to find it increasingly depressing how having children (or not) still can really divide women and end friendships and to wonder how the rest of you deal with this?

[quesadilla]

I always really wanted not to be the kind of person who only had "mummy" friends -- it was one of the reasons I was never sure if I wanted kids until I had dd. When I was pregnant and when DD was very little I went of my way to avoid NCT-ish friendship groups in order not to restrict myself only to the company of other mums of young babies. Not that there's anything wrong with it, I just didn't want to "lose" the old me and become a baby bore, IYSWIM.
Most of my long-term friends now have children and we all suffer from the usual difficulties of keeping in touch with each other that small kids/jobs impose on lives.
Among those who haven't, most are OK with the fact that children form a major part of your life. But I have one friend, childless, who more or less demands that I not refer to my child in front of her unless its a passing or incidental reference (i.e. I have to pick her up after work tonight, type reference). She gets very uptight if the conversation drifts to children for more than a minute or so and complains. Don't get me wrong, I totally understand that other people's children are of limited interest and particularly if you don't have kids yourself, and I don't want to talk about DD's potty training progress when I'm out with the girls. But I also don't realy want to be forced into a situation where the most important person in my life is ruled totally off conversational limits, and any decision to put her needs over friend's needs is treated with anger and scorn. (FYI just as context, childless friend is largely childless by choice, so its not like she's had a heartbreaking history of failure to conceive or anything.)
Childless friend's attitude towards her friend's children has become harder and harder to deal with: there have been a couple of incidents in the past few months where I think her behaviour has been unreasonable. I've tried to be accomodating but have got to the point where I really don't know if I can sustain the friendship any more, we've sort of drifted apart and it makes me feel very sad. At the same time, while I still crave adult and interesting company, I really want a local friendship group where I can actually share parenting ideas/discussions etc. I would really like to think that I can maintain a balance between having friends who really have nothing to do with my family life and being a mum and other friends who are able to share in the experience of being a parent, but it just seems to be bloody hard work.
Do people have to accept that there's a fundamental divide between parents and non-parents which is hard to bridge until kids grow up? Or is it just that I've got the wrong kind of childless friends?

It's the title of the fucking thread!

Waaah waaah, women are shit. Waaah, I have changed my opinion about the way that they're shit and now I'm pissed off that my friend still thinks what I used to think.

"Do people have to accept that there's a fundamental divide between parents and non-parents which is hard to bridge until kids grow up? Or is it just that I've got the wrong kind of childless friends?"

WTAF?

Unless you are the one dividing the world into "adult and interesting" and people who you can discuss parenting with, this really isn't an issue.

Without actually knowing this woman, it strikes me that if she finds the topic of children unbearable to discuss, then either (a) she considers them completely uninteresting and has nothing to offer any conversation, which is honest but rude, or (b) she finds the whole topic of motherhood distressing, for whatever reason. If it's (a) then your friendship will probably fizzle out anyway as your lives diverge; if it's (b) and she really is a friend, then maybe you could try to cut her some slack, or attempt to find out what the problem is. It's one thing to smile through a conversation about skiing holidays, but if it's a topic that's actually upsetting you, it's rather different. What did you talk about before?

You don't seem to like her very much, though, so I can't imagine that letting the friendship die away will be much of a loss. At the moment, she's refusing to talk about children for no good reason, but equally, you're making the discussing of your child the terms on which you're prepared to continue the friendship. Can't you at least find out why, before you abandon it altogether?

There is no fundamental divide. I don't have children, many of my good friends do, I ask them all the time about their kids, we talk about their kids, but we also talk about many other more interesting things. Your friend just sounds a bit rude. Maybe she has some deep seated issues about children or motherhood? Grasping at straws.

Some people will bang on about themselves whether or not they are parents (their job,their weight, their DP, their car, bla bla bla). Your children are part of your life and really shouldn't be a banned topic. I dislike the idea that on an evening out I would be expected to not talk about my children. They're not some annoying, dull part of my life that I don't want to talk or think about.
This "friend" is being unreasonable and unkind.

Is it possible that she so desperately wanted to be a mother that she finds the subject of children unbearable to talk about?
I've been TTC unsuccessfully for almost 3 years and I know how difficult I find such conversations. It is, irrational as it at seem, like the universe is waving want you can't have in your face.

I think you need an honest conversation with her and to find a happy medium. She may feel desperately sad that your friendship has changed but be unable to communicate it and trying rather clumsily to put it back on its old footing. I think also it might be worth really finding out through asking her if she is really childless through choice. whether someone is childless through infertility or not finding the right person in time it can be the most heartbreaking thing in the world. Although I now have a dc when my bf first told me she was pregnant I couldn't cope with speaking to her for 4 months as my longer relationship seemed not to be on track for children. The day I got a text saying she had had dc2 I was at the recurrent mc clinic. You slowly see friends join the 'mum' club and feel more and more alone. It is so painful. That same friend was there for me every step of the way after I told her why I had avoided her.
There is no reason why being a mum should childless friend should not have a friendship there is loads of common ground. I enjoy my nct friends for the mum chat but also as time goes on finding out more about them and building new fully rounded friendships.

As Frankelly says, it's entirely possible that this friend has a particular painful reason for not wanting to talk about kids, which I completely understand (though in OP it does say 'childless by choice' which no-one can know truly but lady in question.) Yet, friend would rather talk about her work, a subject she has deemed more 'interesting' that OP's family life. That's a bit insulting so I also see OP's point of view. I don't have DC, but when I'm with friends who do, the conversation naturally drifts towards their kids and I will happily listen and be interested in what they have to say, even if at times I zone out when they're discussing colic remedies or poo consistency! If everyone but me in the room has a child, I can still contribute to the conversation with educated responses, (but I never offer unsolicited advice as I don't like receiving it!)

Some people are just not wired this way. I know a woman who raved and cooed over a friend's pregnancy (while admitting to 'not being a baby person' herself) She made all sorts of claims to spoil the baby rotten and be 'Auntie X', and yet when baby arrived she saw him 3 times (he's 1 year old) and virtually stopped contact with the new Mum. This is odd, the Mum has a new priority now but hasn't suddenly developed a completely different personality, and I assume would also be happy to discuss non-baby related things. I find OP's friend's attitude rude, you can't just gloss over such a major part of your life. It seems like friend has a selfish agenda here, and perhaps should spend more time with other childless/child free people if the topic bothers her so much.

Sorry slightly wrong end of stick re: 'Talking about work' comment. That was OP making reference to picking up DC after work, thought it was about friend. Should read more carefully! Apart from that, I still stand by the rest of what I posted.

AThing, that's not entirely the way the OP seems to have meant the phrase Do people have to accept that there's a fundamental divide between parents and non-parents which is hard to bridge until kids grow up? Or is it just that I've got the wrong kind of childless friends?.

It is not about other mums not being interesting, it is not about - as you so charmingly phrase it - people wanting to maintain their (adolescent) self-image of yourself as madly interesting and not a boring old mother. It is about how life changes when some people have children and other people don't. It's about how, occasionally, friends without children can't quite understand how limiting children can be to your life, how to can't always socialise how you used too, about how your interests in life change. Let's be honest, most new parents lose the time to take part in their previous hobbies and activities, so it's not even like they can talk about that a lot when they are out. A lot of women will work p/t or be a SAHM so they don't have as much to talk about re work. Their life naturally becomes more about their DC - and that can have a huge effect on a relationship if the other party refuses to be interested at all in children.

Exactly the same scenario can and does play out with new partners, new jobs, and new hobbies instead of children.

FYI just as context, childless friend is largely childless by choice, so its not like she's had a heartbreaking history of failure to conceive or anything.

I wouldn't bet on that... I wouldn't be at all surprised her ultra defensiveness of this kind suggest to the contrary; that she's perhaps not quite as convinced of her decision/free to make that decision as perhaps you might think.

Just because she says one thing, does not mean thats how she feels deep down.

I've drifted apart from a handful very close friends who either do not have children or whose children have grown up (I started late), and although it is a pity, I just put it down to being able to do different things, not necessarily waning fondness. Our everyday experiences simply don't cover the same territory anymore and I am helplessly out of the slipstream of where it's at. Before I became a parent, these friends and I spent our time doing very intense grown up things, lots of workshops and retreats and completely absorbing personal growthy stuff, none of which I have the time, money or inclination for these days; it's the yoga of motherhood for me now!

I have met "Child-Free By Choice" people who don't like kids and make it clear that they don't want to hear about other people's "Fuck Trophies" or "Crotch Fruit" as they so charmingly call them. But, that is a certain sub-category of self-identifying "Child-Free-By-Choice" people. Frankly, they are weird, angry cranks.

I've noticed that CFBC Angry Cranks are often big dog lovers who go on and on and on about their dogs and it's sort of funny to tell them that I actually understand how they feel. I understand it because I feel the exact same way about dogs. I can take everything they say about the evils of children and apply them to dogs. The Angry Cranks tend to find this offensive. The non-Angry ones will laugh and agree with me.

I don't really care about children. I pretty much only like my own kids. So, I enjoy hanging out with non-mums. But, my closest non-parent friends generally show a normal, friendly interest in my children because they know my children are an important part of my life. That's what normal, non-angry-crank people do.

The friend may have good reasons (eg unchosen childlessness) for being like this, but that still doesn't mean she isn't being a bitch. There are basically 2 routes to take:

• back off and accept that the friendship can only continue on a superficial level if at all
• have a frank conversation with her about this and tell her how frustrating it is and how unfair it seems that she and only she gets to set the conditions of your friendship. As it is, she presumably thinks this solves the problem and doesn't see that for you it is a big problem. You need to make that clear and then see how she wants to play it and whether she is willing to compromise or not.

Incidentally, this doesn't correlate at all neatly to whether people are parents or not, in my experience. Some of my friends who don't have or want their own kids are great with mine; some of the people I know who are parents are not keen to talk about them at all.