Why do so many mums ditch their childfree friends?

[Sishirunak70]

Especially when those friends are accommodating, take an interest in your child/children and willing to work around you?
Why do you now only associate with other Mums and think that they 'just won't get it?'

Why do you let them disappear from your life since you became a mother? Whilst I understand it's hard, it's not impossible.
There are far too many martyrs around who believe they're the only person to have ever given birth, everything must now revolve around them and that nobody else can ever be tired or busy, except for them.

Or every 3 months...
Tbh a lot if my childless fruends are at least as busy as we are as a family. Just with other stuff.

This is the opposite experience to what I had, I was the first of my friends to have a baby at 25 out of a group of 5 ranging from 25-30 and they all seemed super excited- hosted a baby shower for me etc.
Once she was born they would get annoyed that I couldn't drop everything to go out with them when they text me at 5pm suggesting dinner and drinks out etc. My husband worked away at the time and I had a tiny baby. By the time she was 6 months old none of them wee speaking to me anymore as I 'prioritised my baby over them'... well obviously!

I don't know your specific friends, I'm just commenting on my own situation. However meeting my ( very cherished ) child free friends from university takes quite a bit of coordination and effort and I feel guilty or awkward about asking to do child friendly activities.
Whereas local mum friends I don't have as deep a relationship with I see a lot more often as I can just text and say I'm heading to soft play if anyone wants to join.

Maybe they are struggling and the only thing that helps is to share the experience with others going through the same thing. I'm sure it's not personal.

God, the replies on this thread!

OP, I totally get why you’d be upset at your friends no longer being bothered about you, especially if they were very close friends before.

Mum here and honestly I prefer my childfree friends, or the times when I can see my friends without their kids. Can’t stand all this hanging about in softplay crap!!

I’ve still maintained all my friendships with my childfree friends and always will.

The truth is as another poster said, some women make being a mum their whole identity and therefore need their friendships to reflect that too. Thankfully there’s lots of us around who don’t do that and don’t automatically assume our lives are busier/ time is more valuable than a childfree persons.

It’s upto you whether you want to continue to make the effort and just accept they might be a bit crap for a while whilst their children are young, or whether you sack them off completely and find new friendships. No one could blame you for the latter, however they may also become better friends to you again once their children are a bit older so may be worth holding out.

I think most friendships are of proximity and things in common.Parenting young children is a different season of life that takes priority in that friends life, equally a single friend could need to prioritise their work .It's not impossible to maintain friendships with people in different seasons but sometimes its the demands of the season that makes thing harder to do. Having said that,we modern technologies in communication its doable.

I've never done this or known anyone who has done it so I don't know what or if there is a general reason for it. Based on your last paragraph, which is very scathing, this could be more of a personal issue. Maybe something about you makes people think you're not worth the effort once they have less time for friendships.

You keep mentioning busyness, but it’s not being busy as in having multiple engagements in a day for example, it’s that when you have a child you are now responsible for that child and every aspect of their life. So making a meal you have to decide what you will like but also what will be suitable for them, going to get the food maybe with a baby or toddler or multiple with you which can be stressful in itself, prepare dinner with them around, make sure it’s cut up suitably then help them eat, clear then up after as well as the usual tidying. Having children adds a whole other dimension to simple tasks. Add that to everything in the day and that’s why they’re busy and tired. Children are your whole life when you have them, you love them like you’ve never experienced before before it just is something no you’ve never experienced until you’ve had them.

They take over everything and they’re hard work. It just is easier to meet with your friends who have children. You can talk about them, they understand when something doesn’t go right and your children are occupied and have a play date so it kills two birds with one stone and you don’t have to have another social arrangement for the day so your children can have a play date. Having the brain space, energy or working out the time to socialise with friends who don’t have children is hard. I keep up with those who really mean something to me but others I’ll admit I have let drop. Luckily most of my friends have children and we’re now closer as a result.

I spend time with people I like, regardless of their child bearing status.

rather than castigating an entire group of people op, which doesn’t make you come across very well, maybe start again with recognising there are one/a few mums who’ve dropped you, cut out all the generalised ranting, and maybe people can help you.

It’s harder when the children are very little OP. Once they’re school-aged I’m sure your friends will have more time to think about themselves, their hobbies and their social lives. Cut them a bit of slack until then.

Your completely right but you'll never get anyone on hear to admit it 😂

The difference is that people with no children are busy because they want to be and people with children are busy because they have to be.

How many nights a week after work are you out being a drop up pick up service? Things that cant be moved because you don’t schedule them and they are not yours to say I won’t go this week I’ll do something else?

how many of your weekends are spent ferry kids round? Visiting grandparents? Trying to shop, clean, get uniforms ready.

it’s not that you’ve been dropped it’s that the priorty and use of free time has changed and we haven’t got time to see you as often, we haven’t got time to spend an hour on the phone.

it gets easier when the kids get a bit older. But until my kids can drive I needed 6 days out of 7 to get them to activities and that trumps everything else

People with children are single mindedly obsessed with their child. They want and need to talk about the minutae of its movements. They make friends in the early days through groups and clubs and find like minded mums with whom they can discuss poo texture , then weaning, then potty training, then schools.
When they meet up with non mummy friends it’s discussing topics they haven’t given headspace to for years and the child needs are always a priority so they won’t listen to anything you say or will provide limited responses.
it’s worked for me to completely sack off my friends who are parents for about 5 years minimum. As PPs have said they are too busy and have other friends who are more in their wavelength so expect little and hope to be pleasantly surprised.

Genuinely, I was often embarrassed to meet with my childfree friends, because I was super exhausted, felt like I could never complete a sentence or thought and it wasn’t fair to the other person to not have a proper conversation. I often made plans and then had to cancel them because I’d had a horrible sleep, etc. And then I stopped making plans.
I had a friend express to me (when my child was about 3) how angry she was that I disappeared from her life. I apologised and tried to explain - there were extenuating health circumstances in my child’s case - but I felt like we didn’t really resolve it.
18 months down the track, her child now 11 months old, she apologised to me saying how tough she’s found the first year and the time she had to socialise she spends with the 2 other new mums within a street or two of her flat.
5 years on, we’re back to seeing eachother more and we’re both so grateful to have eachother in our lives.
If you can, hold out that your mum friends are probably desperate for your company again, and will be extremely happy to see you on the other side of the fog of tiny children.

In truth, when they hang out with other mum friends, I think the friendship angle is secondary to what is actually happening and that’s the parenting. It’s basically parenting with some chat, not a friendship with children happening to be there.

It was nice of you to arrange a soft play meet up, to accommodate them, but they might not think to contact you to make plans because the thinking is not ‘what friend would I like to see’ but ‘what can I do with the kids and who else might want to do it’ (and their friends with kids are coming at it from same angle).

My goodness! Have you ever let slip that you thought you'd bought their friendship forever? That might be a clue as to why they're not keen to see you.
It might make you feel a bit less hard done by if you grow up a bit and understand life (and other people) don't stand still. Things do not stay the same. It's time you
moved on. It can't be good for you to spend your life feeling so bitter.

I don't really have many parent friends because I don't like kids and don't like being around them. That said, I do have a couple of friends who are mothers who love being around me because I am so far from being child centred. I wouldn't want to be friends with the people you describe anyway.

You sound horrendous. I would ditch you

I have a friend who has been distant since I became a mum. She claims she’s busy but she works part time and is child free. I work full time and have a toddler and I’m a single mum! She only comes back to me when she wants emotional support.

They come back when the kids are older. I think it is just that babies and toddlers are full on - you can't just send them off into town with a £20 note.

I had friends who were very glad to have some adult talk, but we still had to fit visits around picking children up from school etc. And it simply was easier for me to travel to them, as I don't have to pack nappies, change of clothes, car seats, etc, etc.

Now we're in our 50s, and the kids are secondary/uni/working, meet-ups are usually easier, but adults are generally busy, and with my three groups of women friends, we're often booking a weekend months in advance because of working round work, conferences, elderly parents, other family,weekend hobby classes, etc, etc. Adults have busy lives.

I found it the other way round. Stop getting invited out. People are suddenly to busy to chat. If you invite them over or to meet for coffee. They will let you know...

I hardly see my best friends these days. One other of the group has kids but they're much older so she's not relying on babysitters or anything any more. They all see each other more than I see any of them so maybe we could turn your argument around?
Except I'm busy with my kid, friend is busy with a job that's a lot of evenings and weekends, another busy setting up a side hustle..everyone's busy in their own way. None of us are taking it personally.

You’ve posted about this before, haven’t you, OP? I remember the specific detail about the soft play coffee, you travelling to them, and feeling hard done by because you’d shelled out a lot of money on hen parties, weddings, showers etc. Honestly, try to let go of the resentment and focus your attention elsewhere in friendship terms. You also sound as if you’re generalising hugely from one single group of friends to something being a general rule. I only had DS at 40, over a decade after many of my friends had children, and they didn’t ‘drop’ me.

Secondly the chat isn’t quite on the same wavelength. They’re going on about some dumb bloke messing them about for the umpteenth time, or some trivial office gossip that one time would've been ultimately interesting but now that all sinks into insignificance. You fall in love with your child and you are obsessed with every aspect of their being - it’s hard to suppress that for any length of time to give a shiny shit about Emma-from-HR’s hen do drama.

So you do think that people without children lead silly, trivial, meaningless lives compared to yours?