The expectant expectations of strangers

It's time strangers allowed newlyweds to enjoy each other for a while without turning on the pressure to start a family.

Mr T and I think of our childless situation as the norm for a pair of newlyweds who enjoy each other too much to allow anyone else into our "circle of fun". We think to ourselves: "We've only been married 14 months. It's not time yet."

However, on our trips back home to Jordan to visit my family, the change in perspective is steep. There, everyone else's loudly spoken thoughts are more along the lines of: "It's been 14 months already? And she's not even pregnant?"

It doesn't really bother us. Our immediate family let us be and exert no pressure, so it is only the unsolicited remarks of acquaintances of our families - people we have never met - that reach our ears.

"Are the newlyweds a nice number three yet," asked a random patient of my mother's.

"My mum wants to know if you are an uncle yet," my teenage brother was asked by a school friend.

"May you be a proud grandfather before summer arrives," said a grocer to my father, one who obviously has rudimentary calculation skills.

Mr T's mother lives in the UAE, but her family in Lebanon also get these types of question from the near and far, people whom neither she nor we have ever met.

Those are the comments that baffle me, a thousand times more than the well-meaning advice of people I have known all my life. Where is the rush exactly?

Usually on trips to Jordan, Mr T and I know that our time will be spent in one of two ways: either with family, or spending time with friends. A recent trip, however, included an unexpected addition to the brief visit: congratulating friends who had just become parents for the second time.

Not only did they make all their parents' friends proud by producing their first child a few months ahead of their first wedding anniversary, but already Baby Number Two has arrived.

"We're heading out this afternoon to visit my friend, Mrs X," I told my mother. "She just had a baby boy."

My mother cocked her head to one side and seemed confused. "Didn't you visit last year, didn't you say she had a little girl?"

"Well, yeah… the girl is maybe a year old now, something like that. This is Baby Number Two," I said, almost apologetically.

There's an opinion I've heard from a few of my newlywed girlfriends, all educated and a few with parents or spouses in medicine. These girls are convinced that the smartest thing to do is just have a bunch of kids, one after the other, and get that out of the way as soon as possible.

The thought is frightening. Then again, how are their choices any of my business? Their approach to parenthood upsets me profusely, and I have strong opinions on it. Yet it is not, nor will it ever become, any of my concern.

It's not unlike those strangers in Jordan or Lebanon or Pakistan or Canada who are apparently obsessed with my childless state in Abu Dhabi.