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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Friendships suffer after kids

28 replies

Rollon2012 · 28/10/2011 23:22

this was on the Wright Stuff and I do agree in some cases,

that having children can test friendships, i.e people criticising you , telling how/what you should be doing.

I've noticed its generally people who don't have kids who do this too Hmm

anyone else experienced this??

OP posts:
OnlyWantsOne · 28/10/2011 23:22

Yes

Some other people's parenting styles may be Wildly different from yours regardless of. Your existing friendship

Why is this in AIBU

MrsBradleyJames · 28/10/2011 23:37

I totally agree it can. In lots of ways; one friend of a friend was really shunned from their friendship group because she had a child whose behaviour was appalling and she was so clueless and rubbish at dealing with him that people found it easier just not to see her.
We stopped seeing a friend who used to wallop her kids as I did not want my DS seeing it. And I didn't want to see it either, tbh.
Also, in our friendship group we have all had kids at different times starting with my DS 9 years ago, so just when one couple is feeling a bit free-er and able to go out more, the other couples have just had a new baby, or twins, or can't get babysitters, and you can't go round there because you can't get babysitters or your child just will not sleep if you take them with you..........no wonder it gets harder after kids!!!!!

Original poster
Rollon2012 · 28/10/2011 23:43

Argh I know I invite my mates round , but sometimes I spend half the night upstairs getting dc to sleep. nightmare.

I had one mate tell me to do controlled crying at 7 months old , otherwise 'he'll never learn' childless friend aswell , exsqueeze me ! :O

(not slagging of people who do CC but imo 7mths is far too young)

OP posts:
Original poster
Rollon2012 · 28/10/2011 23:52

im rooting my brain for more.

OP posts:
MrsBradleyJames · 28/10/2011 23:52

Same with us, Rollon - DS just wouldn't sleep away from home as a baby/toddler. And of course everyone (with or without kids) is an expert - "oh he can't sleep away from home? Well you should have done this or that or you should make sure he can" Oh, REALLY? thanks for that wonderful advice..........grrrrr. People with kids can be as bad as those without - just because THEIR child will sleep even if plonked on the kitchen worktop, doesn't mean yours will..........

am finding it much easier however now that DS is older, if he sleeps over with cousin or friend of the same age as him, they have no intention of sleeping but can stay up talking while we chat and drink the odd Wine downstairs.....!!!

slavetofilofax · 29/10/2011 00:00

Yes! I feel quite lucky that my two closest friends didn't have children when I had my forst 11 years ago. We did drift apart a bit, but when we did see eachother it was made easier because my children were the only ones to consider. Thankfully, as they are very good friends, we drifted back again.

One of those friends is not pg with her first, and I am loving being much more involved in her pregnancy that I would have expected her to be in mine when she was still at uni. The other is going to remain childless, and she is finding it hard now that lots of her friends have young children. She is grateful that I had mine when I was younger, because they are old enough to be left with their Dad easily so that we can have child free time. But she finds it hard because she can't truly understand the demands of young children, as much as she tries to, but she ends up feeling like she always does the running around or travelling or accomodating other people because of their children.

MrsBradleyJames · 29/10/2011 00:03

I've recently got back in touch with a school friend who has older teenagers - and I can tell that she has little tolerance/interest in the ups and downs of life with a 9 year old. She's been there and done that and had enough!!! I end up never talking about DS because I feel so conscious that she's not interested. Seems there's never a happy medium - the friends with kids DS's age have also gone on to have younger ones so they are the friends who are interested and are going through the same stuff at the same time, but it's hard to get any time together!!!

Original poster
Rollon2012 · 29/10/2011 00:12

Thats bad mrsbradley you'd expect someone whos been there to have some empathy.

OP posts:
Original poster
Rollon2012 · 29/10/2011 00:16

I noticed when my ds got around 19/20/21 months people suddenly started telling me to hit/slap him when he was being naughty/hyper really upset me tbh,

OP posts:
MrsBradleyJames · 29/10/2011 00:16

I think that's one of the main reasons that friendships do become harder though Rollon - everyone's an expert, everyone's done things differently to you, and everyone's at a different stage with their kids or life. Though having said that I try to be a bloody fantastic friend, and show sympathy and understanding even when my living room is being completely ghostbusters style slimed by toddlers of friends!!!!

Original poster
Rollon2012 · 29/10/2011 00:20

hmmm yeah I'd have to be hard pushed to 'criticise' in a blatant way now having experienced it myself, it costs nothing to be diplomatic.

alot of older people will often say 'have you tried?this always worked with mine' i welcome that more than 'well if you did this'

I know myself too childless people are more judgemental generally too, I think reality tv has alot to answer for its surprising how many people think a few episodes of SN means expert level.

OP posts:
cat64 · 29/10/2011 00:31

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

mumofthreekids · 29/10/2011 00:44

A very close friend of ours (best man at our wedding, godparent to DS1) got married a few years after us, and started having kids a few years later too. When we had kids and they didn't we really didn't want this come between us, so we made a huge effort to stay close, eg I attended hen night in Bath even though I was BF 8-week DD at the time, we both went to their wedding (kids not invited) and got my parents to come and stay in the hotel too so I could pop out to BF, we've been on holiday with them and had to manage our children to fit in with a childless couple (I appreciate this took some compromise from them too).

Now they have kids and have basically turned into hermits! V difficult to arrange to meet up, all has to fit around their children's nap times etc. It's so irritating that now we finally have this in common again, we are actually finding it HARDER to stay close than before they had kids!!!

Rant rant

Original poster
Rollon2012 · 29/10/2011 10:21

Thats bad mum of three, I dont often get comments but I do sometimes feel like I am being judged. iyswim he is quite hyper.

yeah I'm the only one out of my group to have kids, and sometimes it hurt when I'm not asked to certain things, I get why I wasnt asked but its still :(

OP posts:
pissedrightoff · 29/10/2011 10:40

I must inform you first that I don't drive otherwise this won't make sense.

Childless friend was constantly at me to leave DD to cry, telling me how good her friends twins were as they were in hospital for the first few months of their lives and were hardly ever picked up. She is always making little comments like 'Oh I wouldn't do this/that/the other' , 'Oh look at the mess she is making'

Last week she said 'Oh you are far too soft on her, I would be much stricter, give her a smack'

My reply: I don't tell you how to drive your car do I?
Her:You don't have a car
Me: Exactly.

upahill · 29/10/2011 10:46

Hmm not sure about this.
Most of my friends are from 20+ years ago.
My eldest is 15 so friends have been round longer and they are still friends without any problem.
If anything it is my work that comes in the way of meeting up as much as I would like because I work anti social hours.
I saw more of them when the boys were smaller.

I didn't feel judged and I was more than happy to keep 'baby talk ' to a minimum.

Hardgoing · 29/10/2011 10:49

I think friendships suffer a bit after children for several reasons:

  1. You are very tired in the evenings, and go to bed earlier/have less time for chatting on the phone
  2. Babysitting/going out can be problematic/expensive
  3. If you have friends with children, co-ordinating them all to get together if you live at opposite ends of the country is a nightmare
  4. If they haven't got children, they can give you bonkers well-meaning advice, although at least childless friends usually are happy to come to you and stare open-mouthed at the chaos of your life and feed you wine and run away again
  5. You may have serious parenting differences with close friends so you end up not being able to discuss your children almost at all

Despite this, keeping my good friends is really important to me. I do still call my good friends regularly, even if it is more once a month (or less) rather than once a week, and in holidays, go on little trips to see them (one or two each time). Increasingly I see that having good friends is not just about enjoying yourself and having a laugh, but hanging out with people who really know you, and have followed the ups and downs in some cases over the last 25 years.

I don't feel obliged to hang out with other mums, though. I'd rather just be friends with people who are on the same wavelength as me, some do have children, some don't.

I feel sad for a couple of my friends who dropped a lot of their friends or didn't make much time for them when the children were little. It's understandable, but now they are hitting the hard times in life (bereavement, disability etc) and a lot of it is made worse by feeling lonely/like no-one gets them.

Having said all that,

Original poster
Rollon2012 · 29/10/2011 10:50

haha thats good pissed right off i may store that in the archive ;)

OP posts:
LisasCat · 29/10/2011 10:50

I have another take on this, which I hope you won't mind me sharing.

My friend was killed yesterday when she was knocked off her bike. I am completely crushed, especially as I had missed the opportunity to see her a few months ago, because I was 8 months pregnant, DD1 was getting ready to start school, and life was just too busy. I figured I'd have plenty of time to see her once things calmed down a bit, and now I've lost that chance.

So I realise that for the past few years I've been neglecting my friends because I was so caught up with the chaos of small children. And now I know I have to make more effort not to use my children as an excuse. Yes, they change us, and yes our priorities, in fact our whole daily existence changes to accommodate our children. But we mustn't lose sight of everything else that's important outside of them.

This isn't an issue of clashes over child-raising methods, so not strictly what you're talking about. This is simply a matter of time. The way we organise our lives changes with children, but sometimes the cost of those changes can be too high, and we have to reel it in a bit.

BalloonSlayer · 29/10/2011 10:53

I get peed off remembering the years I spent fussing round friends' and sisters' DCs, arranging child-friendly outings that suited them, driving miles to Christenings, buying expensive presents, then when I started having children I got very little of the same attention for my DCs.

My sister did the massive gasp the other week when it looked as if one drip of clear juice might be going to land on her sofa. God, like her DD never spilt anything in my house!

Another friend longed for a baby for years and was quite down about her childlessness. She nevertheless made a big fuss of a mutual friend's DCs, going up to stay, driving 2 hours for each Christening. Eventually she had a child of her own! When it was her Christening the mutual friend sent an email copying us all saying she was not sure she'd be able to come, she'd only be able to if she could get someone to look after the new dog. She did come in the end but bloody hell I was furious on Other Friend's behalf. Mutual friend is godmother to one of our older DCs but didn't come to our youngest's christening because one of her DCs had rugby practice. Confused

So that's why my friendships have suffered!

pissedrightoff · 29/10/2011 10:56

Lisascat Am so sorry for your loss.

Original poster
Rollon2012 · 29/10/2011 10:59

sorry for your loss LisaCat

OP posts:
Hardgoing · 29/10/2011 11:07

Lisacat I am also really sorry to hear this, you must feel so sad, I would be devastated in that situation. As you say, it's easy to think everything will stay the same but it doesn't, however, those early years with children are very busy and you musn't feel too badly for doing what you have to do to get through (and this naturally means you have less leisure time). I think I was trying to point out that often men are very good at claiming their leisure time in the family distribution and women are quite poor at this, so their friendships often suffer as a result long after those early years.

LisasCat · 29/10/2011 11:42

Hardgoing I completely agree. I am far more likely to sacrifice my social life for what I percieve to be the immediate needs of my children. DP makes more effort to see his friends, and now I see that he is actually the more sensible one for recognising that our daughters won't fall apart at the seams if they have a bit of a cry about being separated from me for an evening, or if they have to listen to boring adult conversation for an hour.

I tend to even neglect phonecalls to friends, always seeing the potential pitfalls... one of the children will need supervision while I'm distracted; the phone call will go on too long and run into when I should be making tea; the other person who I'm calling will also be distracted by her children and will resent me for intruding on her family time...on and on, just numerous reasons why everything needs to be put on hold for my family.

But I'll be taking my lead from DP from now on. And I think he will fully support this, as it's what he's been telling me all along. Just leave the children with him and go to see my friends. Never mind if DD2 cries all evening because she wants mummy and refuses to drink from a bottle. He's happy to put up with her crying if I have a good time from it. It's just me who refuses, because I don't think my friends are as important as being there whenever the DDs want me. But that's wrong. It's fine to put DCs health and safety above friendships, but not when I'm prioritising their wants rather than their needs.

LisasCat · 29/10/2011 11:46

I guess what I'm saying in a waffley kind of way is that, yes, friendships are tested by children, but sometimes we, the mothers, let it be that way more than is strictly necessary, and it's only something as tragic as losing the friend that makes us realise we let it happen. I always swore children wouldn't change me (don't we all!), and of course I quickly grew up and realised that you simply have to change when children come into your life. But you also have to not let the change go too far.