to ask if it's difficult to be friends with childless people?

[CoolToned]

I don't have children.

I prefer the term "childfree" because in our case we made a decision! I think the term "childless" might be quite hurtful to people who have been unable to have children...

I also find the insistence of parents that of course they fully understand the lives of the childfree very annoying. Life changes around you whether or not you have children. I would never tell a single person in their thirties that I knew what it was like to be them because I was single before I met my husband at 25. It's not the same.

Also... this might just be the women I know but the ones who have had children in their thirties tend to have had less full-on jobs pre-children, which also makes them claiming to know exactly what my life's like annoying. I remember going for a coffee with two friends: a SAHM of a two year old and a junior doctor working in A&E at the time. I was in the first year of my job as a lecturer and also still trying to finish writing my PhD thesis: I used to regularly still be at my desk working at 2am and then be up at 5.45 to get my train to work. To be honest, we were both a bit annoyed at her going on about how she wished she could still 'go out drinking every night like you guys' and generally making out how carefree and easy our lives were. The thing is, though, she had only worked for a couple of years (so in a junior position) pre-kids and very 9-5, no concept of taking work home, etc., and seemed to think that so did everyone else.

the ones who have had children in their thirties

Sorry, that should say in their twenties! And since I'm going to be attacked for that I'd like to reiterate that this is my personal experience, I'm not claiming it's universal.

Oh yeah and I had DC1 young and was dropped by almost ALL my friends. It was like I became seriously uncool for becoming a mum

Really upset me and knocked my confidence

Ironically 11 years later a lot of them are starting to have their own babies now and I am an old hand and very glad I had all mine quite young

I have a 6 month old and love seeing my friends who don't have children because they don't just want to talk about babies all the time! The girls who I have met through NCT are lovely but I like the fact we are now talking about things other than kids. I love DS more than anything but he is not all I want to talk about 24/7.

WarholsLittleQueen I'm glad to have had mine young too! the year I turn 40 DC will be 18. I don't think I could've planned it any better for myself tbh.

I will be able to look forward to my mid-thirties onwards without a child permanently attached to me (single parent. I can't do anything on my own) and that... that to me is heaven.

people I know are now having babies in their 30s and are really struggling to cope with the sudden change in lifestyle, from my view at least. Almost constant complaints how they don't have the freedom I am starting to get back. DC is old enough for sleepovers, residential trips and can occasionally cook their own dinner.

I think at 21/22 i was able to adjust much better to the change in lifestyle, no spare cash and sleepless nights than I could now. If I'd had the freedom of being a single woman, a wage and no responsibility.

It depends on the child-free friend really accepting the parent's responsibilities and available has changed, and that my time limitations due to responsibilities are as valid as yours.

Eg we used to meet mid-morning for coffee cake and gossip on weekdays when students and both lecture free at that time. Then we both got full time jobs and moved to meeting up at 6:30/7 in a pub or bar in central London when we both worked. I no longer am available from about 3pm (school run) - 7:30/8pm as its a time I have a commitment on my time of the post-school to dinner and bedtime for dcs, however I'm back being up for a coffee mid-morning.

If I can accept child- free full time working friends can't meet mid-morning on a week day because they've got a commitment on their time (work) they should be prepared to accept I'm not being difficult, I have limits on my time too and evenings before 8pm are pretty much impossible without massive planning and effort.

I've also not bothered with child- free friends who don't want to hear about my dc, but want to talk about their work situation - this is my job now, if I'm not allowed to talk about my job, I don't want to listen to you bang on about yours.

The child-free friends I've kept in touch well with are the ones who've up with well are the ones who've accepted our lives are different but we can still be interested in each other- interestingly, those who've lasted are the ones from before who I had the least in common with on paper before dcs.

Basically, if you are only friends with someone because you have similar lives and backgrounds, it's unlikely to last once you go off on different paths.

Friends with childless people. One of my closest friends is.
They are refreshing. They don't talk about kids all the time, which is nice because I too don't think kids are the centre of the universe.

I think at 21/22 i was able to adjust much better to the change in lifestyle, no spare cash and sleepless nights than I could now. If I'd had the freedom of being a single woman, a wage and no responsibility

Yes exactly, I was already skint when DC1 was born so no great shock to me I was just pootling around in min wage jobs and was actually on dole when got preg :D

And could cope with sleepless nights, recovered well after birth back in skinny jeans days after and I took to motherhood like a duck to water, poss because, older people in my life, and friends, had been so negative towards me for having a baby. I wanted to prove everyone wrong I think.]

The main problem I've found is parents wanting you to come over after bath and bedtime. I'm up at 5am for work, I'm not coming over at 8pm because I want to be in bed for 9! There's a lack of understanding sometimes, I find. As in... Well you can't possibly be tired! That can be incredibly frustrating.

Best friend is child free - its a breath of fresh air to hang out with someone without inevitably talking about kid stuff.

I think it depends on the people. Some mothers ditch childless friends for new mum friends. Others don't. Of course your time available changes. But if you have time to meet up with mum friends, you have time to meet up with childless friends.

No. I only find it difficult to be friends do with childless people if they can't comprehend that I don't have the free time (or money, or energy) to gallivant around as if I were also childless. I get sick to death of hearing 'oh just get a babysitter' from people with no bloody idea. But I have lots of childless friends who are brilliant.

Wish people would say child free and not child less

Also in terms of tiredness, the mother who said to my friend with cancer and who was hardly sleeping because of the pain, that only mothers know what tiredness is, was an idiot.
I also have a friend who is caring for her dying mother and very elderly and frail father. She lives with them. She also is very restricted. In fact it can be far harder to get a carer to cover a social event, than a babysitter for kids. And she is physically very tired. Not only parents experience tiredness and relentless responsibility. Anyone who is caring for someone totally dependent on them experiences this.

I think from reading all these it's being out of step with your peer group rather than people with children being boring or people without children being selfish.

If we assume most middle class people have children in their thirties, even though I know many people here would not describe themselves as middle class and many who are don't have children in their thirties. Then if you have a baby in your twenties it can be a lonely and isolating experience. Your friends don't understand nausea, sickness, crying screaming babies, how although maternity leave or part time work looks like easy street it's actually fraught with stress and financial worries and can strain your relationship.

But then if you are childless in your thirties and not through choice, I can quite see how the assumption you spend all your free time in bars or jetting away on holiday must grate, as if single people don't have a mortgage, don't have jobs, or whatever. I think that can be really lonely and isolating, especially as there's so much pressure to 'put yourself out there'

It just comes down to recognising we don't all do everything at the same time and respecting that

I think that's a very fair, calm and soothing post, Cally! I also think that it's about what kind of person you are, too: some people are just more self-centred and have a harder time trying to put themselves in other's shoes. Motherhood doesn't change that, and times of high stress make us nearly all a bit more selfish (I know that I'm a much worse partner to my husband when things are really tough at work, for instance). Some people do therefore seem to stop noticing that there's an outside world when they have a baby. It doesn't mean that everyone does, and nor is it (usually) permanent! In the same way I don't believe in the concept of 'Bridezilla': I just think that sometimes selfish and demanding women get married.

I thought childfree was when people had made the deliberate choice not to have children and childless was when you didn't have children but it wasn't a choice?
Although if childless is an upsetting or offensive term I'll happily stop using it.

Sorry if the term "childless" bothered some people. I really just thought it meant without a child.

I'm involuntary childless (infertility and miscarriage) and I feel edged out because all my friends have kids and are part of a club I can't join. Their social lives understandably revolve around get togethers with their new NCT friends and other mum friends, and play dates with kids from nursery / friends in our social circle with kids. I happily bend over backwards to fit into their lives - I don't expect to be able to have the leisurely branches we used to have, or a quick after work drink, of course not. Their lives are completely different now they have kids. It's just that their lives don't really accommodate a random mate who doesn't have kids. I can't rock up to an NCT coffee morning as the token barren. I can come to their kid's birthday party, but I can't rock up to the umpteen parties they go to every other weekend for nursery mates, without appearing like some kind of paedo

Sometimes I can't face seeing friends with kids when I've had another failed or cancelled IVF cycle, or miscarriage, it's just too raw to be around happy families

*involuntarily childless

I consider myself childless but not child free

I don't fit in with my friends with children

Nor do I fit in with those who are child free who are leading wild and crazy carefree lives of holidays and nights out

The life of a barren doing fertility treatment is quite different to that of someone who is child free by choice

I'm sorry you're having such a difficult time. I hope you have friends who understand and who can support you.

Banana

Good luck with your fertility treatment

I only find it difficult to be friends do with childless people if they can't comprehend that I don't have the free time (or money, or energy) to gallivant around as if I were also childless

While that may of course be true of this specific set of friends, I do think that statements like this perpetuate the myth that the childfree just gallivant about, while parents are the sole group who move into the realm of responsibility and lack of opportunity to let their hair down whenever it suits them. Which I think is unfair to both groups, creates an artificially them and us situation, and logically ends up in insulting, sexist and infantilising nonsense like the suggestion that Theresa May (an obvious gallivanter - not!) is less suited to being PM than a woman with children.

There's also, I think, immense cultural pressure to believe that becoming a parent fundamentally alters a woman, and to 'perform' that change, which leads sometimes, imo, to struggling new mothers thinking they are supposed to shed all vestiges of their previous self and plunge into a whole new set of 'mummy relationships', like it's a rule.

It's slightly like the fact that despite the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever after major studies that 'pregnancy brain' exists as an observable phenomenon, lots of women still engage in competitive 'baby brain' anecdotes, which are as much about a culturally-mandated desire to perform pregnancy as life changing as anything biological, I think. We get so many more media images of the pregnant woman as serene and self-contained and 'other' than we do of pregnant women being perfectly ordinary - it was why Olivia Coleman's character in The Night Manager (who was both running a failing mini-organisation on no resources, running a spy and skulking around saving people with a gun while heavily pregnant) was such a revelation. She was a warm, quietly heroic, endlessly capable, committed and admirable character who was implicitly (rather than the other cliche of the chilly female spy/cop who is unsuited to motherhood) but her pregnancy was entirely incidental to the storyline.

I recently said on one of the threads about deciding whether to have children that I felt having a child (late) hadn't fundamentally changed me at all, much as I adore my son, and a couple of posters got very hostile and said that only a deficient human being wouldn't be changed by having a child.

Which comes back to erecting an artificial barrier between parents and non-parents. By which I mean mothers and women who aren't mothers, because it's clear that society doesn't expect men to be altered anywhere near as much by parenthood, and in fact they are far less likely to be expected to become SAHPs or go part-time in the workplace etc.