To wonder if some parents stop bothering with non-parent friends?

[Pollysgotacracker]

I completely understand that they've got a lot more to bond over with fellow parents, however I still think it's a shame. I had a friend who I've known for over 20 years, she has an 18 month old daughter now, I don't yet have any children but I'd really like to.

Anyway, as far as I can see me and this friend (who are also part of a group of friends) have always got on well and have a good chat and so on. I'd say in the last several years we've become a little different as she and her husband are on a much higher income than me and my partner are, and I suppose personal tastes have changed. I don't think this should matter, it doesn't on my side anyway.

When her baby was born I was very supportive, and I've shown a lot of interest in her, because I wanted to. I haven't seen her baby since she was around 7 months old and can't recognise her from the photos (I mean figuratively speaking)
I haven't seen this friend in almost a year. Until around 3 months ago, I made several attempts to meet her both individually and as part of a group, she was always saying oh I can't because I have X event that day, but never offering alternatives. I completely understand that having a baby changes your life, however I saw she was still doing other things.

I always offered to go round to where she lives/to her home to make things easy for her, even if I only pop in for half an hour.
I don't feel that I was pushy, but I'd say around 5 attempts over 9 months have been rebuffed.

I decided to leave her to it and move on, and stopped using the group chat as I could tell it was dying and most people had moved on. I never said anything offensive or implied I was upset, I just moved on.

I've started a new career and she never got in contact or said congratulations or anything. She's never asked how I'm doing. I get occasional 'likes' on photos for whatever reason.

She's recently posted pictured of her on outings with mum friends and their babies/toddlers, and she did the same around a month or two ago.
I have no intention of contacting her again, I know people are perfectly entitled to do this. I haven't contacted her for several months now and I'm focusing on meeting new people.

I do wonder if it's because I don't have children and she feels she can't relate anymore, which is odd as I've always worked with children and babies and I love them really. Sorry this turned into a very long post, it does hurt when it's a former close friend of over 20 years, but this is life I suppose. Maybe it's nothing to do with the child situation but who knows.

Frankly?

Money, energy and time are all scarce.

You may suggest a free/cheap outing on a Saturday afternoon, sure. But if we have worked all week, risen at 6 on Saturday with teething toddler, stood around at a rainy football match for 8 year old, then waded around in mud to pick pumpkins, then done mental gymnastics of whatever needs doing for school/laundry/weekly shop/batch cooking followed by birthday party - then, no, DH and I would rather sit in PJs in front of Netflix if there’s a spare minute, not head out/host someone.

Adjust description for baby/toddler/teenager.

sometimes things are let go because we can’t even.

In fairness to her, she's very good at that side of things. Three of us are friends from school and two have similar aged small children, five between us aged one to five. Every meet up involves a playground!

For us the distance is a bigger barrier. I moved 2.5 hours away when I left uni, which she's never forgiven me for , I went for at least one weekend a month for years but now with little kids it's just so hard. Not hard. It's an extra effort I rarely have the energy or head space for at the end of the week. So we don't see much of each other in person.

It's shit but I only have so much to give ATM.

Thinking of OP's friend, it may well be that she finds it easier to meet with friends who have DC because they can occupy her DC, and if she's struggling it may help her to talk to others in the same boat and hear their tales of toddler bullshit or sleepless nights!

My dc are late teens now. Only one of my longstanding friends never had children, but lots of my and dh's friends didn't have any until a few years after us. We carried on seeing them a lot, until we moved to the other end of the country when my dc were 7&9, by which point they'd all had dc of their own, except my still single and childfree friend.

Yes, it's a natural slip. You can't now do the same things when you have children so you naturally spend time with those whose lives are similar.

sometimes things are let go because we can’t even.

God yes.

All relationships take energy. For some people friendships are the ones they will sacrifice when energy is limited. It's not your fault, and it also won't be your fault if you've moved on by the time/if she decides she has the energy for you again.

I’d just say that I was utterly overwhelmed when I had small children and some of that was lack of sleep, some lack of time, some lack of money. I didn’t have childcare and my DH worked long hours. I also went back to work. If my child free friends couldn’t understand this then I don’t think I even had the bandwidth to explain this to them. I was kind of drowning in it all.

It's always been the other way for me. People don't want to bother because of me having kids.

It's not your fault but it's really easy for it to happen, and not really her doing it deliberately, I imagine. You said she'd rebuffed 5 offers to meet up in 9 months. You've clearly got the brain space to remember this. She probably hasn't. She's more likely in that time to have returned to work, got a new job I think you mentioned?, her baby will have started walking and become more full on/demanding. This age is really hard work because they're constantly on the go and yet have no idea about danger.

Yes, I have some wonderful childfree friends who helped me make it work during this time - met up in playgrounds, NT properties, they offered to travel the longer distance and offered to fit it in around DD's
naps. Whilst recognising that your opportunities to chat are limited because you're constantly being interrupted, so from their POV it probably wasn't the most satisfactory encounter!
From the outside I probably appeared to be hanging out more with mum friends. Some of them I didn't particularly get along with but it's easier to manage a day out somewhere with someone else at the same stage as you and it's not like you have the opportunity for an in-depth conversation.

The period from 0-5 is exhausting and there's no 'give'. Yes, clearly if you have a partner s/he can look after kid whilst you go out but I wasn't interested in going out that often because you never get the sleep back if you stay out late, it takes energy and by that end of the day you're running on empty (when I'm that tired I can't cope with a noisy bar or restaurant for instance) and my far more limited availability needed to be divided between the same people (eg pre baby I'd be out twice a week, post-baby it's more like once every few months, yet I still want to see the same people!

I'm sorry but I'm just not buying it. I'm not denying those things but I'm finding it hard to believe that she couldn't offer me a single hour in almost a year, irrespective of everything else. I'm just not buying it at all. There can be 10000 excuses as to why, and are all valid reasons, but a year is verging on ridiculous.

She's fully aware that I'll fit in around her but doesn't care.

Honestly, I also dislike the assumption that childfree people have so much free time and nothing going on in their lives, it isn't true. I work 6 days a week myself.

Life does change, people move on. Unfortunately some people become stuck in a parenting bubble and lose sight of themselves and everything they once were. Sadly, I was like that and fir me it was insecurities in terms of feeling like I had to be a certain type of parent. Some people make their whole (and I mean entire) world about their kids. They don’t leave room for anything else which is a shame.
The other possibility is that she misses her child free life and is avoiding you for that reason
Get in with your life, invest in the friends who invest in you and try not to over think it

Priorities change when you have kids and for some parents that means they don't prioritise their childless friends anymore. One of my oldest friends started fading me out when her dd1 was born, I distinctly remember her saying when she was pregnant that she was going to prioritise friends that she made at baby groups and more local to her. I think she's made her whole life about her kids and nothing else.

It's happened to me the other way too. After I had my ds1 I met up with some of my friends who didn't have kids. I'd left ds1 for the first time to meet up with them so it was a huge deal for me. We'd agreed to meet up for lunch so when we'd settled the bill I said I had to go as I had to get back as I was breastfeeding. They stared at me as if I was speaking another language because they were expecting me to stay all day for a shopping trip.

So, yeah, not every friend is understanding.

Look, you’re sounding very invested in this, and she clearly isn’t. Just drop it?

Not true in my case. Of my closest friends, roughly half have kids (as do I) and half child-free by choice. We are pretty spread out now geographically so meet-ups of the whole group are rare (especially as I and until recently one of my child-free friends live abroad, in different countries). But we all chat on WhatsApp, Zoom every few months, and did manage to finally have a girls weekend away together this year, hurrah! I've been in the thick of raising small kids for the last 4 years and have struggled to get away before now. But off to visit them in Dec, with kids in tow, and can't wait. I think real friendships survive children just as they do moving away, income differences, and most other things.

I definitely don't keep in touch as much with not such close friends or acquaintances though. No time or, crucially, headspace.

It sounds like you're the sort of person who remembers when they last saw someone, time, place etc. I'm like that too. But what I've come to realise is that some people don't think like that.

I met up with a friend last week whom I haven't seen in person since 2019. I could remember where we'd been, what we ate and what we talked about. She thought we'd seen each other in the last year or so!

It's not that childfree people automatically have more free time (I was late having kids, I know this isn't true), it's that you have much less flexibility once you have kids. Before having a kid I could go out for a drink after work, go out for a meal, grab a quick bite whilst out or eat toast late at night when I got in. At pretty much no notice unless I had plans to do something with DH. Now there is somebody in the house who HAS to be fed between about 5.30 and 6.30pm every single day. Who will be massively upset if I miss more than a bedtime or two in a row. I no longer have the flexibility I did have. Yes, I still go out, but a lot less and it's planned with military precision.

I think it's fine if people admit they just don't have time/ can't be arsed seeing friends anymore once they have kids. At least they're being honest. But I have a feeling some of those are ones that will claim 20 years later that their friends didn't want to know them once they had kids.
I had one friend totally disappear after having kids. She lived a 10 min walk away. She'd carry on seeing other friends who had kids but never me. Was always too busy. In fact most of the time she didn't even reply to any messages even just asking how she was. Now her kids are mid/ late teens she's tried to get back in touch with all her old group. I quite frankly can't be arsed myself now. And since then has been putting up passive aggressive Facebook things about people being shit friends and how motherhood means sacrifice and all kinds of woe is me bollocks. I mean after 15 years of pretty much no contact why would I want to bother? I have plenty of other friends (most of whom also have kids) who didn't disappear. Even if it's just a coffee once or twice a year and the odd message. That's enough for most people. But after 15 years you can hardly really call someone a friend anymore.

OP I think you are right and it's difficult but you just have to accept this, but be aware that its usually temporary.

When you have infant children it's incredibly difficult to find time away from them, particularly if your partner isn't especially supportive. Your entire world also becomes about babies and young children and many people end up feeling insecure about how small their world has become and frankly a bit embarrassed about being in "adult" society because all they've done for weeks on end is sterilise bottles and sing "wind the bobbin up". It's not their fault and they are usually just trying to make their lives as comfortable as they can be by taking the path of least resistance. It's shit to be on the receiving end but remember they are probably struggling in their own way with adapting to the huge change this brings.

The good news is for most people it ends: they will suddenly find themselves with kids old enough to go to school and want something of themselves back again.

I "lost" a lot of friends to the soup of early parenthood (I had my DD quite late so some of my contemporaries had teens by the time she was born) but all of them have come out of babyland and back to civilised society again.

Just give them non judgemental space and time. Chances are you will reconnect if you want to. But don't make it into a "thing".

No one has said you have loads of free time or lots going on. Posters have just explained that small children are a 24 hour thing, often leaving little other time and probably more relevantly, headspace.

It's shit but it is what it is.

It's tricky fitting everything in once you have kids. I remember feeling sad when friends went into a young child bubble, but they all popped back out the other side. Some were similarly supportive of me popping into my young child bubble, others not. The ones who matter don't mind there might be months between texts and a year between catch-ups, they value the friendship and understand it's a long life as friends but a few short years of young children. It really isn't as simple as taking the friend to soft play, the toddler wants someone to play with too! Missing bedtimes is also a bigger deal than you might anticipate. It's up to you to ditch her entirely or wait until she has time for you again, your choice. Maybe wait and see how you feel in a few years when she pops out the other side rather than prematurely reacting though.

I think it's more a case of parents and non parents living different lives.

You can still keep in contact though.

I think in your position OP, I would be upset too, as it sounds like you have been very accommodating to the fact that she has a child- offering to do child friendly things or just pop round her house etc.

I have made a conscious effort with my child free friends since having DC to still meet up with them, but to be honest it only works if they are willing to make an effort to do child- friendly things, or wait until bedtime is done (and have flexibility as obviously it’s not guaranteed to be the exact same time each night) to see me. They also have to accept that my toddler may be in a lovely mood and allow us to chat, or I may be chasing after them constantly, dealing with tantrums, making sure they’re fed/napped/happy etc, which makes it hard to actually have an adult conversation. Sometimes just the thought of having to do this does put me off, as I feel bad for my friend that they probably aren’t having the most enjoyable time when they see me and I feel under pressure for my child to be ‘good’ so we can catch up. Maybe your friend feels this way too.

I try when I can to prioritise my child free friends for times when my partner is home to look after DC, so that I can see them without a toddler in tow, but this has to be planned in advance so as PPs have said, I don’t have the option to just ‘grab a coffee’ with someone off the cuff anymore.

It is different, but if both parties can compromise then I don’t see why friendships have to end. Sorry that yours has.

It sounds like she just doesn't want to be friends with you anymore.

I actively seek out non-parent friends, as I am not and never have been very interested in talking about my DC.