To not understand why friendships change so much after kids?

[AIBU25]

I'm prepared to get slaughtered on this but I'm going to put it out there.

I really don't understand why friendships change so much after someone/a couple has children. I understand they have new priorities and less free time but why not make time for your friends? I don't understand how they expect to maintain friendships with absolutely no effort from their side. Most friends would be happy to do kid friendly activities, why not invite people along? People seem to just forget that there was a life before children.

Your experience isn’t necessarily the norm. I was the last of my friend group to have dc and we still saw each other socially with and without the children.

There are lots of factors, money and time being the main ones. Me and dh were like passing ships, he worked overtime at the weekend and I had a night job as did most of my friends, sorry but you sound really naive, bordering on ignorant of the impact it has. Stop being so self absorbed.

Babysitters can be hard to afford /find.

Tiredness for at least the first 6 months.

Pubs aren't really child friendly.

Friends have moved away.

Loads of reasons, doesn't mean I don't care about them.

Most friends would be happy to do kid friendly activities

No they wouldn't...

And honestly, I’m not sure I’d be going to any lengths to maintain a friendship with someone who was sniping about lack of effort when I had a baby. Everyone, whether or not they’re a parent, will have periods of withdrawing from relationships for a bit, for whatever reason — I cant imagine being so demanding and unimaginative that I couldn’t cut them some slack and keep requiring some arbitrary level of effort in order to still count them as friends.

@AIBU25 you’re suggesting that @Randomname85 takes her 3 year old to the pub at night, a 1.5 hour train ride away once a month? Is that right? Is that the kind of thing you’re suggesting to your friends with little kids? Because it might explain the radio silence...

Also i get being tired but how hard is it to send a text- everyone’s different but when it was me I was doing things like putting breadknives in the fridge and mobile phones in the freezer. Waking up every hour to feed a newborn after a three day delivery will do that to you. There’s a reason sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture. There’s been many many a time I’ve written out a reply to a friend and fell asleep/forgot to send/sent to the wrong person/sat my phone down and lost it for half a day half way through. I think the best friends are the ones who love you enough to stick with you in those crazy baby days.

A lot of friendships are based on shared lifestyle, children change lifestyles even between friends that start families around the same time.

Children use up time and energy and there's a lot less left over to spend on friends.

Some families get little opportunity for child-free time.

Sometimes children have used up all your social energy so there's nothing else left, and you just want peace and rest.

Children have different interests that affect what kinds of plan you can make. Mine are at their best outdoors where it's appropriate to burn off energy. Sitting quietly is not their forte, neither is entertaining themselves with colouring and reading (thanks dyslexia and dyspraxia) so keeping them placid and civilised without resorting to tablets can be a minefield. My oldest has outgrown soft play and is very prone to sensory stimulation which is a problem at lots of venues.

My best pre-child friendship involves friends with very similar, compatible children, so our social life involves lots of walks/ Nat Trust/ collecting sticks. Other friendships are harder for keeping children mutually happy and the children have little in common. Now my DCs are getting older, some friendships are resurfacing. One friend and I are now able to go hill walking again and our DCs are able to happily tag along. We've also mastered travelling halfway to a mutually accessible parkrun and carving out 35 glorious minutes of running time together before heading home to our busy lives as before that we struggled with being 1hr+ from eachother and spending a day together.

Some friendships can handle one half having children, but the logistics of two sets of children with different needs will be too much.

The best friendships will still be there when you're ready for each other.

@WellWellWellWhatHaveWeHere I just think to maintain a friendship you have to both work at it and both make the effort. She could ask someone to look after her child to go out one evening a month?

Because children drain you utterly, they really want as much as you can give them, then more.

You might get a few moments of freedom and it's tempting to spend those in delicious solitude, or at least only on really nourishing friendships. So-so friends fall by the wayside.

Even just a text requires mental effort to be your old self.

Initially exhaustion, and don't underestimate hormones and the need to be close to your kids. I still have my friends but we chat on the phone and WhatsApp a lot more (although not in the first few months because it literally took me days to text back with the constant interruptions). For me nights out at the pub hold very little appeal now, yes a few times a year when I am in the mood now, and I am sure this will increase as they get bigger, but honestly I would much rather be in with the kids asleep upstairs. They're only small for such a short time and maybe the urge to stay in is part of not missing this.... I appreciate my friends understand this and rather than weakening the friendships I think the sign of real friends is exactly adapting and adjusting.

Have kids yourself then you will realise.

It’s a combination of exhaustion, lack of money, inability to hold an intelligent engaging conversation in the early years- combined with friends who fail to acknowledge your LO because they aren’t there yet, who show zero interest in even hearing about your child let alone attend child activities.

When younger friends are people you live life with, as you get older friends because people you catch up with about life- some people can’t understand that

The text thing. You text to ask how they're doing and it can quickly turn into "when are we meeting up?" Which can just be an added layer of guilt. And I'd go out and try so hard not to be a baby-bore, but that was my biggest job and preoccupation, so what else had I really to talk about? I heard enough about other people's work and pets and holidays, but always felt (rightly or wrongly) that talking about the baby needed to be kept quiet.
It's a lot better now, but I still remember how lonely those early days were.

You sound self centered tbh AIBU25.

You cant afford to be selfish when you have children or have friends with children. That dynamic changes.

I got home from work at 9.15pm after being up x5 last night with my boys and up with them for the day at 6am. I looked after them all day, did the housework and then went to work.

Same again tonight and tomorrow.

I'm exhausted and never stop

@AIBU25 Her post seemed to make clear that she couldn’t make it because she had the little one and would have to take her. Maybe just my reading of it though.

In any event, most of the replies on here are telling you that it’s a really massive upheaval when you have kids. Lots of people like me are saying that they’ve struggled to keep in touch with others despite having good intentions and that they really appreciated the friends that stuck around. Whoever your mate is that your disappointed in right now, I think you’re just going to have to decide if the overall friendship is worth you feeling it’s a bit one sided for a little bit, until they are out of the woods a little. You just can’t be someone’s priority once they have kids. That includes expecting a reply quickly. Even if you used to be the person they could call at 4am for a heart to heart, and vice versa. It hurts but it’s life.

I have found this since having my two DC (3 years and 8 months). Every day is filled with routine (in between the whirlwinds!) so it doesn't leave much time for anything else. It's tricky to have friends for dinner as they work until 5-6pm and we need to eat and have the children ready for bed way before we would be finished if they came over.

Also tiredness. Some nights I can barely stay awake to have a cuppa before crawling into bed myself.

I rely on my mom for childcare in the week while I work, so wouldn't dream of asking her again at weekends and truth be told, I don't want to leave my DC anyway.

My closest friend doesn't seem to grasp the fact that I don't have any surplus money now at all now either. With nappies/extra food/childcare fees, it's impossible for me to spend money on going to the greyhound races or drinking cocktails at a themed event.

It's very easy to lose friendships when your life has a bomb dropped into it and your whole world revolves around someone else.

I don't want to do things with my friends kids.

Babysitting is a massive expense if you weren't fortunate to be born into a family of the right age (you want grandparents that are old enough to be newly retired, but not elderly and exhausted) plus you need to be local to them and them to be responsible people with a healthy interest. DH and I made the mistake of being born to older parents who can't babysit anymore so the fact that we're far too far away is a moot point anyway.

We don't even bother with something like the cinema for the pair of us anymore as after paying for a baby sitter and watching a film, we barely have change out of £50, and we'd rather wait 3 months and buy 4 or 5 DVDs for that! We only really go out for special occasions as babysitting is such a ball ache to try and negotiate plus pay for.

Actually, we do a bit better on heading out solo with a friend one at a time, but couple + couple time is dead as the chances are that we're probably out with a babysitting candidate anyway!

I get you OP. I think in my case what irritates me (and I said this on the thread about people not texting back) is that one friend in particular will go out (without DC) with her other friends but if we do ever manage to meet up will bring them with her. It means it restricts; where we can go, what we can talk about and what time we have to return home. I do the majority of the travelling, which is fine but it really does hurt that she doesn’t put the same effort in for me as her other friends. We don’t get together that often due to distance so when we do, I’d like it to be a decent, uninterrupted catch up. It’s like I’m not worth the effort as I don’t have kids.

When my best friend had her first baby I was still single and carefree and really wondered What would happen as our relationship revolved around meeting for drinks or meals with drinks. But when she had her baby I never expected her to continue our pre baby lifestyle; I would offer to go round to hers, I’d take dinner for her, meet her in cafes in the day time and take a lot of interest in her baby. As a result our friendship got a lot stronger so I don’t think having babies needs to negatively change a friendship.
I think for the first 6 months (maybe longer) people get a free pass to be crap with keeping in contact after having a baby as your mind is so scrambled but I’d say of the friends I let go of during that time it was mainly the ones who weren’t interested in my baby and expected me to keep to the old lifestyle.

I’m childfree and single and found that even if friends with babies/children did invite me around/out, the children just took every ounce of attention. Not anyone’s fault but it was just a two hour shouting/grappling session that i was there to witness to be honest.

Its all-consuming and it only eases up when the children reach say seven or eight, by which time, everyone’s moved on.

Simple way to understand op, have some kids.

I spent the first year of DD's life in a zombie like state, because she woke hourly, every night. By the time DS came along I was more used to it, but it was a huge shock to the system. Believe me, I hadn't expected that. I'd had plans to see friends, go on nights out, but had to cancel them all as there was no way I could go (not to mention the fact that both DD and DS were breastfed bottle refusers. Trust me, that makes having a child free social life pretty bloody difficult/impossible).

Now DD is 4 and DS is 2, it's a bit easier and me and DH try and fit in nights out where we can with our friends. However, these need to be not too boozy as we have no nearby childcare and both don't think it's fair to leave each other alone with two very hyper kids whilst sleeping off a hangover. And life continues to be relentlessly exhausting with working, child care and chores. There is not enough of me to go round!

I've had a few friends drift away since the DC arrived, and I'm not too upset as I think it shows there was never that deep a bond to begin with. The ones who've stuck around are my true friends and I make sure they know I'm there for them...but they will have to accept my limitations for now. I do the same for them if they go off grid, whether because of children, illness or other reasons. Because friendship is about showing that empathy and understanding, maybe you don't agree??

Lots of people assuming I don't have kids, you don't know this!