Friends with kids when childfree

[NoKidding]

Do you find it hard when kids are almost always the main topic of conversation? Am always interested in my friends’ lives, whether that’s family, work, travel, pets… but it can be hard when kids are the main topic all the time, or they are physically there when trying to talk. I think being childfree is unusual amongst most of my friends, which doesn’t help…!

I do always ask about my friends/family/colleagues children, look at photos and remember things about them to ask follow up questions next time we talk, but some people are too much like you ask how they are, they reply how their children are. You ask what they’ve been doing, they reply with what their children are doing.

It’s also hard to maintain friendships if the friend is bitter about being a parent eg you ask if they watched XYZ/saw XYZ in the paper and they start being snappy about not having time to watch tv/read/whatever because of the kids and they take out that frustration on you. One woman at work is like this about everything and everyone just tries to avoid her now because she is horrible to everyone about anything they do or say using the fact she’s a mum to justify it but she does it to people who’s re also mums so…

It’s much easier to be friends with people who love being a parent actually because they respect my decision to be childfree much more for some reason they never ask me why I don’t want kids or try and tell me I’m wrong or anything like that. The parents who are regretful always try and convince me to have children and take out their frustrations on me. Easy to avoid when they’re friends by ending the friendship, harder when they’re family or colleagues!

I don't mind the kids talk. It's a big part of my friends' lives so if it's important to them then I will show an interest. But what I find hard is talking in front of the children. You can't really have adult conversations in front of little ears. So conversations are always...superficial? Lite? Lacking depth? I don't know. You always have to censor what you're saying. Can't talk about problems or issues. I'd rather meet up without the children.

Most of my friends with kids relish not talking about their kids, luckily!

They can just be them, and not mum-them. One friend, however- oh my god, I get every tiny detail and I admit I do get bored.

But it's the same as another friend who talks about work in detail, using acronyms and work-talk I have no knowledge of. Just as tedius!

It's not that I mind it, I just struggle with appropriate things to say, other than 'Oh, that's nice' sort of thing. And I'm hopeless at knowing what to say to children themselves (small children, I mean, older ones get my standard adult small-talk).

It tends to result in me falling out of a conversation while the parents excitedly discuss schools or whatever.

Over the years my friends have evolved into friends who are also child free, friends with children who like having adult only, limited discussion about children time and more casual friends who I meet up via a hobby and it’s a big enough group to avoid the bores (not just about children) by not sitting too near them. The child-obsessed ones have faded out of my life as we have nothing in common.

Thanks all. Agree particularly about having conversations in front of little ears, or toddlers interrupting a lot!

Also true that it can be hard to know what to say in response to info about children, as it’s such a different life to the one I have.

And I’m also not good at knowing what to say to kids!

What are adult only topics?
Or do you just mean more ’heavy stuff’ about life?

I let a couple of friendships go fairly recently because it all became about their kids. An hour or two of whatsapp video calls a fortnight was 99% about the consistency of their kids' poos/teething/burbling. I was always expected to do the 7 or 8 hour round trip to see them and then they'd be too busy holding a baby to buzz you into the flat for several minutes. Then the visit would consist of a walk to the park to get the toddler to sleep, and then more talk about them. I came to absolutely dread speaking to them.

I have other friends with kids who talk about them but haven't made motherhood their entire personality, so know this isn't universal.

I also don't enjoy talking to parents while little kids are present. It becomes: "Yes, I read about - Dylan, stop it. Do you want to play with that toy? Do you want Teddy? - I read that and thought - Oh, he's just bitten me! Can you stop climbing on that, it's dangerous" etc.

I think this is more prevalent in new parents but definitely know some people who still do it about their adult children. I'm a parent but I'm also me and I really value time with friends when I'm someone other than mummy. It may get better as their off spring grow but it might just be they are not your tribe. Could you suggest meeting when they have childcare to see how that goes?

Fortunately I'm past the age of having contemporaries with small kids, but the other day there was a pregnant woman at the knitting group I attend and the whole conversation soon revolved around birth, breastfeeding, infant care. I sat thinking about this board and getting on with my knits, because there was sod all I had to say on that subject!

I was wondering how knitting chat would turn into breastfeeding chat, then I realised, I have a friend (who I do love, although it won’t sound like it 😬) who can turn any conversation into one about childbirth/breastfeeding/her children, to the extent even her friends who are parents tell her to give it a rest. If anyone has seen the Big Bang theory episode where howard turns every conversation around to him going to space, she’s Howard! She turned a conversation about tights around to her being a mother 😂 She could definitely turn a conversation about knitting into a conversation about breastfeeding!

LOL! Usually the conversation at knitting is general, and more likely to feature older women complaining about their utterly useless, stupid husbands (which is also tedious, since that's something else I gladly avoided). It wasn't even the doing of the pregnant woman so much in this instance, more the other mothers talking about it. Interesting to them, certainly, but the whole thing was wryly amusing for me!

I just ask about their children, and nod politely for 2-3 hours. I figured once the kids are grown, we can go back to talking about other things.

Meeting up with friends on a one to one basis is fine. Yes, they'll talk about their kids for a lot of the time but I am interested in hearing how the kids are getting on and I find that conversations tend to be more balanced; I'll talk also about things going on in my life and when it is clear that either one of us has nothing to contribute - whether that's in response to me talking about my work, or a friend talking about their kids, we move onto a different topic. That's just natural human conversation behaviour.

Meeting up with kids in tow is more challenging for the reasons described - I tend to look on those, not as oportunities to catch up with a friend but to see the child. Conversations are definitely more superficial and that can be frustrating but usually only for a few years and then it's easier to catch up while kids are doing activities or with babysitters/grandparents. I say usually, I have one freind who still brings her son everywhere - he's nearly 16 and clearly finds it as frustrating as I do. Conversations can be difficult though - I always seem to trip up on saying the wrong things in front of little ears even when I'm trying hard to be careful. Tbf though, I've seen other friends who have children being told off by other parents for this sort of thing so it's not a clueless childfree thing! Recently I was in conversation with a friend about films while her 9 year old daughter was nearby. I made a vague reference to a scene in which a main character dies. I didn't go into any details, I literally said "I was surprised when X died - didn't see that one coming", to be met with a shocked look and pointedly told that we can't talk about this in front of her daughter. Fair enough but in the hour preceding this, friend had spoken in a lot of detail about her mother's cancer treatment and prognosis (not good) and about someone she knew who had committed suicide. I had made a judgement about suitable topics due to that.

The most frustrating situation for me, is getting getting with a group of friends whether their children are there or not. Don't get me wrong, I'm talking about women whom I love but it just easier to see them individually these days where conversation naturally tends to be more balanced. I've had so many occassiosn where I've literally been ignored all night becaus the only topic of conversation is children and any attempts to break into the discussion are ignored. Even trying to join in by saying that something similar is going on with one of my nieces or nephews, normally results in me being told that I don't really understand, so I end up shutting up again. I can go hours wondering why I'm even there.

Interesting this topic came up today. Mum has new neighbours and this morning the husband was telling me his wife is really struggling without adult company. Normally I’d jump at the chance to make a friend locally - but having been through the “friends having babies” stage I have no interest in going through it again.

mum isn’t really well enough to deal with a visitor with children though she’d have been fine with it before the stroke. But I found it tedious, irritating, stressful having toddlers in my flat, hated being out with them in tow - and I still remember the first time someone told me they were going to have to put a soiled nappy in my bin!

I like to cuddle a very little baby who isn’t crying but that’s more like cuddling a puppy 😂 They stop being tiny very quickly. Though some aren’t tiny when they’re born either!

I can absolutely understand children being one of the topics of conversation, it's natural we'd talk about the things important to us and/or going on in our lives. What I have an issue with is it being the only topic of conversation either because there is no other topic or because every topic gets turned round to kids.

The friendships that have survived the "You have children, I don't" schism have tended to be those where children are one of the topics of conversation and we both talk about the stuff that's important to us.

And don't even start me on the whole thing of "Sorry, hang on...darling, did you drop Mr Binky? Did you? Did you? Heeeeere's Mr Binky, I've found him! There you are! Sorry, what were you saying, something about your husband having left you? Oh dear, Mr Binky's on the floor again! Let's find Mr Binky!"

I get that having a child is all-encompassing but people in front of whom I could self-immolate and they still wouldn't notice if it happened at the same time as their child blowing a bubble...those relationships haven't tended to survive.

And don't even start me on the whole thing of "Sorry, hang on...darling, did you drop Mr Binky? Did you? Did you? Heeeeere's Mr Binky, I've found him! There you are! Sorry, what were you saying, something about your husband having left you? Oh dear, Mr Binky's on the floor again! Let's find Mr Binky!"

Arghhh this. I was trying to talk to a (now ex) dear friend about how frightened I was during a cancer scare (which she knew I was dealing with). She kept interrupting me to pick up toys, fuss them around her toddler's face, then try to get him to talk so he could "show off his words to me".

I don't think she heard a word I was saying and I guess she probably wonders what happened to the friendship.

I’m sorry to hear about your cancer scare, I hope everything is ok now.

It’s this kind of thing I always think about when there’s threads on here about women who are losing their friends who have just become parents/women who have just had a baby and are losing their friends and they’re told something like ‘it’s normal, when this stage passes, you can reconnect’ and I think I’m really not sure the childfree woman/childless woman/mother with grown up children who is posting or being posted about will actually want to reconnect with that ‘friend’.

Well exactly. It’s quite possible paths will diverge so much that there is no reconnecting. I had 2friends in my 20s who got married, had children(8 between them) and became SAHMs permanently. We still exchange Christmas cards, their updates are all about their children and grandchildren, mine are about my travels, I don’t think we’d have much in common any more.

Thank you - it was years ago, all good now (it was negative, thankfully).

I agree on the second para. It seems to go without saying that the friends are perfectly content to wait for years for the parent to be ready to resume friendship. For some that does happen, but it shouldn’t just be assumed that the parent can put in absolutely no effort and then just pick it right back off years down the line.

Obviously the priority is the child but I think new parents do assume that they can leave friendships hanging for years and nothing will cause the people in it to grow apart in the meantime.

I feel like that is the same kind of thought process that some parents have where they think when they have a free afternoon you will be instantly be available to spend it with them. Or maybe that's just my friend. If her mum takes the child for the afternoon she'll text "I'm free! Let's go for lunch." Then she gets low-key annoyed and guilt trippy when I don't cancel my plans for her because her free-time is so precious.

Most of my friends are also child free. The ones who have kids haven't made kids their entire personality and topics of conversation. They are still themselves.
I have a sister who has only talked about kids for now eight years. You could walk in with a limb missing and she would not notice and just monologue on and on about what her kids ate and said that day. It is beyond boring.
I also let a friendship like that go- after a two hour trip to her house to see HER only to play with a seven year old, be shown videos of same child, whilst only discussing the child. Not one question about my own life.

It’s this kind of thing I always think about when there’s threads on here about women who are losing their friends who have just become parents/women who have just had a baby and are losing their friends and they’re told something like ‘it’s normal, when this stage passes, you can reconnect’ and I think I’m really not sure the childfree woman/childless woman/mother with grown up children who is posting or being posted about will actually want to reconnect with that ‘friend’.

I'm always a bit about that advice. No-one ever checks to see if the child-free person is happy to put their friendship on ice for however-many-years, and it's even worse when you're the only child-free person in a group of friends so it happens to you over and over again around the same time.

Rarely have I had a friend disappear like that where we've "reconnected" later - by the time they're out of the Baby Black Hole, I usually find that our lives have moved on too much, not least because I have other friends by that point. What's the alternative, sitting around on my friendless tod for years? Sorry, I went off and lived my life.

It generally goes down like a cup of cold sick when it's suggested that new mothers still need to make a bit of an effort; there's usually a chorus of "You just can't because you're too tired", "Any spare time I have is family time" or "You are so focused on your baby you can't think of anything else", but the bottom line is you have to find a way to make an effort. Because when I'm told I'm not worth using the smallest fraction of their free time for or they can't even be bothered to listen to me, that's effectively saying that they don't value the relationship.

There's a woman I work with who if I say I've done ANYTHING at the wknd will immediately respond "well I could never do that because I HAVE CHILDREN". Her children are late teens🙄That just makes me more sure I made the right decision though since apparently if you have kids you can't even watch TV or listen to a record for 16 yrs 😂Luckily my friends who are parents are a bit more sane and have kept their own identities.

I’m 52 so I’m passed the age now of friends having babies, to be fair I avoided most of them when their kids were little as I wasn’t interested and went for other child free friends.

A good friend from childhood has now been back in my life a while now since her kids have grown up, but 😩 we went out the other week and I had to hear her drone on endlessly about her grandkids.