Writer Aimée Lutkin made the decision to stay child-free, here she discusses the often-unacknowledged reality of the impact your nearest and dearest having children can have on your friendship…
If I’m being honest, being a mother was not something I put at the top of my bucket list in my twenties. While I still don’t regretting child-free at 38, it’s not easy to witness almost all of your peers start a family. Even when you’re happy that they’re happy — and I am — there is a bittersweetness to it, because you know that you will be seeing them less and less, or not at all.
There is a lot of debate on TikTok right about who is at fault when friendship fades as one person becomes a parent and the other doesn’t. One user, @__barbarah, went viral after Julia Fox responded to one of her videos in which she says: “I’ve seen a lot of women post: ‘You want to know who your real friends are? Have a baby’,” she says. “I’m not a mother, but I don’t know what it looks like on the other side. But I am a friend – and you guys change after having a baby. You make us feel like we’re no longer relatable… so it’s not just one-sided.”
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Julia Fox responded by saying it’s not their friends that are no longer relatable, but the woman who’s just had the baby – because she’s completely overwhelmed caring for her son. And she’s a rich celebrity.
If we can step back and look at it somewhat objectively, it seems like both parties kind of want the same thing: community. They just see the issue completely differently. Mothers want support. Childless people want to remain included in their friend’s lives.
But who is the onus on to maintain the ties that would fulfill everybody’s wants?
Obviously, I have my biases, but before getting to them, I genuinely think that when friends have kids, a period of relaxed standards of reciprocity is necessary; compromise and patience are key. I know how overwhelming it is to keep myself alive, so adding another life to the mix must feel at times like drowning on dry land. It is a childless friend’s duty, in my opinion, to show up and help out, to shoulder the responsibility of making plans that can accommodate the needs of a new parent, and to not take it personally if you don’t hear from them as much for a while.
The issue arises when that grace period ends, because many parents think it never should. It is common to hear parents say, “My kid is my first priority” as a reason for why they no longer reach out, ask questions about their friend’s lives, or take a couple hours off by hiring a babysitter to go to birthdays or big events that don’t center around children. Well, if we were in a monster movie running from a giant insect or something, that would be relevant. Pick up your baby and leave me behind! However, we live in the real world, where caring about someone more than anyone else should not preclude you from taking an interest in the other people who have loved you and supported you throughout your life. Sending a friend a “how are you” text every few months will not take food out of your kid’s mouth.