with a condescending tone, build walls! They facilitate disconnection and feed into a division that already exists.

• “You wouldn’t understand how exhausting it is.”
• “You wouldn’t understand the feeling of love.”
• “You wouldn’t understand the worry.”
• “You wouldn’t understand how hard it is.”
• “You wouldn’t understand; you’re not a mum!”

The double standard in this push-pull of hunger for understanding is perplexing. Some people make audacious allegations of not being understood without any recognition that they don’t understand the person they are accusing.

Recently a colleague was talking about taking her child to the doctor and the associated worry. I listened and showed empathy, only for her to turn around and attack me with … you guessed it … “you wouldn’t understand…”

Another time, I joined a few friends for dinner. As they laughed and joked, exchanging stories of their kids, I opened my mouth to say something encouraging and supportive and was shut down immediately with a wave of the hand and an “Oh, you wouldn’t understand Ali, it’s mum stuff.”

Do you know what I do understand?

Being excluded, dismissed, minimised, and spoken to in a condescending tone! Oh, I understand that. And given the popularity of a Tweet by The Volatile Mermaid, this experience resonates with many in the non-parent world.

As we’ve already established, there are many situations where the words “you wouldn’t understand…” are spoken. But none as reductive or infantilising as when these words are uttered from a parent to a non-parent (I know, I know, not all parents!).

These words are said with the subconscious bias that by becoming a parent, the utterer has taken a step up the ladder of existential greatness. The purveyor of these words believes — often subconsciously — that they have more value because of their reproduction status.

I’ve noticed something ironic.

The parents who say these words in a dismissing manner are the ones who think they know what it is like to be childfree or childless. Their logic deduces that given there was a time they didn’t have children; they understand a life without children.

Let me be very clear.

Life before children is very different from a life of choosing not to have children or being unable to have children for whatever reason.

Most parents don’t understand the physical magnitude of revulsion many childfree people feel at the mere thought of having children. Nor do they understand the disenfranchised grief experienced by the childless.

Not everyone without children has arrived at this destination along the same path. There are similarities and differences between childless and childfree people.

Non-parents lead different lives to parents, they are more likely to:

• Volunteer their time to the community.
• Travel and learn about different cultures.
• Support friends and family.
• Study and further their education.
• Engage with self-growth and personal development.

So while non-parents may not understand parents, the truth is most parents don’t understand non-parents.

It’s time to open the one-way street to oncoming traffic and learn about the different directions life can take us.

The perversions of pronatalism cast non-parents on a lower hierarchy than parents. This hierarchy provides an unspoken dialogue that parents don’t need to understand non-parents because they are beneath them.

So, on the one hand, some parents think they know what it is like to live a life as a childfree or childless person; on the other hand, these same parents utter statements like this:

• “I can’t understand how anyone would choose not to have children.”
• “I don’t understand what people do with their time if they don’t have children.”
• “I can’t understand how you find purpose in life without children.”

A stark lack of understanding here! If you only see the world through the lens of your own psyche, you risk missing out on the full palette spectrum.

Are acceptance and understanding interlinked?

Kindness and compassion are more important than our reproductive status. People are not automatically elevated in virtue simply for reproducing. But if you are a good person and do good things, regardless of whether you are a parent, your goodness will exude into the world and be met with reciprocal good.

I have some incredible friends who are mothers, and I have also lost some incredible friends when they became mothers. The remaining friendships are those that don’t speak to me from a parenting VIP club. They don’t use oneupmanship on me or belittle my life experiences. They don’t mistakenly believe becoming a parent automatically raises them to a higher echelon of society.

In the book, Untamed, Glennon Doyle talks about calling a friend to ask for parenting advice.

“Liz doesn’t have children, so she is still sane enough to have perspective.”

Thank you, Glennon! Thank you for recognising that you don’t need to have children to know how society works or how young minds function.

You don’t need to have children to figure out a tricky situation or discuss bullying. You don’t need to have children to listen to parenting dilemmas and develop solutions for them.

I was recently trapped in a conversation with a very ignorant man.

He told me he wouldn’t trust anyone working with children who wasn’t a parent themselves. Teachers, pediatricians, child psychologists, language therapists, child protection services, etc. His view was overtly crass. Unless these experts were parents themselves, he deemed their qualifications irrelevant! He equated their parental status with their competence and understanding of their job!

But the scary thing is, this opinion is pretty commonplace!

The “you wouldn’t understand…” paradigm is not limited to parents versus non-parents. Some parent friends tell me that this goes on between parents!

• “You wouldn’t understand, as you only have one child.”
• “You wouldn’t understand as your child sleeps through the night.”
• “You wouldn’t understand as your husband is around.”
• “You wouldn’t understand, as you have more money.”

It’s heartbreaking, really. These words are uttered from a place of pain and suffering, perhaps fuelled by feelings of isolation. But the way they are uttered intensifies the isolation and pushes people away.

Would you really want to spend time with someone constantly competing against you in the suffering or happiness Olympics?

There are solutions.

Maybe instead of telling people they wouldn’t understand, or they can’t possibly understand until they join the parenting club; the parents guilty of expressing such sentiments can learn to bring others into their fold. They can paint out their lives in a show and tell and help others understand.

Yes, that’s right, instead of being hostile and resentful that others don’t understand, help them to understand.

But that’s not where this stops. If you are a parent who is guilty of overlooking your non-parent friends and family members, now would be a great time to try and understand them.

Non-parents deserve love, compassion, and understanding as much as parents do.

No one has an automatic right to be understood. But when we give each other the grace and recognition of living different lives yet experiencing all the same human emotions, we can use our similarities to bind us instead of allowing our differences to tear us apart.

KM Fikes has an enlightening way with words; she shared this during our conversation about the “you wouldn’t understand…” rhetoric.

“I appreciate white ‘allies’ starting their advocacy, “I don’t know how it is to be black in the world…” I concur: “I don’t walk earth in a trans body…” We humbly admit what we don’t understand YET in service of connection. ‘Not understanding’ should begin not end dialogue.”

I don’t know how it is to be a parent in this world. And maybe some readers don’t know what it is like to be childfree by choice or childless by circumstances. But with compassion and kindness, we can use our differences to grow together and build bridges over the parent versus non-parent chasm. It’s time to listen.

🙏Thank you for reading my story Ali Hall

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If you enjoyed this article, you might like this one on How Childfree and Childless Women Are an Essential Part Of Society’s Cohesion.