The “What’s on your mind” off-topic is going so well I’m going to let it run for a little while to continue the conversation. Lots of very interesting subjects on a whole range of topics. Some we’ve discussed in past months, but others we haven’t or they were before some readers discovered Like it is.
One of the Childfree topics on our minds is about friendships – how they can change rather abruptly once a child or children make an appearance. Sometimes we are prepared for it, most times we are not. Only in the rarest of cases does it seem that parents make as much effort to maintain friendships with their childfree friends, even if they were quite close before. I did a post on this topic some time ago and it got quite a few comments. Given that friendships are such a crucial part of our lives it can be quite devastating when they change so suddenly and one friend is replaced by a child. And there really isn’t much the childfree person can do about it. Anyway, I thought I would post the link to the post for you to read again. It was first written back in August 2008 – so just over a year ago.
Has anything changed? Add your comments or just read. And continue to add your great comments to the off-topic discussion.
Childfree – What happens to your friendships?
I’ve also updated the Archives page… now you can click on the dates to expand the posts and choose the ones you want to read. Much more useful than just having dates.
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I’m really hoping that my friendships won’t change that much once my friends start having kids (though many of my friends are childfree as well, or only want one child). Though I’m childfree, I do enjoy children (so long as at the end of the day, I don’t have to deal with them) so I don’t mind hanging around kids and am actually somewhat looking forward to being some friend’s kid’s crazy aunt or something. But, that said, I do think it’s likely that at least some of my friends will retreat into their percieved “grown-up-hood” and leave me and the other “immature post-grads” behind.
For the longest time, about 8 years, I cringed whenever I would get a phone call or email from one of my closest friends. I could never talk to her about her. It was always about what her son was doing, where he was going, the latest funny thing he said. I would grit my teeth in frustration and try to steer the conversation to HER. What are YOU doing? How is YOUR job? I even went to visit her and wished I hadn’t spent the money on plane fare. Rather than getting in some good girl time and girl talk, her kid went with us everywhere. He’s older now and things have gotten a little better but I don’t think our friendship will ever be the same. My other friend who had children has fallen off the radar completely. She still talks with our mutual friend (the one mentioned previously) because it’s all about the kids. There’s no interest in my life, what’s going on with me, or what I’m doing. It’s all about the kids. I’ve been fortunate to find childfree friends but losing the friendship of people I’ve known since high school was very difficult.
Yeesh, that really sucks when you see someone you used to have fun with sucked into the vortex of parenthood. I’m curious though – what were these friends like before they had kids? Did they have a lot of outside interests? Were they active and happy and leading fulfilled lives before taking on the additional burden of parenthood? I’ve started to notice that the people who have kids and fall off the radar/have little else to talk about other than their kids tend to be the people who were “just killing time” until marriage and/or parenthood entered the picture, or are using their kids as a means to fill up some hole in their lives (like that’s going to end up well). I can understand new parents getting excited talking about baby stuff just because it’s NEW, but eventually it wears off and anyone with a decent amount of common sense should understand that the things they find fascinating about their own kid probably doesn’t mean anything to anyone else so they don’t talk about it all the time (like potty habits, dear god what’s with all the Facebook posts that show up on STFU, Parents because some idiot’s waxing nostalgic about/posting pics of his/her kid’s poop??).
Unfortunately we are the only CF couple in our circle and our relationships with any breeder couples have changed dramatically. We never see them anymore, and when we do they talk breeder issues (which we have no interest in).
I’ve also noticed little jealous looks from some of them when we talk about our recent purchases or travels, and I think there are some hard feelings there but I refuse to feel guilty over it. They made their choices, we made ours.
However I think that the friendships may resume when their kids are older. Only time will tell.
So we’ve been working hard to expand our circle unfortunately its not that easy and is taking time but it IS working.
CFC
I tried to be honest with a childed friend once.
It started when we went out for her 30th birthday. She chose to invite 3 new mommies (plus spouses) and me (I thought I was childless at the time, but turned out cf) with my baby rabied ex. All the women could talk about were babies. At some point, I turned to the men’s side and talked computers and cars with them, although I know nothing about either.
When it was my turn to turn 30, she asked if I had special plans. I told her bluntly I would not be inviting her, unless she talked about anything else but babies. She spoke about babies like she breathed. Needless to say we have not spoken since. That was 6 years ago. In the meantime, I learned that she had 3 kids in total with her boyfriend. Broke up. Found a guy with 5 kids and moved in with him. She studied at the university in the same program as me (that’s how we met) and isn’t working anymore. She was quite good at what she did. Shame to waste a diploma like that.
I had a long-time pen pal from Asia. She met her American bf online, quit everything and moved to the US. They had a kid, fought a lot, he had online affairs. She broke up, put her life back on tracks. Then she met someone new, got married and will have a baby soon. She sends me a birthday card to tell me she’s pregnant. Great.
My soon to be former best friend moved to the UK with her husband, had a kid there after numerous rounds of IVF. I’m sure I will never hear from her again.
Kids change relationships. Not only between spouses, but everyone’s, and not always for the best. From now on, when I invest in a potential friendship, I try to find out early in the relationship if they have kids or plan to have them. It’s like dating I guess. Kids are a deal breaker.
I heartily agree. I’d like to say that I have an open mind about remaining friends with people once they have children, or becoming friends with people who have children. However, I have to say, kids are a deal breaker. In my husband’s circle of friends, there are several couples with 3+ children each. I have tried on numerous occasions to talk to the women, and it fails miserably. Once I told them I have no desire for kids, they distantly ask me how my job is going, and then turn to one another and talk snotty noses and soccer practice. I find myself out on the back porch talking with the husbands about sports, hunting, and their kids driving them up the wall.
Friends from high school/college that have kids; the baby shower invitation is about the last I’ve heard from all of them. I am lucky to have a small (and growing) group of friends who are without children. We have so much more in common; the conversations are about anything from current news to places we’ve traveled/would like to travel… there are SO many things to talk about other than what junior pooped in his diaper!
I’m much like you, Mrs. Ogre, I try to find out early on if they’re of a similar mindset to me. I normally lay down that I’m CF within a few times of meeting people, and many naturally follow on with their responses. Sure, you’ll get questioned a bit when you start to pull away if they’ve declared that they want kids, but I’d prefer that to getting to know someone well and then them disappearing off the radar completely.
I’ve experienced a lot of friendship loss in life, through serious long-term illness (it’s amazing just how “busy” people become when you’re in hospital and no-one has visited you for weeks!), but I find this kind of friendship loss a bit more difficult to fathom. Previously people were, I think, scared of me being ill, but now I get the impression that they’re threatened by my entirely benign declaration of being Childfree!
One of my best friends is a woman who’s 14 years my senior – she and her husband have always been like surrogate older siblings/stand in parents for me (they were the ones I went to for relationship advice, spent holidays/birthdays with, and they were there for every grade school play/pageant/milestone), and they got pregnant when I was in my early twenties. I was definitely afraid that once they had kids (and they had twins!) I was suddenly not going to be as important to them – and to a degree, this was the case. Their twins were premies and required a lot of care & attention. Phone calls were less frequent, and when I came to visit, a lot of the times the kids came with us out for coffee or meals, which were correspondingly shorter and more harried. It was eerily like being an older kid dealing with the sudden competition of a younger sibling.
BUT – not once did they ever make me feel as if I was less important to them once they became parents. If the kids had to come out with us or they didn’t have as much time to spend with me as they’d expected, they always let me know and asked if I was comfortable with the situation and never made me feel guilty if I wasn’t. If the kids kicked up in public, they apologized and we cut the outing short and rescheduled. Conversations did not become child-centric – even though I would ask about the kids and they’d give me updates, they would always ask how I was doing and continue to have interesting discussions about art/politics/movies/whatever and in fact, often asked me to talk about those things because they knew they didn’t have as much time to keep up on current events/culture as they did before they had kids and there was only so much they could get from watching the Daily Show (usually running a couple of days behind).
If I asked them how it was being parents, they were honest with me about both loving their kids and being frustrated by parenthood, because no matter how much they’d prepared for it and wanted it, there were just some aspects that could be overwhelming, and they wanted me to know exactly what the score was for them so that when it came to making my own decision about whether or not to have kids, I was going to have ALL the information, and not just the “oh you’ll love it when they’re yours/kids are soooo worth it” platitudes. Which is why I didn’t mind so much hanging out with them if the kids were along – I WANTED to see what it was like and what they were like as parents, and since it matched up with what they were telling me (no hypocrisy here, thankfully), I believed they were being sincere. And now that their kids are hitting double-digits, we’re getting back to hanging out more often sans kids, and I’m definitely enjoying being the “crazy cool aunt” who is quite probably going to take on a similar role with those two girls as their mother took on with me when I was their age. Although that also means she’ll probably foist them off on me for the “sex, drugs, and rock & roll” speech she gave me when I was a teen. Crap.
And now that more and more of my friends my age are starting to have kids, I’m hoping that I’ll be just as lucky with them as with my older friends. Even though I will most likely not have kids of my own, I’m not going to resent them for making a choice I don’t find appealing for myself, so long as they don’t swallow the cult of sanctimonious parents kool-aid. I’ve seen first-hand that it’s possible to be a good parent and still maintain solid friendships, and how parenthood can become an additional layer to who you are without becoming ALL that you are, so I’m not going to accept any of the “but you don’t get how hard it is because you don’t have any kids, they’re my whole life!!” excuses. I’m perfectly happy to help if asked and to make accommodations for “sick kids & need to reschedule/not being able to find a baby-sitter do I mind if the kid is with us when we get coffee?” situations as long as they don’t become the norm. Giving slack in friendships is a 2-way street and all too often the burden can unfairly fall on the friends w/o kids, in which case I’d say the friendship is no longer worth maintaining (and maybe you never really were that good of friends to begin with). And if any of those friends start using their new status as parents to badger me into making a similar decision or denigrate me as a 2nd class citizen, forget it!
Sadly, I’m sure there will be some friendships that won’t be able to extend past the parent/not a parent breech, but I’m hopeful that the amount of thought, preparation and consideration that many of my friends have put into their decisions to become parents bode well for how they will handle the transition and that while our friendships will have to change as well, change won’t necessarily = end.
Apologies for the long post, but this topic in particular has become really important to me as of late, what with no less than 5 friends having their first kids this year.
These comments are making me sad–but it’s good to know what’s coming. I’m 30 and CF, and terrified of losing my dearest friends to parenthood (although it hopefully won’t be for another 2 years or so ’til my friends start to reproduce). There’s at least a few among my circle of close-knit friends who are on the fence, which gives me hope. But yeah, really not looking forward to losing some of my best friends to the abyss. I guess that’s what hobbies are for–my husband and I can get involved in interests that might introduce us to other childfree couples. I’m really excited about looking into MeetUp.com and finding CF gatherings that way, too.
I just wish I could keep things as they are forever, but I grudgingly concede that some of my friends think their lives will not be “complete” until they create a few replicas of themselves, so the times they are a’changing. I just wish they could see the awesomeness of a CF lifestyle. Oh well, they’ll be sick with envy in a number of years when they see what my choices bring me (sounds smug as hell, probably because it is! haha!).
Many of mine have changed but it depends on the person, how they are as a parent. Some of my friends made it their entire life and became really obnoxious. I figure these things just happen because that’s what happened, I move on.
The friend I lost and spoke of in the last topic here became my friend as she was a new mom. I did not know I was CF at the time but was far from baby-fever and she was a new mom in distress with a 2 week-old infant. Honestly I think she needed me physically – to help her with her baby, to help her work around her home, etc and I needed her emotionally as a friend. We each got what we needed from eachother and as I came to know her, it became clear that this woman was CF at heart. She had not wanted a baby but after being married and dogged about it by her then husband for 7 years, she gave in. 7 months into her pregnancy that husband left her. I think the reason our relationship worked so well in the beginning was not only that I was there for her in every way from child-care to taking her and her very old dog to the vet to be put down (cried so hard and I didn’t even really know the dog!) but because she was of a CF mindset (except having a child) she didn’t talk incessantly about her baby, she didn’t let her baby stop her from doing things, she had other interests other than staying at home with the child every chance she got. Ultimately though I think that’s the reason for the end of our relationship. The fact that she never wanted that child and I was very near the epitome of what she had been a decade earlier made her sad or jealous…or both I’m not sure. Maybe I had made myself TOO available for her, had her relying of me too much, but when I started to pull away to have time for myself and my then boyfriend now fiancee, she was hurt. Which led to snide comments, which led to me avoiding her even more which continued the circle until we no longer had anything in common anymore. There also came a point and maybe it was because her daughter was older (6years old) and more interesting to her or needed more attention but she had changed to where spoiling her daughter was the highlight of her work-week! We’re talking about a 5 year old picking out her own Vera Bradley luggage to take on a vacation to Austrailia…firstly Vera Bradley? Really? And secondly what 5 year-old is really going to remember or enjoy a trip like that? I went to Disney World when I was 5 and all I remember is being terrified of Mickey Mouse. Anyway, it’s sad for me as I don’t keep many friends to lose such a close one. On the other hand, I do have a good friend who is 22 years older than I and since her kids are all grown up she’s well past that stage of being completely tied to them all the time. My fiancee also just introduced me to a couple at his work who are our age and childfree- and fun to be around! Go figure! Bittersweet but a learning experience.
With very few exceptions (and I still haven’t met any of them in person), I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that trying to have a true friendship with a FEMALE who has children is an exercise in futility. Men with children are sometimes different. They still manage to go on camping trips, golfing, shooting pool at the pub after work once a week………in other words, the manage to still have a life outside of just being someone’s father. Women on the other hand are just too quick to turn every ounce of themselves over to parenthood and seem to see this as a positive thing. However, the moms I know resent their husbands for going out and doing their thing while they stay home taking care of the children even though they reject offers from grandparents and others to keep the kids so they can have some ‘me’ or ‘we’ time,too. I don’t know why I should care if they stay home, even when they do show up they don’t have jack shit of interest to talk about anyway.
I don’t have much experience of this with my peers, thank god, although there are a few exceptions. I know some people from where I come from who’ve had children in their teens. Culturally, I’m sure the differences between the lower middle classes and the lower classes would make friendships difficult anyway, but what really bugs me is that they’re so smug and sanctimonious. No one can criticise them because they have a baby! And that makes them special! And no one can even suggest that it might have been better for them to finish their education or learn a trade first, and maybe make something safe for them financially! That’s bigotry! The time for babies is now now now! Not doing so is unnatural! They can always have a career later after they’ve raised their babies! On welfare! In poverty!
Sorry, but I just can’t get that mentality. And the sanctimonious nature, from what I’ve heard and read, doesn’t get any better as a whole. It’s not like age or money would stop them. Of course there are exceptions. I don’t know how my friendships will fare if they choose to have children.
A lot of my friends are teachers like me (and a surprising amount have no children, imagine that?) and while we do tend to talk about our students, those among them with children rarely seem to talk about them. I have to say that I’ve been lucky that most of our friends have been reasonable, and also seem to have held on to some balance in their lives. Perhaps it has a lot to do with the type of people they were before they had children, and perhaps for me it has to do with the fact that I don’t mind being around kids as long as they go home at the end of it all, much like at work.
One thing I was surprised to find regarding friendship and pregnancy/parenting—with the advent and increasing popularity of IVF, it seems you can be surprised by the pregnancy announcement of a friend right up until they hit 50. When I turned 40, I was sure that I had seen the last of baby shower invitations from my older friends, but not so! Just when you think you’ve reached the safe zone as far as adjusting to a change in a friend’s family
size and possible changes to your friendship as a result, voila–meet junior. And, honestly, ladies isn’t it a bit gauche to be having a baby shower when you and your husband can well afford to trick out the nursery since you’ve been working for over twenty years?
With very few exceptions (and I still haven’t met any of them in person), I’ve pretty much come to the conclusion that trying to have a true friendship with a FEMALE who has children is an exercise in futility.
Reading all of your replies makes me think:
a) I must be the only person on earth with normal female friends who are parents.
b) That’s terrible.
Last week we went to visit another couple with a new baby. I like babies in small doses. It was a dream evening: we visited with the baby, she ate and went to bed. We proceeded to have a very nice evening of adult conversation both husband and wife. But again, like my other friend who’s normal, they elected to have children a bit later in life and they were already interesting and lively people before they decided to reproduce.
Yeah, I know the women that you are talking about — I know some, too — but there are others out there but they are so few and far between it makes a lot more sense to cultivate friendships with other CF people.
My friendship changed when my best friend had her first daughter. Understandably, there is no more time to just waste with me. Of course, I would never demand such a thing. But have my boyfriend (who is most certainly childfree as well, to a degree that almost isn’t sane lol) and we’re perfect for each other.
My best friend is now pregnant with her second child and her husband has a child from a previous relationship. Needless to say, she’s ears deep in children rearing and we haven’t seen each other in months now. Hell, not even a call. I understand that she’s extremely busy and she wanted children badly… now that she has it, I’m sure as hell not going to raise a fuss. More power to her. =D