2 Great Gifts for Friends and Family Without Kids

No matter how old you are or why it is you don’t have kids, the holiday season is a time when we non-parents need to take extra good care of ourselves. Holiday festivities often don’t have much to do with us anyhow. For many, these days are full of minefields.

Thanksgiving was fairly tame for me this year. I was seated next to a delightful 8-year-old, who knows I don’t have kids. She told me with pride how she’s the “bonus” grandchild my child-free friend obtained as a side benefit of partnering with her grandfather.

I smiled and told her she’s the kind of child anyone, me included, would want in their lives. She beamed, and I felt I’d added an extra boost to her future self-esteem, regardless of how her own future parenthood picture might pan out.

As for my own evolving sense of self-worth, I noticed this moment passed with much less internal drama than it would have in years past. I am not a mother, and I now know that’s a positive, yet complex aspect of my existence. I now also know I’m not alone.

When I think of challenging holiday tables, they often occur when those of childbearing years get peppered with queries about babies, some subtly, others with blatant intrusiveness. The coming holidays are supposed to be all about giving, and it would be nice to get a bit of a break this year.

I have two suggestions for this holiday season, and they’re both pretty simple.

1. Don’t ask any questions about offspring, period. Wait to be told. Instead of asking about the childbearing intentions of anyone present, just wait for them to disclose what they want you to know when they want you to know it. The question is more fraught than many parents may realize.

It’s possible the non-parents among us are trying to realize their fertility and/or identify future partners. Or they have recently experienced a miscarriage. Or they’re worried their decisions to remain child-free will raise hackles.

Or maybe they have kids, but there’s a back story that stings—substance abuse, estrangement, incarceration. The kindest gift you can offer is space for others to choose what, if anything, they share.

2. Dedicate at least 20 percent of the conversational space to topics other than kids and family. Why 20 percent? That’s a conservative estimate of the proportion of adults who will never have children. You’ll likely have at least one such person in the midst of this year’s holiday gatherings. My simple math suggests we include on average 12 minutes every hour talking about topics that don’t include raising kids/grandkids.

You don’t need a stopwatch, just a little sensitivity and self-management. That little respite really isn’t too much to ask and will be much appreciated by many.

I’m always grateful (and honestly more than a little surprised) when holiday gatherings include any conversational thread about what we non-parents are focused on these days. And if the thread continues for more than a few minutes, I’m utterly delighted.

Why? Because I feel included in a way that just doesn’t happen when the talk is mostly about other people’s children, even when I think the world of them.