To think there is a divide between childless/free people and parents?

[zeezeek]

And that it is mostly perpetuated by women?
As someone who didn't have DC until I was 40, indeed spent most of my adult life without them, I have seen both sides of this. Before the DDs came along I endured a variety of comments in my 20's about when we were going to have a baby, in my 30's about how I was a career girl and then when I (miraculously considering the amount of chemo I had) got pregnant at 40 a whole raft of smug comments ranging from how I didn't know what was coming to relief that I was finally joining some kind of exclusive club.

Since having the DD my life has changed, but it is no more and no less worthy than the life I had before. I don't feel superior, I don't feel wise. I still hate and despise the idea of breastfeeding. The sleepless nights weren't great, but actually the ones I had during my PhD were much worse.

In the years before I had DC I lost a lot of female friends when they had children. It wasn't my choice. I've never been a demanding friend. They decided that I didn't fit into their lives anymore so ditched me. These days my closest friends are male (some parents, some not; some whose DW/DP I know, some I've never met). Some of the women who ditched me years ago have tried to return to my circle - seemingly with the sole intention of smugly telling me how much trouble I have ahead of me as my DDs get older.

People are childless/child free for a variety of reasons - infertility, choice, leaving it too late, not finding the right person.

It doesn't make them less of a person - in some ways they are more empathic, sympathetic and understanding. Many people can tell stories of inspirational friends, relatives, teachers who didn't have children but who inspired, loved and supported DC in their lives. Why do some women allow this divide to happen? Becoming a parent is life changing - but so are a lot of other things....eg surviving a life threatening illness or completing a physical challenge. We all contribute to society in different ways - having children is just one of them.

Sorry for the rant.

[Daisygarden]

It's hard to know if you really were ditched or if it just became impossible for the friends with DCs. Sometimes the chains are mental not physical. Sometimes you feel guilty for leaving a teething screaming DC with DH for the night. Some of my friends have been made to feel guilty by their OH and so they cancel at the drop of a hat. Some of my friends struggled with their body image and confidence after having children and I personally have cancelled a couple of events because I didn't have anything to fit my new size 14-16 body when all my pre-preg dresses were 8-10. I also felt judged by acquaintances for "letting myself go" because of the weight.

If you are genuinely good friends you still bridge the unavoidable gaps of time demands, sleep demands, career demands etc that are going on in both your lives. I have 3 DCs but thoroughly enjoy my time with my child-free friends and equally my friends with children. I enjoy times with all our children present but make plenty of opportunities for child-free events. I sometimes cannot stand talking about our children endlessly when we (friends and I) are on a night out (after the usual children news and general story swapping) so I have a stock of subject-changers ready but that's just me....

[Minshu]

I have more friends since I had my DD - most of my old friends don't have kids, and I do see them less often, but we are still friends. Some of them struggle to understand why on earth anyone would want to saddle themselves with this type of burden, but that's ok - I don't understand some of their lifestyle choices, but we do have a respect for these different ways of living.

And I also have "mum-friends", many of whom would probably have become friends if we didn't have kids of the same age in common.

All friendships evolve over time. DMIL's best friend is the woman she met in a maternity ward 49 years ago, but they rarely talk about kids these days...

[Daisygarden]

& yes to all of Pounding's post above. Money concerns etc. Feeling invisible or boring. Can relate to all of that. I still have strong friendships because I happen to love those friends, so I just made it work no matter what - I was never going to lose them - but it doesn't mean I didn't feel all those negative things at one time or another.

[zeezeek]

PiperChapstick - I had comments like that. It was very hurtful because at the time I was in my mid-20's had undergone chemo/readiotherapy and had half a leg amputated due to cancer AND then got told I would probably never have children. I was also trying desperately to forge some sort of life for myself away from being a cancer patient and that involved working fucking hard at doing a PhD. Yet there were some people, same age as me, with children who trotted out that line.

I think I am a bit bitter still about those days, even now, when I have the children, the career, the DH. I think it is the hurt that I felt then that means that I still, hopefully, have a lot of sympathy/empathy for women who don't have children for whatever reason. It is rarely black and white. In my experience few women haven't ended up in that situation/made that decision without a lot of thought, difficult decisions etc and I think that needs to be taken into consideration.

For example, a very good friend of mine would have liked children. She was never desperate for them, but when she found out she was pregnant she was happy. She went on to have a miscarriage, then another. Then her marriage started to fail and having children seemed to her to be a selfish thing to do as she knew that they would end up splitting up (he was also emotionally and then physically abusive). Now she is nearly 50 and at peace with her decision. To the outside world she is hard and tough and not keen on children. She is highly successful and has endured many comments from women in her office about how she doesn't understand because she has children. Each one sends a knife through her heart because she remembers the 2 she lost....but they don't know that.

[OliviaBenson]

Thank you for this thread op. We are child free by choice but I've been struggling recently- feel like I'm different and losing all my friends.

It's nice to know it's not the same for everyone think I just need new friends!

[SheKnowsHerNose]

I don't know anyone who would say they do feel superior or wise. More informed (through experience) about something they didn't know about before, yes. Massively changed, at least temporarily, yes. Thrown into a different category, dealing with the world in a different way and being dealt with in a different way, at least temporarily, yes.

I would say OP you come across as smug for still despising breastfeeding in a "look at me, see how I haven't changed, I'm doing parenting right by still being really cool and unchanged by it" sort of way. Am I right to think that? Or have I got that completely wrong? Is it possible that you could also be wrong when you say friends are smug?

As for "you don't know what's coming" when someone's pg - that's standard boring pg-related small talk and doesn't remotely mean someone's looking down on the previously cf status of that person. Doubtless people say the same thing to people who are about to get a puppy but it doesn't mean they look down on people who've never had one.

I think having a baby at 40 when all your friends had them earlier must be a bit irritating at times, with lots of people desperate to give advice and no sense of a shared journey of discovery and learning from each other. I can see that could be rather one-sided and irritating.

[geekymommy]

I'm afraid of boring people without children. I have a toddler and a newborn, and don't have the time or energy to do much other than take care of them. Most of what I watch on TV these days is shows for the toddler. I could talk with childless people who aren't interested in my DCs about... what, exactly?

[Mermaid36]

I have endured comments and questions about our child-free status for 14 years. Personal questions about our relationship, sex-life, money/salaries etc, including several comments over the years about how why DH and I ever got married in the first place if we weren't going to have children.

We were the first couple in our respective circles to get married and almost (bar one) the last to have children - one other couple and ourselves are currently TTC.

However, I have absolutely no regrets about not even thinking about children until now - I've done all sorts of cool and amazing things that I wouldn't have had the chance to do if I had children.

I just wish that people wouldn't write me off purely because I don't have children, or assume that I hate children because I don't have them.

[zeezeek]

SheKnowsHerNose - I suggest that you read through what I've written again. I am smug and possibly arrogant about many things, it is one of my personality traits, but having children: no, never. I spent too many years coming to terms with the fact that I may not have them.

[zeezeek]

It is also rather annoying that people who had DC in their 20's and early 30's seem to assume that their child free friends are out partying every night. Unfortunately that's rarely the case as those people are probably working their arses off at work and having less of a social life than those with DC.

[SheKnowsHerNose]

I didn't say you sounded smug about having children, but rather about being unchanged by it.

[Mermaid36]

zeezeek oh yes! I can't remember the last time we went 'out' .... I don't drink, we don't go clubbing etc.

We actually spend time with our friends who all have children, funnily enough!

[SheKnowsHerNose]

And I only mentioned that purely to try to show that writing off what other people say as 'smug' is a tricky process and that you can't really generalise about people with children OR people who are childfree. It's easy to ascribe all sorts of motives to what people say that they don't actually have.

"Some of the women who ditched me years ago have tried to return to my circle - seemingly with the sole intention of smugly telling me how much trouble I have ahead of me as my DDs get older."

Are you sure they're not just trying to find common ground for conversation by talking about children now that you apparently have them in common? Again, most of that sort of conversation is small talk.

[MrsGoslingWannabe]

YABU to hate and despise breastfeeding. Why do you hate it so much? You don't have to do it.

[Doobigetta]

I don't know who you parents think the rest of us are out partying with! You can't do it on your own once your friends are all at home with babies.

[Tryharder]

I don't have many close childless friends these days because my childless friends are off doing exciting things like festivals and impromptu trips to fun places that certainly do not include 3 children under the age of 11!

[Indole]

I don't understand why anyone would hate and despise breastfeeding. I can totally understand why someone might not want to do it, but hate and despise? That is weird. I personally did not want to bottle feed, but I don't hate and despise it. I recognise that other people have other priorities and difficulties and life circumstances. Each to their own.

There is a divide between the childless and those with children, but it is just that until you've been the slave of a baby, you just don't have much idea of what it is like (the bad parts and the good parts). I had more idea than most, having functioned as childcare for many younger siblings but it still wasn't the same as having my own baby (just the one, she won't have to do what I did).

Most of my friends have children. Some don't. I haven't lost any friendships either way, apart from one insane mother at school (and her issues were all her own and unrelated to having children, I think).

[LazyLohan]

It took me ten years to have my child. Seen it from both sides and I think it just boils down to who your true friends are. Yes when you're childless a lot of women with children will exclude you, drop you and view you as less worthy and somehow inferior. Equally I had friends with kids where my friendships just changed a bit and we perhaps saw each other less often, but the quality of the friendship didn't change even though the frequency did. Or we did different things like coffees, a picnic in the park or walking around museums rather than bar hopping.

Equally when I had my child I was dropped by some childless friends who weren't interested in people who wouldn't go on weekend long benders or were no longer available at the drop of a hat, who weren't out every weekend and who didn't want to socialise in any environment which was not totally geared to adults. And I also had childless friends who were more than happy to realise my life had changed a bit and do a bit of mutual accommodation so we stayed friends and still did things together.

I think true friends view you as far more than a mother/not a mother. And if you lose a friend based on whether or not you have procreated that person was not really a friend in the first place.

[LazyLohan]

Indole until you've been the slave of a baby, you just don't have much idea of what it is like

I don't think that's true and I think that 'You just don't understand' attitude is exactly the sort of thing that gets childless people's backs up. They might not have done it but they know it's tough especially because some mothers spend so much time banging on to them about how they'll never understand how hard it is and are capable of empathy. Empathy doesn't come out with the afterbirth you know, childless people can have it.

I hate that 'You can never have the insight and understanding until you are a mother so we are divided' attitude. Patronising insulting nonsense.

[SheKnowsHerNose]

But where do you think that idea comes from?? It comes from people who have experienced the shock to their lives that comes with having a baby. People who have been in a 'before kids' state of knowledge and experience and an 'after their own kids' state of knowledge and experience and have directly experienced the difference.

That doesn't mean you can't understand intellectually that there's a difference if you haven't got children, of course you can, and of course you can empathise. Just like you can understand intellectually the life-changing nature of cancer treatment, and empathise with someone who's had it, but still not really know what it's like.

To say that it's nonsense to say there's a difference is to sweepingly dismiss the direct experience of the people who've been through it.

That doesn't mean there's some kind of value judgement going on when people observe that you can't know until you've had a child what it can be like. It's just observation - people reporting their own experiences - not judgement.

[SheKnowsHerNose]

The argument that someone doesn't know what it's like to have a child shouldn't be used to shut down discussion, if knowing what it's like isn't as relevant as some kind of general intellectual understanding. That must be frustrating.

I don't think that's how parents in general mean it though? I think they mostly say it because they know how their own perspective on child-related things changed once they had them.

So not really comparing you a cf person to them, more comparing their pre-child selves to them now, and extrapolating to you from there.

[LazyLohan]

Yes, but that poster didn't just say that there was a difference in knowledge or experience did she? She said that difference made a divide. That it somehow makes the two groups fundamentally different and divided.

I don't believe it does. I think it simply means that some people have experienced one pretty mundane aspect of life that others haven't.

I mean, having piles, genital warts or an ingrowing toenail are also pretty mundane life experiences but nobody bleats on about how they have created a fundamental divide between those who have experienced them and those who haven't.

Having different experiences doesn't have to cause divisions. And I think it shows a singular lack of imagination to believe that it does.

There are childless women who I have a lot more in common with and some who have children that I would walk over hot coals to avoid. I don't think having experienced childbirth suddenly means you are a member of some special group divided off from those who haven't and 'don't understand'.

[iniquity]

I have friends who are mums and friends who aren't. 75 per cent of women do have kids so most of the women I know are mothers. Certainly having a child young meant I didn't gave much in common with child free young people at that moment in time and of course a child changed me
Had I waited till my forties I doubt I would notice the difference and I suspest I would still have lots on common with women of a silimar age.. Children or no children so yabu.. Your view point is shaped by your age.

[MakeItACider]

I think this is an interesting discussion. I think the stress and difficulties of having children brings out personality traits of people that you might not have otherwise noticed.

I have a childless friend, and it is recently, once my DSs got to nursery/school i realised just how terrible she was at being spontaneous. She always wanted to organise things well in advance (think months ahead for a casual dinner catch up). I found it increasingly awkward and started refusing to commit that far ahead. She would refuse a quick catch up if she had, planned something else, even if that something was going grocery shopping (on top of her online shopping) , or even changing her wardrobe from summer to winter clothes...(!).

I had never realised how strong this trait was in her, nor would have guessed how much it would annoy me when i was juggling the many commitments you take on when having DC.

[SheKnowsHerNose]

Well obviously I can't speak for her but the word 'divide' came from the OP, didn't it? (And, really, 'bleats on'?)

Any difference in experience creates a divide which in some situations might be hugely relevant and in other situations isn't relevant at all. We're all in a whole load of intersecting and overlapping groups.

"I don't think having experienced childbirth suddenly means you are a member of some special group divided off from those who haven't and 'don't understand'."

It makes you part of a mundane but real group of people who've experienced childbirth, so when your childfree or pregnant friend starts declaring how there's no way she'd ever have an epidural, you're likely to roll your eyes inside and want to point out that she can't know for sure till she's in labour. For the context of that discussion only, the divide between having experienced childbirth and not having experienced it is relevant. (That's not the same as the childfree/not childfree divide though, think of adoptive parents.)

It's not that the divides aren't real it's just that they are multiple, overlapping, intersecting, and sometimes brought up in irrelevant contexts. Pretending they don't exist is as silly as privileging one over all the others.