AIBU to think some people become even more flaky and selfish after they have kids?

[Hey1256]

Ok so here’s the story, I’ve now lost a few friends over the years because prior to their pregnancies the friendship was mainly one way to start with. I would always instigate meet ups, I would always be the one to travel to see them because a half hour journey to most of my friends seems to be the other side of the world.

After their babies arrived I don’t hear from them, they cancel meets and NEVER want to travel anywhere.

Now, please don’t misunderstand what I’m trying to say - I totally get that when you have a child it is the priority and things become more difficult. But does it really mean you don’t care about anyone else enough to see how their life is going or want to see them, ever?

Fast forward a few years and quite a few of my other friends are having babies. One has been amazing, so good despite having the baby she has been making what effort she can which proves that you can still remember friends post baby.

The others I have not heard from them since they fell pregnant. If I don’t reach out to them and ask how they are it doesn’t happen.

Why is it that when some people have kids they start thinking people without kids lives are irrelevant? Not worthy of asking how they are? I know these friends keep in contact with their other pregnant friends. They haven’t wanted to initiate meet ups.

Anyway, it’s made me really upset. Do I just have shit friends? Why don’t people value social relationships anymore particularly once they have a child?

I’ve really had enough. Is it time to make new friends?

@jealousorfair - oh, sorry, yes, I see now what you meant by shortcomings. You mean things like not responding to texts or catching up etc.

This is exactly what I mean - both sides should have empathy. So as you said you’d empathise with a childfree/childless person who had had a bad sleep. That also means parents should be empathised with, or as you said ‘get away with more’ in those situations.

In your situation, where parents of a child need to work out lie ins and naps etc, there is a more competitive element, naturally. You should empathise with your husband, he should empathise with you. Should then let you lie in! Everyone knows mothers are more tired than fathers 😉

'binge watching Netflix' is a passive activity and is not comparable to a baby up in the night that needs your 'active' attention, it just isn't - it's insulting to hear such bollox! Research shows that new parents face up to 6 years of sleep deprivation. The ignorance is annoying and I'm sorry OP but your rhetoric about not losing yourself to motherhood shows a woeful lack of understanding of what becoming a parent entails!

I’m just baffled that I could be tired from being up all night with three kids, my friend could be tired from going out to dinner and staying up until 2am watching Netflix and we can’t both empathise with each other.

There is definately different levels of tired.

Especially when one is tired by choice and one is a stacked up tired from nights upon nights of sleep deprivation without having s choice in it and begging the dear GOD for s moment to doze off.

No one is saying there is no empathy. I can empathise with someone struggling no matter what.

But there is NO COMPARISON,

In fact, I find your comparison of the two friends quite minimising to the mental exhaustion experienced by a mother who had no choice but to keep her eyes open to make sure her baby doesn’t fall off while she feeds him/her and burp and go back to cot or a toddler that wants to suckle all night because he is ill and teething... compared to someone who chose to enjoy the night watching Netflix when they have a chance to catch up on sleep later.

I used to stay them up nights on Netflix,, I would never do it now I look back with envy,

I get irritated when I wake up finding DH up the night watching. He definately isn’t allowed to complain to me about sleep after a Netflix night. Zero sympathy

@Goldenbear - yes a mother will be MORE tired than a childfree/childless person who stayed up all night to watch netflix. That’s not the point. The point is, why can’t they both have empathy for each other.

Someone always has it worse than you, luckily people can offer advice, help, empathy and sympathy to many people not just the one who has it the worst!

It depends - when we were both child free adults my sister phoned and woke me up at 3am to ramble drunkenly at me about a "cute" (her word) man she'd met - I had to be up for work at 5am and was pretty annoyed. She called me again when I hung up and had just fallen back to sleep, and again at work at 11am the next day - she was a student - to tell me she was "so tired" she'd "had" to miss lectures.

Why did it matter that she'd made me tired, and herself tired, and I had work and she had decided to skip lectures, we were both tired, should I have empathised?

If you're long term bone tired from looking after your incontinent mother who night wanders and has dementia, or you have a chronic illness which has stopped you sleeping for months, it's a kind of sleep deprivation a long term sleep deprived parent of a child who has woken every 45-90 minutes all night for years can empathise with.

If you're on nights then yes, empathy although at least you get to catch up at some point (I know).

If you've been up binge watching Netflix or partying though - no. I won't empathise with that even now when my tiredness is just from shift work, because it's you're own silly fault unless the Netflix isn't the real reason!
It's not competitive to be annoyed when someone expects sympathy for something short term and self inflicted for frivolous reasons from someone experiencing a long term, more serious, non frivolous version of the same thing.

Bit like getting drunk and stubbing your toe and expecting sympathy on an equal level from someone you're visiting in hospital seriously injured in a work accident.

@Goldenbear not true everyone's experiences are different.

Are you telling me every single mother on the planet loses their identity?

I think you're the ignorant one

@JealousOrFair - but that is the problem. There is no empathy. There is only ‘you don’t know what tired is’ or ‘you’re not a tired as a parent’ or ‘you don’t know tired until you have kids’.

The point is it's insulting, the empathy is drawing a comparison and there isn't one. It's trivialising something that is not a trivial matter. You can stop watching Netflix but you can't stop responding to your newborn without neglecting it.

Friendships will usually take a dive with small children if you’re child free or your kids were older.

You talk about driving an hour for a coffee, in probably a nice busy coffee shop with music playing cosy (small spaces) setting.. now throw in an infant that can’t be in a car seat that long, coupled with said child not sleeping if it’s too stimulated by all the noise n people bumping into the pram if you can even get it in the bloody coffee shop.. and that leaves out the embarrassment of nipples soaking through a T-shirt, a refluxy baby projectile vomiting so much onto you it looks like you’ve wet yourself and the why won’t they stop crying everyone’s looking feeling.

Not to mention that you’ve been up from 6am, went to bed at 12, fell asleep at 1 up at 2 back to sleep at 3 up at 4 back to sleep at 5 if your lucky and there wasn’t a leaking nappy. Night shift worker who used to stay up 4 days in a row.. seriously they could use newborns as torture devices.

You spend your “free time” in the bath, peeing without a tiny human, eating warm food, having an adult conversation for the two hours a night you get to see your partner without shhing them or passing the baby if your lucky, your weekends are now “family time” another form of torture where every family member will moan to each other as a contest at who hasn’t seen the baby for how long.. there’s two days in a weekend people i cannot time travel... and while they offer to baby sit you don’t want to abuse it for little things like time to yourself when you might need it to see a doctor.

And you’ve still to do everything your friend with no kid has to do in those “3hours between work n bed” somewhere in the mix..

And yes we forget about texts n crap that we don’t have to wash, wipe or feed. Personally if I forget to message back that day or within a few hours I don’t bother if it’s just a how’s you because I assume like a phone call it’s a chat when you had time. Maybe I’m odd.

@Goldenbear - and unfortunately for everyone, this is why some friendships can’t survive when one has a baby and one doesn’t.

The competitive misery is all well and good. But how can do you explain OPs friends also not contacting her before they ever had children?

I'm like you OP, I'm always the one to make an effort and also the one always getting excuses from others. It's always been this way. Now I have kids, and my friends don't. I'm still the one to contact them, and travel to them. I often get things like, I text a friend in July asking if they would like to meet up. They reply their next free day is in October. When October comes they might cancel anyway.

It feels a bit shit at times but I keep going or I'd never have any social outings.

OP, your interpretation of losing one's identity is 'basic' and laughable. My identity has changed since I have had children as I am a 'Mother', this is in contrast to when I wasn't one. No one status has more or less value but 'yes' it has certainly altered!

@Goldenbear funny that it is a complaint of so many mothers who feel like this. Not ALL mothers obviously I don't know what the stats are but for you to deny it exists is pretty pathetic

@Goldenbear yes because all childfree people do is watch Netflix

Agree with absolutely everything @Lunafortheloveogod said!
Your odd night up watching Netflix is no way comparable to the YEARS of broken sleep some parents get. Leaving the house has to be a military operation precision timed and quite honestly in the first few months after having DC I was insecure about my changing figure not to mention it was months in between hair appointments and I was bloody knackered! If it was a choice between being out in public an hour from home or in the comfort of my own home or coffee shop round the corner I know which I'd prefer!

I think I should return to this thread after I have kids because it's quite clear I just don't understand!
Yeah, that's for sure.

Harry I really think someone who has made a choice to watch Netflix all night expecting empathy from someone who has no choice in chronic sleep deprivation is as much taking the piss as a wealthy man coming to a homeless guy expecting empathy about not being able to afford to buy his daughter a limo for her birthday... and is like forgive me that’s why I can’t offer you money.

I think I really wouldn’t want to be friends with someone who doesn’t acknowledge my sleep deprivation is more serious of an issue than them enjoying Netflix at night. It sounds incredibly insensitive to bring up a luxury like that to a parent and then expect it to be seen as an issue to moan about.

I don’t get how the conversation would go?

“If you’re bloody tired from Netflix go sleep early tonight because you have a choice in that!”

As for us parents we have no hope of catching up... very different.

Tired is not same as sleep deprivation and mental exhaustion. Very different

Do you know after this thread I've decided it's not motherhood that makes people not make an effort I think the shit friends were always shit! They just changed their excuses to the kids after they had them.

And I have to deal with either putting up with that or ditching them.

It's not a conversation I'll bring up with them as I'm not begging for friendships and that's how it would feel.

We live in a patriarchal world where woman are conditioned to think most things they do or don't do are a bit lacking, woman 'losing their identity' via motherhood is another facet of that in my mind. The social conditioning that lets us believe there are shortcomings in becoming a mother. Many women believing this doesn't prove anything!

I’ve definitely became more selfish since becoming a parent. Won’t put up with crap and am a lot more conscious of what I spend my time and money on.

My son is my absolute priority in life; I won’t apologize for that.

But, I’m not flakey. If I arrange to do something, then I’ll be there. Because I only accept invites to stuff that I genuinely want to do

1300cakes in the OP's case I suspect that they never really were her friends.

I don't think it's competitive misery though, it's just not comparing like with like. If somebody's lost their job you just considerate, you don't say "oh I know how you feel, I've stopped bothering going to my yoga class and it's like a big hole has opened up in my life, I'm not sure what I'll do..." They're not the same, the same way months or years of extreme sleep deprivation are not the same as choosing to watch Netflix all night.

In the end OP needs new friends, these people never were that into her.

@itwasalovelydreamwhileitlasted - I didn’t say it was comparable. I used Netflix as an example because I wanted the silliest reason I could think of that someone could be tired alongside being up with the kids to ask why even though one was ‘silly’ and one was ‘serious’, it should still be possible for both people to empathise with each other.

As I said, someone always has it worse than you but we all still like to have a bit of a vent and get some empathy.

@JealousOrFair - no the conversation should go

I’m knackered I was up all night watching X on Netflix

I know how you feel, I was up all night because of X teething

Oh bloody hell, that sounds awful, I hope X is well soon, can I get you a coffee?

Harry

So would I be rude to say:

“Sigh, you lucky thing. I wish I can stay up watching Netflix. I’ve stayed up all night with my teething toddler and I don’t think I will be getting anymore sleep tonight .”

I’m I minimizing her “tiredness?” And not being worthy of being her friend ? Because frankly all I feel is jealousy not empathy and surely that’s understable?

Oh and I know what child free people do on average as I was childfree. It's not like I don't have any experience of that life!