I'm not the friend she needs right now

[TransformationChynaDoll]

I have a dear friend who I have known for over ten years. Due to circumstance and personal choice, our lives are very different now.
She is a SAHP and I work full time out the house in a busy, unpredictable role. My child is in school. She homeschools.
I think it wasn't always so obvious but we're just not managing to meet up much at all anymore. I'm not home until 7 each night, her little one goes to bed at 6.30.

Weekends we always have class birthday party's or family things or I'm just exhausted. If we do plan to meet up, she'd rather go early in the morning but we don't get up until late as we've had to rush out the house for breakfast club five days of that week.
I feel it's very frustrating for her as I'm never around. I don't have a partner and so meeting up on our own is impossible, and I use all my annual leave on school holidays, when we usually go away.
She has made a lot of comments about not wanting to miss any of her child's life, and that she would never force her child into childcare, but I have no choice financially. I have also made comments that she hasn't liked about how school is beneficial for teaching resilience and that I think it's the 'least worst' option. Our disagreements have got quite heated, as obviously we both think we're doing the best thing for our children. We're both single parents and have made different choices based on our idea of what's most important.
I mostly feel like I let her down a lot by not being there much. I can often only spend about one day a month with her, when she really wants me to be there on a weekly basis.
Does anyone else struggle with making a friendship work when you obviously have very different ethos's about parenting and priorities?

Once a month is plenty to see each other, but I do think you might be making some excuses.

"Little things like Saturday is the only day I can food shop, clean my house, go to the bank to pay in a cheque, drop things to charity shops, buy birthday presents!"

Surely you don't need to pay a cheque in, go to the charity shop and buy presents every week? Charity shop and present buying once a month and I can't remember the last time I paid in a cheque. You just scan it on your phone to pay it in.

Try and be firm with the time you can offer. Say you can do a Saturday in 2 weeks time for lunch from 11-2. If you have her to yours you can still do odd jobs such as putting washing on while she's there. If you give her times you are free and if she declines, you won't feel so bad for being the one who can't commit. Hopefully she will have the flexibility to fit around you but it does need to work both ways.

We are an extremely busy family like yours, as are a lot of our friends, but friends are important so we try to fit dates in in advance.

It sounds like you do care about the friendship so hope it works out and you manage to come to a compromise that works for both of you.

Do you feel like you want to see her, or that you've grown apart?

If you do, I'd make time - yes you might have a class party/family stuff on a weekend, but is it beyond the realms of possibility to get together on a Saturday early evening for a take away with the kids?

If she's insisting it has to be early morning you'll have to just tell her "I'm free at X time on Saturday, do you want to catch up?" If she says no then you have done your bit