The “Steal My Joy” Argument

I’ve heard this one a dozen times. But what’s at the root of it?

I’m a dude that can’t impregnate his wife, which is sad to live through, but over time you come to grips with it. I also happen to have spent a chunk of my professional existence as a writer for myself and other people. In the context of “write what you know,” sometimes I write about infertility, fertility, parenting, motherhood, etc. You can obviously argue I don’t know motherhood, as I’m not a woman or a mother, and you’d be right. In those cases, it’s a mix of observational + what people tell me about the experience.

About five years, as some of my wife’s friends got pregnant, periodically I’d hear from them that I “stole their joy” around pregnancy because I wrote something that insinuated maybe not everyone really wants to be a mom and they largely do it for societal pressures and/or to keep up with their friends.

First of all, that argument is insane to me. If some fat fuck kid who writes on Medium can “steal your joy” around creating new life, well, there’s a much deeper pathology there that I cannot possibly delve into without going to Med School at 43 and becoming a psychiatrist.

By now, I think 12 women have told me some variation of how I “stole their joy.” I generally ignore it as a little bit off or…