To be disappointed by my community of parent friends and peers

[FlyBirdieFly]

Hi everyone,

I just wondered what people's perspectives are on this.

We have a 6 year old girl and during our time as parents, we have struggled to build a community in the way I expected we would. I thought parenthood would bring new supportive friendships where mutual help / support would come naturally. However I've just not found that. Our DD rarely gets invited to friends' houses, yet we have her friends over a lot - one of them in particular we have over every week but dd has only been invited there a couple of times. This has always been the pattern - we invite and host folk to ours but so rarely get invited to others' for similar - we do a mixture of having DC and a parent / parents round or just have DC round on their own. I think we're pretty nice people and DD is generally very kind and well behaved, (with the odd normal off day on occasion). We get asked fairly regularly to help out with friends' children etc which we do almost every time were asked.
We've had a really challenging year as a family - we lost dp's dad last year and a baby at late gestation earlier this year and I've been really shocked at the almost total lack of support from our community of pals.
We live in London and I wonder if people are just so busy and consumed by the franticness of their pace of life they don't have space to form proper mutually supportive communities. Or, am I just naive and that's just the way it is everywhere?
I'd be interested to know other people's experiences on building communities with other families and if anyone has any tips for me. Or if I should just get on with it and that's just the way life is.

Thanks for reading x

WTF ????

Aren’t play dates just supposed to be fun?? What’s all this talk of ‘support’ all the time

How do you know these people and for how long? I mean, are these actual close, longterm friends, or people you just vaguely know from having a child the same age? And what exactly is it you want from them? Reciprocal play dates/childcare is a very different thing to offering in-depth bereavement support, for one thing.

I live in Yorkshire and I can't say I had much help raising my DC (they are older now - 19, 15 & 12). I was on my own with them up until 2019. The only help I received was from my parents and siblings tbh. I thought it was because people work long hours and want to 'protect' their downtime and not host people and kids unless they are related.

After working all week I get that people like to have evenings and weekends in their home as relaxed as possible and hosting isn't relaxing.

They are fun @sweetashunni but undoubtedly there's something mutually supportive for parents about them too!

I've known them a few years (between 2-5) @HermeticDawn and I don't expect bereavement counselling from them! Just a chance for my DD to play with someone else in someone else's house and a bit of reciprocity I suppose but it seems from people's replies I'm getting it all wrong.

The thing is, I'm not sure that many people really want that kind of community these days. So many people seem not to want to engage with their neighbours, jusging by threads on here. It's crap if they expect you to host them or their dc and don't return the favour though.

I'm afraid people have their lives, and although they may be sympathetic to your situation e.g. bereavement, it just cannot be as centrally important to them as it is to you.
Life just goes on, in the main indifferent to an individual's problems.

Did you not have friends before having children? I think often people come to mumsnet complaining and they seem to expect they would make immediate best friends with their young child’s parents.
People usually already have support networks and friends prior to having kids, they might add a few but they aren’t looking to start over.

I had a baby when I was 18 so I never had a "community" as such, obviously not very many of my peers were having babies that age, most parents who I met at baby groups and the like were much older than me and at different life stages so I really had very little in common with them. I had barely any practical support.

Children eventually forge their own friendship groups as they get older anyway.

I think this is really an assumption we get from Hollywood and tv shows, I think those types of communitys are rare, unless one parent in each couple stays at home, otherwise everyone is just too busy.

There are lots of reasons people don't invite others round.
I didn't particularly want to host other parents as I was very conscious our home was much smaller than theirs and later on when DD was old enough for friends to come around without their parents but still needed an adult I was working and she was in childcare and I didn't really know the parents as never did the school run, apart from her bestfriend who would come around in the school holidays.
DD was/is always happier to go to other people's homes and never really wanted other people here in her space, totally normal for children with ASD although we didn't know that she had ASD until she was in her teens, she has always only invited a select few to ours.

I think it's pretty common to have a romanticised ideal of friendships. Most people I know have found it hard to build the kind of closeness they crave. Maybe it is our busyness, our mistrust, our selfishness. People are moving away from anything effortful like having people over, and preserving precious time off. My experience was

• realising belatedly that there was a strong contingent of social climbers who didn't see me as having enough value
• my dds friends not necessarily being closest with the dc of the mums I liked
• people with older children already having their social circle
• being latched onto by people only wanting favours

Friendships aren't like in the movies. Best idea is to be part of some kind of group for you (could be pta or child related, but form your own friendships not based around dc classmates). But have low expectations..

What was the point in writing that ?
Stop inviting people round regularly @FlyBirdieFly , I think people are so wrapped up sometimes that manners go out of the window as proven by the above reply

Oh I’m sorry you’re having that experience. If you don’t live near family (and many in London don’t) you do need some level of community safety net. It sounds like you’re doing all the right things to try and build it. Only thing I would say is that my parent/mum friends who would do anything for me and vice versa are actually friends…. We may have met at the school gates or toddler groups but we socialise together without kids, go away, basically have a separate relationship. It’s not really about the kids. Try cultivating friendships without worrying too much about the kid element?

But you still sound as if you’re conflating two different things. Reciprocal play dates are entirely different to support when you lost your baby and your FIL — I would expect the latter from old, close long-established friends, not people who were just in my life because we had similarly-aged children.

Play dates are complex. I have probably hosted more in the past because I have a big house and garden, but since we’ve been renovating, the house and garden are a building site, and it’s not safe. Other people’s work patterns or small spaces mean they don’t host. I assume people who continue to ask my child are happy to host.

I'm sorry you're feeling like this, and I'm especially sorry for your difficult year.

I did have a bit of what you're talking about but I was a SAHM and I considered it to be my job to establish that kind of network. It evaporated pretty quickly when my kids changed schools and I got a job. Only a couple of the 'friends' I made during that time remain.

I will also say that sometimes there is a glamour in supportively gathering round a person and if you hear about it on social media it is normally all very performative to be honest. I would concentrate on trying to make actual meaningful friendships and the support comes after.

I can hear your frustration that you feel you’re making more effort with friends than you’re getting back. You’re doing regular childcare for the child you have over every week. If it’s not working for you and you feel taken for granted it’s okay to stop.

I’m so sorry you lost your baby and your DP his dad, that’s a lot of pain to deal with. Hoping for some consideration and support from people you consider friends isn’t at all unreasonable 💐

Sorry for your losses, OP. 💐

We've found it hard to build new friendships. We moved 4 years ago when DS was a baby. We're still trying to forge friendships but it takes time. My DH particularly is very lonely. My only suggestion is to just keep going, be friendly, suggest meeting up without kids like for a coffee at yours or whatever. It is hard, though.

I get it.
No one thinks of or values single and childfree people, specially if they are women.
Totally at the bottom of totem pole, and always supposed to help everyone else.

Anyways to op.
I thought that this is exactly why people get partners in the first place. To have that default help, a person who cares and shares a life.
Most people really just try and survive their own lives, they are not thinking what they can do for you or your daughter.

Hi @FlyBirdieFly I think you're getting some harsh replies!

Maybe focus less on the "support", more on the "mutual".

How do the play dates at your house come about? Do you always invite or does anyone ever ask if their child can come over?

Do you ever ask for your DC to go to a friend's? Or are you waiting for someone to offer?

Because "mutual" goes for both sides of this. You have to lean on others too.

If you have tried and they aren't willing then yes I'm afraid that it's bad luck. Maybe dial down the invitations and sometimes say no to requests to avoid building resentment or burn yourselves out at a difficult time for you all.

Your post really strikes a chord with me as I've wondering the same lately too. I can confirm it's not just London as we live in East Midlands and it's very similar for us. We often have the children's friends round but when they get picked up there's rarely the offer of having ours round at some point. It's generally just a breezy '' thanks for having them, bye!" And time ticks on, until your child asks if they can have another play date with that child again, and you have to invite them again as they haven't offered to reciprocate. I don't mind having other kids here but it would just be nice for them to play at their friends for once. Some people just expect to always be able to come to yours (but then you hear about them inviting other children to theirs to play..ggrrrrr)

Let's be honest most people don't want the noise/mess/hassle/responsibility of other kids in their house but I don't either but I do it for my kids, when it boils down to it so I'll continue to do so for their sake.

From the other side of this, DS gets invited round to people's houses, but we rarely invite to ours, the majority of his friends live in houses with gardens, we live in a tiny 2 bed 2nd floor flat, with barely enough room for us.

If we invite, we take his friends out to do something, but since the cost of everything has gone up, we can barely manage with living day to day let alone days out for an extra child

Don’t take it personally. I have friends and acquaintances and my kids are pretty well liked, but I don’t have friends round for coffee every other day, evenings out with wine every week etc. I text friends and see mates I had pre kids maybe twice a month for drinks or lunch. I just don’t think that’s how people interact these days. For me it’s because I work from home a lot and so I don’t want people around all the time, but I also just don’t really want to socialise that regularly. I prefer my home to be peaceful and somewhere I can relax. I do see my relative for a long weekend most months though and we share childcare when one of us needs to.

I find people are very very insular. It was bad enough before but covid made it much worse. Also most people are entirely self serving.