Men make the rules.

From today's Hax:

Dear Carolyn:

I was unable to have children and my husband refused to consider adoption. Therapy has helped me come to terms with this, but I find myself struggling for a graceful way to cope when people talk at length about kids and grandkids. For example, I was at a breakfast event with a group of professional women, and fairly quickly they started telling each other about their children and grandchildren. This went on for 20 minutes. I felt terribly left out, and after a while I simply got up and left.

The letter goes on about this problem, which Carolyn addresses.

What she doesn't address, however, is the very first sentence. Having children is apparently VERY important to the woman who wrote this letter. So important, in fact, that she can't be around people who are sharing pleasantries about their own children and grandchildren for a prolonged period of time. She's willing to adopt, but her husband isn't? What the hell is going on there?

Adoption is one of the most generous acts a couple/person can bestow upon another. They're not only opening their homes to a child that doesn't have one, they're opening their hearts to this child and saying, "Come be with me and I promise to love you like my own." Is there anything that could be more giving? Seriously, I place this on par or above directed organ donorship. You're giving a piece of you to a child you don't know and have no biological connection to. How great is that?

And the letter writer's husband doesn't want to do that. Which I can understand. Adoption isn't for everyone. But it's something that is clearly very important to his wife. It's something that she undoubtedly wants. Why is her husband the one calling the shots here? Being childless isn't and shouldn't be the "default" setting for their relationship that they revert to when consensus cannot be reached. Just as both of them should agree to adopt, both should agree not to adopt. And I'm not sensing that this letter writer ever agreed to that.

Which really sucks. I can't believe that there isn't a large amount of pent up resentment toward her husband for this reason. Ick.