Child free group of friends. One friend has had a baby

[Shebaguinea]

I'm in a group of about 10 friends in our 40s. Always been child free. Lots of conversations about not wanting children. Several friends do not enjoy being around kids at all. Id prefer to not be around kids, but will phone it in and do my best to try to help out friend.

1 friend unexpectedly found herself pregnant after a short relationship and now has a small baby.

Things are now becoming difficult socially. Friend often requests help/babysitting/people to go to child friendly events and soft play etc. I do not babysit. Never changed a nappy, never wanted a child etc. but I've cleaned her house, helped with laundry, batch cooked for her etc.

She now wants more help and has suggested a babysitting rota so she gets a night off a fortnight. None of us want to do this. I've always helped with cooking and cleaning and have done lots of lifts for hospital and dr appointments...but I most definitely do not want to help with childcare. None of us do.

Are we awful people? Friend seems to want us to step in as family/other parent and help her. I'm happy to assist with other things but honestly I don't want to.

'I think there’s a 21st century myth that friends are your family-by-choice: that friends are there forever and will do anything for you. It comes from tv sitcoms but it is a myth'

Very well said. It's normal for friendships to change as lives change, and this is a hell of a change for a group of childfree women!

Agree in spades. It's also everything to do with people thinking the main role of the childfree in society is to support those who have chosen to procreate.

I have my own DS and when he was about 12 a friend had a baby. She went for a bath and I offered to have the baby (with my DS and her DC) for a couple hours, get the baby fed, changed etc.

With my years of experience of raising my DS on my own and the two DCs help, my god what a nightmare! She came back down to mess and the resulting laundry everywhere. You rapidly forget how hard it is to care for a small baby!

She wants a rota so she can date. You cannot commit to a rota. You are child free by choice that doesn't mean you have free time to look after a baby! She has to do it. It is very hard but still.

Yes, she did.

She had unprotected sex on a one night stand or at least casual basis-and chose to continue the pregnant. Try reading yourself.

Of course she had a baby by choice. Long may we continue to have that (looking at you USA).

To turn it round, if I was the only CF person left in a group that had bonded over wanting to have children I couldn't expect my friends to only meet me at CF venues. I couldn't insist on holidays without kids, or evening meet ups, or baby sitting rotas so my friends could meet me without children. In that situation I might have to make some new friends. So I suppose it works the other way round!

Did you read the OPs posts? She’s not losing any friends because she has a baby, she’s losing her friends because she’s a cheeky fucker and she is the only one behaving like a child, and a very spoilt one at that. She hasn’t been completely rejected at all, she’s been helped and supported and compromises have been made for her but none were good enough, she wants the whole group to only meet up during the day at child friendly places and cancel their holiday because she can’t go. I already feel sorry for the mum friends you think she should find.

Shit friends who help her with deep cleaning her home, lifts to doctor appointments, batch cooking for freezer meals. Oh yeah, they're shit friends because they don't want to babysit. Honestly some people....

I’m child free by choice but have a lot of experience in raising them (hence not having the energy or desire to have my own). They are bloody exhausting and utterly terrifying until you get used to them. You can’t take your eyes off them for a second, they will fight sleep with every fibre of their being if something outside of the norm is happening and Usain Bolt himself would struggle to catch a toddler who either has something in his mouth or who has realised that you’ve left the stair gate open.

Leaving aside the issue of your friend’s outrageous expectations, unless any of your friends have got a lot of experience in caring for babies, it would be madness to expect them to care for a child they’d see, at most, once every few weeks. Very few children will relax around a complete stranger when it should be their mum changing their nappy. And how many of your friends would know whether the baby is crying because it’s hungry, wet, grumpy, teething etc. You’d need to build some kind of bond to be able to know that, and that’s not going to happen once a fortnight. It’s a recipe for disaster.

I actually find it a very sad group of friends. Everyone’s life choices are their own but I hope I would be there for my friends if they needed me during stressful times in their lives.
you’ve said it yourself, babies are exhausting and terrifying at first and it sounds like this poor woman has had to cope with that entirely alone. On top of that she will certainly have noticed her friend’s attitudes. She is asking for one day every two weeks, there are 10 friends. At the very most she’s asking each friend to babysit 3 times a year to help her through this emotional, exhausting time when she has nobody else. I wouldn’t call them friends!

I think a PP hit the nail on the head when she said some people think friendships are akin to family when they just aren’t.

No way I’d be committing to a babysitting rota. If she wants a regular babysitter then she needs to pay for one or ask her actual family members.

When DD was a tiny baby and not crawling yet, I put her down on the bed for a half minute while I grabbed some wipes from the bedside table. She chose that minute to figure out how to crawl,and crawled off the bed. Rushed to A and E. Luckily, she was fine. Never left her on the bed again.

But just shows how even experienced people can make mistakes with babies. That's why I don't want to look after anyone else's.

Yes they are shit friends. She hasn’t asked for the things you’ve listed. She has no other support, no time to herself and she is asking for her friends to babysit on a maximum of 3 days a year each so she can focus on herself for a short time. Ffs even if they offer to start the rota when the baby is in a reasonable routine with sleep, it would give her something to look forward to and they’d barely have to do anything.

She has money to hire a paid babysitter or nanny. Did you not read that?

You would change your entire lifestyle, stop going to restaurants, pubs, wine bars, the cinema, theatre etc, cancel your holiday and not book any more and babysit every fortnight?

@Divorcednursemummy a) she's not poor she can afford to buy in help, b) she made a deliberate choice to have the baby alone and not to involve the father, c) OP has helped a LOT with household chores and d) as it's a child-free group presumably she knew full well that the friends weren't terribly interested in children.

Her position may have changed, but theirs hasn't. They don't want to be involved with babies.

She’s asked them to cancel a holiday because she now can’t go. She wants them to stop meeting up if she and her baby cannot go. They are not shit friends. She’s had more help than most get from their own family! Some people don’t even get that level of help from their husbands if you read a couple of other threads running at the moment. Babysitting when the baby is in a routine isn’t good enough either op has offered to babysit when the baby sleeps more and that’s unacceptable to the friend.

At least it took longer than usual for this post to show up. Maybe use your imagination a bit; you might 'get it'.

You know babies are people don't you? They are literally just people. Yes, completely helpless little people who only sleep in two hour blocks, require their meals to be weighed, measured and served at the perfect temperature and who expect you to clean up their poo (and that’s assuming you get an easy one!)

Also my group of friends are childfree and don't know any babies. But when my baby was born they treated him like one of the gang and they act like they like him at least. Oh do give over! Yes, they probably do like him and they might even be happy to socialise in child friendly places so you can bring him with you. But how much are you actually asking them to do? You don’t even ask them to go to soft play with you! Try asking them to come and scrub your house from top to bottom so you can sit with him and watch Cocomelon. How many of them grab the changing bag when he’s got a stinky bum? How many have actually volunteered to babysit so you can sod off out for the evening? Anyone can coo over a cute baby but there’s a lot more being asked of the OP and her cf friends.

She should get a live in nanny. Why try and force others to do the parenting role they've happily and purposefully opted OUT of?

They are not shit friends, they are friends not interested in children. She has money, so she can pay.

Besides, objecting to the group going on holiday because she can longer go is what's shit. And incredibly entitled. She needs to own her choices and find (additional) friends, who are in similar circumstances to her.

Yet, she never stopped to say no, don't do any of the cooking, cleaning, or dropping me off! I assume, also, that she did ask for lifts or at the least didn't say no, it's alright I can take myself or get a taxi, it's fine, did she?

She can afford childcare. She just wants to use her friends as free childcare so she can get ratted once a fortnight.

That's exactly what she signed up for when she chose to continue the pregnancy. She's not running to the father is she and banging down his door, you know, the person who is 50% responsible for the child's existence-and demanding he takes HIS child once a fortnight, is she?

No, she's asking for it from friends who have been very clear that they don't want children of their own and enjoy doing things that don't involve or cater to children-who also had zero say or responsibility in creating said child. Do you seriously think that's reasonable? Really?

They didn't choose for her to have this child. Now, she wants to burden them with a choice she made because she doesn't want to put her hand in her own pocket to pay for this childcare. I get that she needs time to herself-don't all parents-but you get that by either paying for it. Not demanding it off people who don't want to do it who have no responsibility for the choice she made.

Also, what are they getting in return for all this childcare and help? She's expecting them to entirely change every social outing to suit her new life. She's expecting them to babysit once a fortnight so she can go out and continue her pre-baby life. So, what's she doing in return? Anything? Or are friendships are one-way street where the entitled parent takes, takes and takes some more and gives nothing back?

OP has supported her in the ways that has probably been very beneficial to her friend-after all-she never turned it down (cheeky fucks never do) and ways that she feels comfortable doing-but that's not enough because the friend can't go out on dates and do what she wants anymore (even though she can she just needs to pay a professional like everyone else).

Also, what's the likelihood of all 10 friends agreeing to this rota? Pretty low. So, someone is going to be doing more than 3 times a year, aren't they? Also, it's pretty likely that in this rota, there'll come a time when one of them can't make their "agreed" turn, and someone else has to cover. Taking more than their alleged "share."

If they agreed to this set-up, it'd only be a matter of time before the fortnight became weekly. Then, it'd be "Oh, OP, could you just pick up my DS from nursery, I'm busy!" and so on and so forth the cheeky fuckery continues.

So, maybe instead of thinking that all of her friends, who had no input in this choice of hers, should bend over backwards for her, you should be saying, "You know what-that baby didn't magically appear out of thin air, I'm sure someone else is 50% responsible for it-maybe HE should be forced to take care of it, too!"

But, I forget, OP and her friends are women, child-free women at that, and women are carers, first and foremost and if you don't have children of your own, your time is everyone else's to do what they want with it.

I know exactly how lonely being a parent is. Being a single mum to young children knowing your group of friends is out having fun. It's very depressing. However; she decided to continue with her pregnancy and have a child knowing she would do it alone.
I feel that although a rota sounds a bit much; it wouldn't hurt to help her out occasionally with the baby. Let's face it, if it was you, how would you feel. Sitting round her house once a month after the baby has gone to bed, with a cuppa and some chocolate wouldn't hurt. If she was a true friend, then you'd want to help her. Whilst your under zero obligation - treat people how you would want to be treated.
I had friends who became young parents and the amount of times I'd go around and sit with them, stay over to have takeaway and a bottle of wine, I've lost count. I did it for my friends. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Ask Mr Tumble to explain it to you 🙄

But they have gone to her house. They have helped her. It’s still not enough for the friend, she wants them to cancel their holiday and not meet up if her and her baby can’t go. If they also give in to babysitting what will the next request be.