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?

Yes the reality is that for those early years its bloody difficult and sometimes impossible for parents to get out and have a social life on week days. That is why social lives tend to shift to weekends for a few years.

This isn't a failure to value friendships, just the brutal reality for many when juggling nursery/nanny/childminder times, children's activities, workplace demands and random acts of illness, late work demands, $RANDOM_CRAP etc. Those with the handy family member to babysit midweek are the exception, not the norm.

Its all a bit shit for everyone but you can either take it personally or acknowledge for a few years it will be generally difficult and maybe weekends are the way to go until the children are a bit older and life is more manageable. This isn't them "not showing up" its just the practical reality of life when working and caring.

I would focus midweek nights on friends who either don't have children or whose children are past that nightmare period during the week and use your weekend slots for those with children, accepting that overall you will see less of them for a few years.

Its worth hanging on in there at a lower level - the wheel turns and suddenly things get easier, then elderly parents may kick in, then they don't. I have a bunch of friends from school days - we have gaps of years with children (or not), working abroad, scattered jobs, ageing parents but we always kept in touch and in pre- retirement (retirement for some) we see a lot of each other despite being moderately scattered.

I'm glad we didn't give up on each other at the difficult times.

Of course it is. But it's also missing the OP's point.

🙄

It's not unreasonable to be upset that all the actual planning and arranging is on you. They should be pulling their weight there. The odd occasion of being too overwhelmed is reasonable, claiming to always be too stressed to do it isn't.

Some of the compromises you want them to make might actually just not be possible though. My husband can obviously have the kids for a weekend day or evening if we have no other conflicts. But we take each child to different weekend sport activity at the same time so we can't cover for each other there. My husband works late (so he can do morning drop off) so I couldn't do "early dinner in the city after work" even as a one-off due to wraparound pickup times.

Definitely feel free to push back and say if something is really inconvenient for you, though. If you already have other commitments, those should be respected and if that means the meet-up gets delayed, that's life.

This is my experience as the childfree friend as well. OP take the pressure off and focus on other friendships. If they come back later, you get to decide if they fit into your life at that point.
you deserve to have fun and feel valued in the meantime.

Where have I said OP isn't entitled to feel how she feels? I've repeatedly acknowledged that she is. You clearly havent even bothered to read what I wrote so I dont even know why you bothered to reply.

What I disagree with is the assumption that if her friends can arrange childcare for certain events, they can necessarily do so for a social engagement, and that their failure to do so proves they don't value her.

Having a partner doesn't automatically mean that person is available to look after the children. They have jobs and commitments too.

I mentioned my own circumstances because they illustrate why childcare isn't always easy to arrange for everyone - an assumption you continue making. My parents are dead and my husband's parents live on another continent. We had no grandparents to call upon. That's not me judging OP's situation, it's pointing out that not everyone has the same options. We arent privy to her friend's childcare arrangements are we?- so we have no idea actually how easy or challenging it may be for her friends to arrange childcare.

OP's feelings are valid, but that doesn't automatically mean her friends are at fault.

People can care about their friends and still struggle to make arrangements work. That's not saying everything has to be about parents, it's recognising that friendship requires consideration of everyone's circumstances.

You say once a month, and you also say you usually meet up at weekends. That’s quite a lot, really! I currently don’t have a weekend day that’s entirely free until December. If a friend asked me to meet up at the weekend within the next few weeks, I would have to try and squeeze them in around existing plans, and I wouldn’t be able to be very flexible.

You are presumably not their only friend, so they will have other friends who are in the diary as well as family. Then you’ll have kids events, clubs/training, birthday parties on top of that.

I have a friend who got the hump because in our little friendship group of 4, she was the only one who ever organised anything. The problem was that she expected things to be organised much more frequently than the rest of us did. We were all perfectly happy to meet up with her as often as she suggested, but it was just that if it were up to us we’d probably have been thinking to get in touch to arrange something more like every 5 or 6 weeks rather than every 3. So perhaps you just need to leave it to see how long it takes them to get in touch with you?

😅

I miss socialising after work so much. But the truth is that 5-8 window on a weekday is prime family duties. I share childcare well with my DH but that means I’m either leaving sharp to do kid stuff or working later to make time back. I’ve kept up with my childfree friends with a combination of weekend things lunches or later evening things. It’s not a choice, I can’t not pick my kids up or feed them their dinner.

I know right?

😆

You are vastly underestimating the tiredness that comes with small children.

I haven't slept a full night since I was 6 weeks pregnant. That's 3 years. I'm tired to the bone and between home life and a demanding career, I have zero left. Just nothing in the tank.

I did go out on Saturday evening with a friend. Drinks and dinner in central London. She went home and had a lie in. I went home and got 3 hours of sleep. It's Wednesday and I still haven't caught up. I want to die from exhaustion and I'm not going for an evening social again for at least 6 months. If it makes me a bad friend, so be it.

And most of my friends' DHs are fucking useless. They won't tell you that as they're too embarassed. We tell each other for a bit of support and sympathy but it has been a SHOCKING life lesson. Men are so often just fucking awful when kids are small.

Here to sympathise, OP. As a childfree, perpetually single person, it is often assumed that my plans are just more flexible, I have more time, I have more disposable income and is it is "just easier" for me to organise myself around others.

I have the added complication of living abroad, so seeing some friends is a weekend and an international flight. I do understand that I am more "portable" than young children.

HOWEVER, friendships are two-way, require upkeep on both ends, and sometimes ebb and flow. Are you able to tell your friends that you're feeling a bit taken for granted? Do they know that you'd like 1 in 3 meet ups to be convenient to you too? What happens if you drop the organisation and respond "no worries about dinner in town then, what do you suggest?"? Would you accept a few video call catch ups in place of face-to-face in order to keep the friendship going?

Do you have other childfree friends, hobbies or social groups that you can focus more on right now? I let some of my friendships ebb while their children were young because the children/family/husband took up so much space and time (and always took precedence) and I felt like an optional extra slotting into everyone else's free time. Focusing on more reciprocal friendships helped bridge the gap during those years, and obviously paid off in terms of actually growing different friendships.

I have no magic bullet, but I will keep my fingers crossed that your friends are just a bit overwhelmed and value your friendship enough to try to meet you halfway sometimes and find ways to keep it alive. If not, I wish you the very best of luck in forging new and different friendships with people who are currently able to invest equally.

Once your friends have children, you dont need more than one hand to count on as to how many times they they come over to your house, with or without kids over a ten year period!

I think loads of the responses talk about who's time is more valuable (or not more valuable) but the reality is it's a question of priorities which speaks more to the fact that early motherhood re-wires your brain in a way that is effectively brain damage.

Most mothers in their first few years are basically wired to be pretty selfish and put their kids first to what seems to an outsider a really ridiculous extent.

I think the error is to expect mates who have small kids to be 'rational' or 'balanced' in the way the rest of the human race would be. Of course it would be totally fair for the friends to compromise just a few times a year. Those friends would probably agree that. And before they had kids, and when they have older kids I'm sure they would / will (otherwise they are just rubbish mates). But when kids are small your brain just doesn't work like that.

Between the overwhelm of keeping other humans alive and the massive amount of brain chemistry happening in that time, it's completely normal for mums in the first 5 years to be, for want of a better term, rubbish friends. And I also think it's OK if we just acknowledge that and don't expect them to follow social norms.

Think if it this way - when my kids were small I'd have known logically and rationally that I wanted to maintain friendships, that it was fair to meet in town, that it was just a 20 min tube ride, that I could come back if something went wrong... but 100,000 years of biology was screaming in my head that if I left by kids they'd be eaten by a tiger. And that is a pretty loud voice.

People can care about their friends and still struggle to make arrangements work. That's not saying everything has to be about parents, it's recognising that friendship requires consideration of everyone's circumstances.

So we (mostly) agree. This by the way is far more reasonable than how you started.
She is recognising their circumstances, which is why she is the one to organise, change her own plans and make all the effort.

If that's from one person only, then the friendship isn't taking into account everyone's circumstance is it? She's already said that her weekend morning meet ups are trouble for her, (but not why, granted). It's certainly not taking everyone's feelings into account and sorry, not making an effort is the fault of someone not making an effort.

Oh, the childcare example wasn't needed, the OP already said they have partners. So the childcare as far as she makes out, is not a massive an issue once a year, let's face it, as the children's dads it shouldn't be!! What it is for everyone else isn't relevant?

I do think though the OP would be better served to talk to her friends about how she feels and give her friends a chance to say what they need too - maybe monthly meet up is just too much for them now, go for quality, not quantity. It will go one way or another but at least she will know her next move, there's no point in continuing feeling horrible the way she does.

I just don't think your "bingo" is correct. When in the trenches with small children (mine are secondary now and my time is a lot more flexible) I would not have arranged to go to the concert. Either dh or I would have gone to the relative's birthday alone, depending on whose relative it was. And I'd have probably taken a child with me to the medical appointment, or dh would have to have taken time off work.
For some mothers I knew, with helpful grandparents or siblings around, life seemed a lot freer. Or those whose toddlers would accept a babysitter without crying their eyes out.

One thing I think the OP should do is talk to her friends about how she is feeling - even just to say she notices no one else seems to make arrangements - and put the ball in their court more.

Ah, at last, you've climbed down off your high horse and arrived at the rather reasonable conclusion that OP should actually talk to her friends rather than assume the worst. Progress! 😆

Ah, the childish route, right? 😅

Right back atchya.
Nice to see you not blame the OP anymore. Progress.

(I'll take credit for that!) 😄

I do understand that it feels unfair to you but this phase will pass. When their children are teenagers, they’ll be self sufficient and left home alone instead of outsourcing care. I’d wait it out if they’re good friends. I lost my group of friends a couple of years after my first was born. They refused to change the time we met up straight after work on Tuesdays. They were only there for two hours, so if I turned up late they’d still leave! I didn’t work in the same city as them and had to drop my child home first. They didn’t have kids then and didn’t understand that my child comes first. They stopped inviting me! My kids are teenagers now and I could go to those after work drinks again, if they’re still on?! So I do think they were short sighted by freezing me out!

If you are genuinely fed up and want to stand back a bit, that’s also fine. If they’re asking too much of you then it’s okay to say that doesn’t work for me as it’s too late or far. Just keep dialogue open and friendly so they can reengage when their children are older. Perhaps it’s worth making new friends that better fit in with your lifestyle?

Yes, I am responding in kind after your insults about brain cells (made earlier in the thread)

I am presuming if you can dish it out, you can take it back 🤷‍♀️

Dogs with bones and mansplainers - not worth the text time.

Firstly sorry to hear about your struggles with fertility that have led to you being child free - I can imagine how much that hurts when you then feel this part of your social life rotates around others children.

IME, there will be parts of their routine that is non- negotiable and therefore expecting them to be able to meet you at these times is not reasonable, e.g. if they are still breast feeding or when they are waiting for partner to get home and take over childcare. I think you have to accept than apart from the odd exception (holiday, weekend away, special event), few parents would arrange a grandparent or babysitter just so they can leave early to meet friends for dinner.

However, groups of parents/Mums still manage to arrange to meet up so it is do-able without you always having to be the one to compromise. Making sure the compromises are shared where possible, e.g. taking it in turns to travel, meet in the middle for meals, would help. If you’re friends aren’t willing to do this and expect you to always travel, I’m afraid they don’t seem like good friends

Yeah you're right.

Unless every single one of your friends is a single parent with zero support, their excuses would wear thin. I am a mother, and also work full time. I also wish to maintain friendships. If I arrange something with friends, my DH steps in, and vice versa. And it is not always nighttime things (I don't actually like them much). I arrange weekend things or annual leave time.