Have children changed your friendships?
May 21, 2008 by Sherry Osborne
Filed under Parenting
Image details: Women with tennis racquets laughing served by picapp.com
I was reading this today, and while it’s not exactly the same thing, it got me thinking about friendships and how they can sometimes change when someone has kids.
I’m really lucky. In our circle of friends, most of us had kids around the same time. There are four of us with five-year-olds so that’s been great, and there are a few kids older or younger, but we’re all parents just the same. I only have one close couple-friend (no, that’s not a word, but you know what I mean) who don’t have kids but they both love children very much. They chose not to have any so they don’t feel sad around my kids like they might if they were simply unable, and they’re not crazy kid-hating childfree nutjobs. When we get together I try not to talk about my kids constantly but they always ask a lot of questions and enjoy coming over to see them.
Not everyone is like that though. There are many women who have lamented the loss of friendships because they had kids and their friends didn’t. Usually it happens when the others are still partying and Mom is at home with a newborn or just doesn’t feel like going to another bar, but it can happen just because of different priorities in general.
And sometimes friendships can fade out if you both have kids but have drastically different parenting ideas. Again I’ve been lucky because although the four of us in our crowd do a lot of things in different ways we still have a lot of similarities and respect for the things that we don’t have in common.
How about you? Did your friendships evolve or die out after kids?
There’s just one couple-friend that I can think of that completely disappeared from the face of the earth when our oldest was born. We went camping with them, out to eat, to the movies, etc, and then poof, a month before I was due they were just gone. It was really upsetting because we all had so much in common but they were a few years younger than us and looking back on it now I think they had the “don’t want to be dragged down” mindset. Ah well.