The only child free friend in the group, always asked to compromise or organise for others.

[RooRooRu]

I sadly don't have kids. I have 2 close friends who have young and young(ish) kids. We have been friends for roughly 10 years. I completely understand that when you have kids your priorities change, and things don't stay the same as when you had less ties. We have always been pretty good at making an effort to see each other, but I feel the effort is now resting firmly with me to organise our catch ups and for me to compromise on where / what / when we do it to fit in with family life.
The time we meet always fits around nap / routine / weekend sport, I'm often asked to rearrange any pre-existing commitments to accommodate them.
It's often left to me to arrange and book what and where we are doing, because after family life and work they 'just need someone to make the decision for them'
The location is always closer to where they live to make it convenient, not close to where I work or live. Never early dinner in the city after work for example, because that's too hard for them but easy for me.
AIBU and I just don't get it because I've not had to manage the juggle?

this one

Yes sorry, I had no family help and a dinner in the city after work finish time , 6ish, would have been impossible for years. And now I have sporty teenagers, weeknights are still challenging to get out. Weekends are busy with multiple sports ferrying. School holidays usually a bit easier.

I had my child when I was young, so by the time my friends had theirs, mine was around 15. So I know what you mean.

I have a cousin who never had children, and she used to do all the organising and planning - and then simply wouldn't turn up. I had arranged childcare and would turn up to the venue, only for her to ghost me, and this was repeated. Do they ever let you down in this way? Do you have fun once you're actually out with them? If not, I would gently withdraw from the friendships and accept that they now have other priorities.

You have to decide ifyou still want to be friends in ten years. If so, then yes, you make the compromises now. If not, find some other friends.

They're not demanding you rearrange your plans, meeting up with them isn't a summons, but if they have child-related commitments that can't be moved (like sports etc) then it makes sense to rearrange yours

They can't be arsed to organise to meet up with you. This happened to me too, but my friends don't even have kids. Stop organising. You can either wait until they notice, or explicitly tell them it's someone else's turn.

Do prepare to make new friends, I joined a sports club with an active social side, so now all I need to do is show up to the parties/dinners/days our. It's great.

I'm sorry to say but your post kinda underlines that you dont get the juggle. Having the head space to arrange social events when I'm working and have small children with their own timetables and commitments sometimes just isn't going to happen

YANBU, but it is just going to happen I'm afraid. I think if you want to keep seeing them you are going to have to carry on.

The trick is not minding.

I get what you mean but I think you need to get better at saying no if it doesn’t work for you. If they have a child who has to be picked up from nursery by a set time, and if they are travelling into the city maybe their partner needs to rearrange work in order to collect the child, (and maybe it’s not even possible for their partner to rearrange work depending on their job - maybe they can’t cancel on clients or patients etc) it’s reasonable for that not to work for them. But it’s also reasonable for you to say no to going to theirs if that’s not what you want to do.

Do they work in the same city?

That makes absolutely no sense. The OP is the childfree one in this scenario. If her friends who are parents have gone to the effort of arranging childcare, surely they’re less likely to stand her up — it would be a waste of a babysitter,

It depends whether you're prepared to be in it for the long haul. Give it ten years and their children will be teenagers and doing their own thing; 20 years and they'll be young adults and your friends will be rediscovering their social lives.

It is a tedious phase for the childfree friend (I'm childfree and it was like this when I was in my 30s). I started socialising more with women older than me whose children were at the teenage/young adult stage as it was hopeless with women in their 30s who had young families.

I've been both sides as took us a while to have our child via ivf. So I experienced working round parents and then being the parent. If you want to see your pals you do have to compromise, as bringing a child out during nap time would be no fun for anyone, and adding lots of journey time on and needing to get back for lunch/dinner/naps etc would also he very tricky. If they're in child care or school, again restrained by that. The parents are also inconvenienced by their children's schedules believe me lol, life is now round their needs and believe me they will miss those days when things were freer.

An early evening dinner in the city nearest you would mean keeping it short for getting back for bedtimes etc, whereas I guess you have that freedom to go home at your leisure. It sounds like you wanted/want children which adds an extra emotive element though so I do understand how you feel, but try to separate that and I commend you for keeping in touch so we'll with your friends who have children.

Aren't you both doing the same thing though.
Dinner after work suits your circumstances.
Takeaway later suits theirs.

Maybe there is no right or wrong. It's not just young children that can affect plans. Work, caring for elderly parents or finances can all change friendships and plans.

I suppose you just have to decide if they are worth compromising reasonably for because they should meet you in the middle also.

I can see both sides but as someone with 4 small dc, I now compromise less than I used to. I rarely go for dinner or drinks after work - I don’t want to miss bedtime. Occasionally I will but if all the meet ups you suggest are drinks after work, I can see why they say no.

If you want to stay friends long term, you might need to do the heavy lifting for a while. How old are the children/ do they work in the same city?

This is such a good point.

As many of the women (sadly) do all the mental load in their partnerships.

So yes, when my kids were young, for me to go to dinner in a restaurant after work would require...

My friend:
Book restaurant
Show up to restaurant

Me:
Make sure husband knew he was on pickup and send a million reminders
Book kids into relevant after-school / late on nursery
Leave the car in a certain location to facilitate husband getting from his work to the car to do double drop off
Get food in and pre-cook kids' dinner day before
Make sure food in for husband dinner as he didn't often cook for himself
Organise pyjamas and bedtime stuff
Pre-pack school / nursery stuff for the next day
Anticipate everything that will be needed like various snugglies etc in leave them out in sight. Still field 36 calls during night out from husband who can't find the right shampoo / blanket / pyjamas
Show up at restaurant
Have a great time but regret it as soon as I got home to a house that would be chaos and getting woken up 879 times in the night

^^ when looked at this way, 'meeting central' doesn't really feel like a balance in terms of each side's input.

Are all your friends with partners/dads? Then you're not being unreasonable. Surely once in a while dads can do the care so you ladies can actually go out and have a catch up? Why is everything down to the mums?

I can see if early dinner is an issue if someone's at work due to longer travel and childcare/school runs but surely meeting up shouldn't be such a task for them otherwise. While things change a lot when have kids, if people really do want to do something they tend to find a way and that's the same with suggestions of doing things instead of leaving it all to you. Maybe time to try and make a new circle of mates.

Your husband is a bit useless isn't he? One night and can't manage without you spoon feeding him everything and then he still can't cope?

But sometimes the OP will have commitments that can’t be moved, like a family birthday celebration. Parents aren’t the only ones with immovable commitments.

I actually do think YABU to an extent. I know how it feels though because I was the child free friend for a little while but I was happy to fit in with their routines. I didn’t ever consider cancelling other plans or doing all the organising though - you should stop doing both of those.

Parents of young children generally struggle to manage going out for an early dinner/over bedtime (it’s really not worth all the logistics for me, I maybe miss bedtime a couple of times a year for things that are one offs) and often naps and children’s routines aren’t as flexible as you’d imagine.

I don’t generally mess with my oldest routine as it throws him for a while and makes the day a bit miserable. My youngest is far more flexible but if I was your friend and we met up with my overtired child because I’d pushed their nap time it’d be bloody miserable for us all. It’s just life with young children!

To be honest a dinner in the city with my 3 friends would mean that it wasn't just me arranging to meet with my other 3 friends. It would mean organising the time for 4 girlfriends and their 4 husbands who will be picking up the slack with the kids that evening. Not unreasonable, but organising and making sure the schedules for 8 people fit nicely together is a bigger undertaking than most child free friends realise. That's before get to the point of "where shall we meet" as we all live in various parts of London.

Going to dinner after work for me personally means arranging to finish earlier than usual, rushing back to where I live to pick up the kids from school, take them home, give them dinner (by which time my husband may or may not have come home from work as he works longer hours) and then rush back out to the city. The alternative is that I ask ask my husband to leave his work early (and not get paid for those hours) so that I can stay in the city "for a quick after work dinner". This will then cost my family the price of the dinner plus the loss of income because my husband had to leave work early. It's really not that simple.

Were you friends when you all worked in the city, and now you live miles apart? Realistically going into the city for a ‘quick dinner after work’ is not really going to work for someone who’s no longer working and lives 20 miles out with young children, for example. You need to find new times/activities that suit you all. Likewise it shouldn’t always be a takeaway at theirs.

It is hard when you’re in the trenches, though.

That’s what I was going to say @Happyjoe, haven’t your friends got husbands or partners who can sort the kids @RooRooRu?
I think it’s important to keep friendships going and let’s face it there’s more to a woman than just being someone’s Mummy.

I was in danger of becoming a doormat because I was the only one with kids and the default organiser and the three of them who had kids (eleven between them between 1997-2006!) expected me to organise everything. The straw that broke the camels back was when they all organised a spa weekend away without the kids, and without me because "we'd just be talking about children and you wouldn't understand". Maybe so, but finding out about it after the fact was really hurtful.

So I pulled back - really pulled back. I stopped organising things, joined sports clubs with a social side (running and tri are good for this), made a point of making friends with other women who didn't have kids - of all ages. Nearly 30 years later, those are the women who are still my friends, whilst the three who had the kids are women I only see at Christmas (and they still try to get me to organise it all and have it at my house!).

Honestly, life is so much harder with kids. The effort required to meet up with friends when you have young kids is so much more than when you're child free. You're recognising how much work you put into meeting but not how much they put in.

Edit to say you shouldn't be cancelling existing plans though, you just meet at a time you're all free at a later date