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.

i think seeing your friend’s issues as trivial because you have a kid is rather callous.

I have a son with complex special needs which takes up most of my life.

When I’m with any friend childfree or not, I don’t judge their problems as less than mine.

If anything I’m thrilled to not be talking about myself and my son, and happy to be seen as a human separate from motherhood.

I find these threads really odd - I can’t help but wonder if I inhabit an entirely different planet to some of you.

Being a mum to small children is a humongous part of my life and it takes up much of my time and energy - especially as one has special needs. So naturally, it comes up a lot if I’m catching up with friends. My child-free friends don’t have any particular interest in the topic of childrearing, but they want to hear about what’s going on in my life because they love me. In the same way, I don’t have any interest in HR but I want to hear about what’s important to my HR manager friend and what’s going on in her life - which includes her work - because I love her. Do some of you really just view friends as people who talk about things that align with your interests rather than unique people who you love and care about?

I also note that, for all of OP’s protestations that she is indeed very busy, I cannot imagine any of my child-free friends having the time or interest to sit and stew over whether I was more interested in my mum friends than them. They are lovely, caring, busy people with exciting and full lives - I cannot imagine have noticed how often I spend time with my mum friends, let alone be bothered about it!

I’m always surprised by how people on mumsnet don’t actually seem to care about their friends as people - they just view them as accompaniments to going places, doing things… weird.

They’re just stating fact though aren’t they? For them, they’ve never known real love until they had children. It’s what they’ve experienced. Maybe it wouldn’t be the same for you, but for them it is. It’s the same for me too, the love I feel for my children is completely different to any other love I’ve experienced, they are my children.

She's offered to go to a soft play with them so the kid would be occupied anyway. What's the difference?

what you fail to understand ,and I do hope you don't have kids, is that being a parent means you want more than the bare minimum for your kids.

It's rather sad when adults have no hobbies, do no sport and no activities, but it's neglectful to do nothing for your children. Why bother having them in the first place if you are not interested?

Yes I drop friends how instantly because of DECADES of things that have been said to me by either pregnant women or those with children. Both online and in person. I don’t want to be a better friend anymore. I’ve done that. I would have liked others to be a better friend to me in return over the years. And guess what? It never happened. But they have kids right so that’s FINE! They are exempt from being nice and we must be understanding at all times to those with children. I however should just accept any and every awful thing said to be over the years because I just DON’T UNDERSTAND!

I think the first thing a woman with a child said that I was a bit 🤨 about was when I was about 18. She was early 20s and had just had her first child. The conversation was about heaven/hell and the afterlife. There was about 8 of us at someone’s house. She said she was glad she had her child early as at least that meant she was now guaranteed to go to heaven as she’d “turned her life around” and god would understand and forgive her past behaviour now she was a mother. The rest of us though….. apparently the other way to be guaranteed to go to heaven was to have a child like her. We were all just selfish for wanting to enjoy our youth apparently.

Over the years it’s been a variation of the eye rolling if I’ve ever mentioned being tired or busy. God forbid I once just mentioned that I was irritated because I was woken up by fireworks at 2am and then again by builders next door at 6am. The reply I got was “seriously. You’re seriously going to complain about that when I’ve got 2 kids?”

At a dinner party once when a friend of a friend turned up last and the only seat left was next to me she said “can I swap with someone? I don’t really want to sit next to someone who doesn’t understand motherhood.”

Online there’s been various versions of “you don’t/will never know what true love is. You’re selfish as you’ve never had to put anyone else first. All parents are default non selfish just by having children apparently. Aren’t you worried about being lonely in old age? Who will look after you? I hope you’re not expecting your nieces to look after you. That would be so selfish.”

People on here think non parents should pay extra tax. Because of all the non selfish parents having kids to look after them. There was a thread yesterday about how parents should have priority EVERY YEAR for Christmas holidays at work. Non parents should just accept they need to work every Christmas. In fact I’ve been asked in real life why I would care about being off for Christmas as I don’t have a “real family” anyway. Need to tell my husband, siblings, parents, nieces and nephews that they don’t count as real family.

My in laws always expect my husband and I to stay at family gatherings to clean up. None of the other siblings have to because “they have kids so they are tired/need to get home/do enough cleaning up already.”

A friend once said to be “how would you have a kid anyway? You and your husband are always staying up late and sleeping in at weekends and going out to various non child friendly things. A kid wouldn’t exactly fit in with your lifestyle would it??” Well…. The reason we do those things is because, we can. Should I start setting an alarm at 5am for no reason at weekends? Going and sitting at soft play? Is that what parents did before they became parents? Or did they adjust their life accordingly when it happened?

As it happens, I’ve been trying to have a child for a decade. I’ve spent thousands and thousands on IVF. I’ve had multiple miscarriages. Yet the comments keep coming. Even from people that know. “Well everything happens for a reason. You obviously just weren’t meant to be a mother for some reason.” Cool. I’ll say that to someone with a disabled child should I? Well there’s obviously a reason your child is disabled. For whatever reason you obviously weren’t meant to have a fully abled child. I get told how “lucky” I am to have so much disposable income. Yup. That 50k credit card bill for IVF leaves me with SO MUCH spare money I just don’t know what to do with it all! I’m so lucky not to have the worry of kids. I should be thankful for my infertility! Having kids “isn’t all it’s cracked up to be! Haha” said by someone pregnant with their 4th.

So yeah maybe I am psychotic. I don’t really care at this point. The amount of things I’ve had said to me over the years i would rather just take the risk and drop friends instantly rather than have to keep smiling through the insensitive and sometimes terrible things they may say.

Telling someone they don’t know what real love is sounds so condescending.

I had people say that to me while going through infertility and I still don’t understand the point.

Well I certainly wouldn't have tolerated it even when my own kids were a similar age.

Mind you I didn't do " mum" friends. I certainly didn't want to talk about bloody kids ( including my own) when socializing.strangely I managed to keep my child free friends. In fact most of my friends remained child free and I remained friends with then until they died. One of my best school friends did have kids but I think we maybe met each others kids 6 times ( all in 30s now) as always met up without them and relished our freedom to chat about other stuff instead

I

Don’t get this at all - it only takes one adult to put kids to bed so I go out at least 3 evenings a week even working full time and having little kids - can see childfree friends or friends who have kids and also escape any time Really 🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️ unless your a single parent I don’t get why you can’t do similar

With a group of Mums who had their eye on their children.

But how do you have the energy for that? 😂

I can’t speak for everyone, obviously, as all relationships will be different. However, when I got married and pregnant shortly thereafter, two of my best friends were in their early 30s and still single. It was quite difficult to juggle chats about terrible dates with very small kids on little sleep, time and space. Personally, they weren’t helpful when they visited, they didn’t seem awfully interested in me or my kids and had zero understanding about why I might not now want to go out late night dancing (to be fair I still don’t, think i had outgrown that by then and kids were the trigger but not the reason). I felt like our lives had little in common. They presumably felt like I was buried in my babies and very boring. I’m sure both things are true. I made loads of new friends through kids stuff and at the time they were great to share similar experiences with as they were going through the same thing at the same time whereas my single friends were not. Some of those have stuck as lifelong friends as we share an awful
lot more in common than reproduction.

we drifted apart and that’s ok. We had less and less in common over time and I didn’t have the bandwidth to keep up the effort with people who seemed so disinterested in what I was doing and so keen for me to be the fun party friend that I was when I was younger. I’d changed and therefore so did our friendship.

Sounds like hell lol

I made the mistake of going to one of those places once Never went again

I had energy for it. But I was younger. I think if id started breeding in my late 30s/40s I might not have

I also note that, for all of OP’s protestations that she is indeed very busy, I cannot imagine any of my child-free friends having the time or interest to sit and stew over whether I was more interested in my mum friends than them. They are lovely, caring, busy people with exciting and full lives - I cannot imagine have noticed how often I spend time with my mum friends, let alone be bothered about it!

Same! My childfree friends are interesting and have better things to do than rank who spends more time with who.

All of this.

I think you're forgetting that many parents work now, so there is less time during the week for activities and family time - this pushes everything into the weekends.

Life has changed a lot, in general, since the 90s.

Not everyone is the same. I have a job with a long commute - I can't go out during the week any more and get up at 5am. That's being middle aged, children are irrelevant!

I had all mine in my 20's and certainly don't have energy to be out 3 evenings a week on top of work, parenting and household stuff.

Not at all - my parents both worked 40-50 hours a week in the 90's and I never once got home from school before 5pm (was in after school club).

This is me too.

I haven't lost any of my childfree friends since having DC. I actually find them more valuable than ever.

I havent ditched any accomodating childfree friends, Im still good friends with lots of them. Its the ones who expect me to continue along as if I dont have children that I struggle to work with.

You have flexible jobs, lots of money and masses of support. Not everyone has those luxuries.

Sorry that's been your experience, with how many friends who now have kids?

It's not been my experience since having my DS but what I've found harder is that I moved cities. Some close friends have taken turns to come up and visit, but us going down is harder with a toddler, I've got a licence now but still not driven on the motorway (need to sort it) and just the volume of people who we want to keep up with. When I first moved up here, we were actually renting a car every weekend and travelling down to visit at least one or more set of friends, trying to keep up with everyone.

Most of my friends are amazing and just understand there's a limit to how frequently either one of us can travel. I completely get they've got busy jobs and social lives and their other friends and family to see as well. Only a couple of friends I have noticed just stopped asking me questions about myself entirely - they're more than happy to post in a group chat or answer questions I asked them about their lives but completely ignored anything I said about myself, photos of my DS, or have ignored messages I've sent them individually. So I've thought sod this then, I've not got the time to invest in chasing them and they actually have no idea of some major life events on my end.

Also - are they seeing mum friends out of convenience? I have at least one mum friend from a baby group who to be totally honest I don't think we'd be good friends if we didn't have kids, lovely person but just not that much to say. But she's the most available on a weekday and we take the kids to a toddler group together. Sometimes you do need mum friends to just bounce off/get advice/hear from someone who actually gets it. It's not the same as you kowtowing to parents just because you don't have kids.

You do come across very bitter towards parents in your post, could this friend be picking up on that? Or if you seemed grumpy about going to a soft play maybe she's thought she should wait until she's got someone to watch the kids before she asks you to hang out again?

Little kids yes. But when they are older there are a lot of sports and other activities that take up a lot of time driving them around. I still go out, but one night a week, not 3.