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| Enjoying a walk together |
Yesterday, I wrote about the most common question people ask us when they find out that our family homeschools. Today I would like to write a little about the second most common question we get asked. This time it has nothing to do with our family homeschooling, but it has everything about the size of our family. I started hearing it from people when I was pregnant with Little Monkey, but it only happened occasionally. Now that I am pregnant with my fourth child I hear it more often, and Daddy hears it all the time, "What were you thinking having another one?" That's right, it seems that a lot of people are almost offended by us having four kids. I am not talking here about genuine concerns form close relatives about how we are planning to support our family. I am talking about acquaintances, coworkers, and even total strangers feeling the need to let us know that we have crossed some sort of a line by having four kids.
Not all remarks and questions are offensive and rude, like an elderly couple in a grocery store mentioning that our kids will never "run out" of playmates, or a friend saying that we are working on "starting our own sport team". These are cute and I don't necessarily take offense to them. But some questions from people that hardly know us can be downright inappropriate. When Daddy has had some people ask him if he has not got "fixed" yet, or if he knows what "causes that" I just cringe. When has it become OK to inquire about intimate details of married couple's life. When has asking about the status of your private parts become an acceptable topic for conversation in any other place than drunken frat house? When has it become everyone's business what choices a married pair make as to how many kids they will have?
