As you flaunt those ‘perfect’ family pictures, have you thought about the childless? PHOTO/FILE
31.03.2018
Sometime back, I wrote about a colleague’s totally disinterested reaction when I excitedly showed him my son’s baby photos.
He had passed by my desk in the morning on his way to his workstation and casually asked how my son was doing. Instead of taking his polite inquiry at face value and simply answering a vague, “Fine”, as is expected and leaving it at that, I immediately unleashed my phone from my handbag and began showing him his photos to show him just how fine he was.
He was my first child, and being an excited first-time mother, I found everything about him cute and amusing: his two teeth, his gummy smile, his unstable gait.
How could everyone not share in my wonder and excitement? Wasn’t he just the cutest baby ever?
It was only half way through the sizeable photo album in my phone that I noticed just how bored and disinterested he was, but being the polite man he was, couldn’t bring himself to tell me to shut up and keep the photos to myself.
I would conclude, from that incident, that the truth is, even though you will never hear it, that people just aren’t interested in seeing your children’s photographs.
Following that telling incident, I never show anyone my family’s photos or even talk about them unless someone shows genuine interest. Their photos are not even on my Facebook page or any other social media platform I am in.
It is true, chances are that you are the only one who thinks that your children are ‘adorable’ and ‘cute’. Besides, people are exasperated when you go on and on about how clever they are, how well they are performing in school, how wonderful they are.
I know this because nothing irritates me more than people who use any opportunity they get to blow the trumpet for their children. I suspect that 99.9 per cent of all the parents in the world think that their children are the most wonderful children in the planet, so no, yours aren’t as special as you think.
This week, I received a thought-provoking email from a reader. She requested me to consider talking about a group she referred to as the “forgotten demographic in our society” — unmarried, childless, middle-aged women.
To quote her, they are invisible, and in a world where consumerism drives just about everything, not even fast-moving consumer goods advertising targets them, advertisers are too busy selling their goods and services to mothers and couples.
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She wrote, “It surely must be a lonely world for these women, (who are not mothers for various reasons) who have to listen to accomplished female personalities gush about ‘motherhood being the best job of all time’, and live through the days preceding mother’s day and father’s day.”
This reader, her name is Wairimu Mungai, told me that she since took down all her “perfect” nuclear family photos on Facebook after realising that those “perfect children, perfect spouses and perfect families” we have a habit of posting on our social media pages were a painful reminder of how insensitive we have all become to the plight of others.
To be honest, I had never looked at it this way. I mean, is it fair to be forced to censor or mute your accomplishments or some areas of your life just so not to offend those that are yet to get to that stage?
When you think about it, though, her argument does make sense. Majority of us are all about me, me, me. We are so selfish, we are completely insensitive to the needs and comfort of others around us. As long as we are full and satisfied, nothing else, not even the suffering of those around us, matters.
Sometimes, our assumptions are highly insensitive too. I once overheard someone I know ask an acquaintance we both know why she was taking so long to have a child —“Ama hutaki ku-lose shape?”
She wondered whether the reason was that she was afraid childbirth would render her shapeless.
Now, I knew that this woman, who had been married for a couple of years, had difficulty conceiving. I cannot even begin to explain how offended she was by this uncharitable presumption.
Should we talk about our ‘happy’ marriages and ‘perfect’ children? By all means yes, it is a free country, and that marriage and those children are part of who you are. However, having them does not make you superior, better, or happier than those that don’t, so refrain from flaunting them every chance you get.
cnjunge@ke.nationmedia.com; Twitter: @cnjerius. The writer is the editor, MyNetwork, in the Daily Nation
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