Undescriptive

Yesterday I was with my friend Lynn Toms and we were googling her to see if we could find something. Today I can’t even remember what we were looking for, but I do remember something we found about someone named Sheryl Lynn Toms. The Google listing was for a ancestry.com site and it said “Sheryl Lynn Toms, mother of 0.” What?!
I have never heard anything so insensitive, except for maybe things that come out of Donald Trumps mouth. For the first thing to say about a person is that they were a mother to none is not the most descriptive way to characterize a person. If we were to do that you might say “Dana Carter Lange, never in the Army,” which really doesn’t say anything at all about me.
I wonder if Ancestry makes the same distinction about men who never had children. Of course with men you never really know if that is true because there could be children out there they don’t know about, as long as the man is straight and not celibate. 
I love being a mother and really like my child, but it is not the definition of me. I’m not sure I would want my listing to start, Dana, mother of one. I certainly think that anyone who does not have a child, for whatever reason does not want to be called out for it.  
Let’s try and be more thoughtful in our characterizations of people. There has got to be something better to say about Sheryl Lynn Toms. I don’t know her and I would bet you good money she has done something in her life that is more memorable than not having children.
I am thankful I saw this yesterday because it saved me from writing about the Republican convention and Mrs. Trump. Enough has been said on that subject, but I do wonder if Ancestry will list her as, “Melania Trump, mother of one, good quoter of Michelle Obama.”