Whenever April Fools’ Day gets closer, I see several social media posts which say something along the lines of “Pregnancy is not a joke – there are people who want so desperately to become pregnant, but will never be able to, don’t make a pregnancy announcement as an April Fools’ joke this year.” For the longest time I never understood this – the people who make jokes like that aren’t making light of people who are unable to have children, they’re just making a dumb joke. I would never have thought that it was a particularly funny joke to make, but also it seems harmless.
Of course, I thought all that as somebody who has not been through the experience of finding out they can’t get pregnant. I wasn’t saying that people were wrong to say or think that, I just didn’t understand. I thought to myself “By the same logic, any pregnancy announcement is just as bad, right?” and then I thought about it for a while and I realises that that was the point. If you can’t get pregnant it probably does make you feel a little bit sad whenever you see that one of your friends has successfully done so and so, that’s a sadness you have to go through a lot anyway, so you may as well not have to go through it for the sake of somebody making a pointless joke.
I suppose I could have simply asked someone why they found posts like that so offensive, but as it’s obviously a very sensitive subject, it didn’t feel appropriate to bring it up. The other day I was just walking along and thinking about the subject, when all the pieces fell into place and it suddenly made sense.
