Anyone else feel like they are just losing friends with each kid they have? Maybe it's just where I live but I'm 26 years old and I have 2 little toddlers and I'm pregnant again. I've noticed as time has gone on less and less of my friends want to hang out. Now most don't have kids. Maybe that's why. Ive noticed people I went to school with are having kids later and later. Only one of my friends have kids but we don't hang much due to having a hard time getting together cause we have kids so young. We see each other only every other weekend. But my other best friend never comes over anymore or wants to hang out. She works from home as an artist. Idk I've been told to get into mom group locally but we don't have any.
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It's hard to maintain friendships after having kids - especially with those that don't have any. Most of our friends don't have kids yet (I'm 28).
Sometimes I find it hard to even find things to talk about with my childless friends, which is terrible. We're just in different stages and they can go out on a whim without setting up a babysitter days in advance.
I've found that it's not just exclusive to childless friends, though. I have one friend that I've known for 20 years and we had our daughters within a few weeks of each other and we've also drifted apart. She's a SAHM and I'm a WOHM so our schedules just don't line up.
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I think this is pretty common. It's really hard to maintain friendships sometimes when you're in very different stages of your lives.
I found that as my friends have kids though, we start to reconnect more, which is awesome! And I've made some mom friends that I really cherish.
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I also think it’s common and not necessarily with only childless friends. But it sucks! Only one or two couples we are friends with don’t have kids and they still make an effort to come to whatever...that is, when we can get people together! Since our 2nd was born 4 months ago, we’ve seen friends maybe twice? It’s been super hard to coordinate especially when everyone’s kids are on different age schedules. What’s worked ok is for us to just say on a whim the day of or day before, ‘we are going to public swimming/the museum/etc, does anyone want to come?’ Rather than planning in advance. Regardles, it does bum me out a lot sometimes thinking we are going to lose our friend groups eventually and need to make all new friends! But what I’ve found is of those we still see on occasion, we don’t need to have meet ups all the time to maintain the friendship. Everyone understands and we pick up right where we left off even if it’s been months.
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Yeah it's super hard sometimes. I mean I text them a lot but I do miss people lol. I'm a SAHM and I miss having people over. I just see my husband really. He is one of my best friends. I'm hoping as my kids get into school age I'll meet more moms.
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It's DEFINITELY common, among both sides (childfree or parents). Actually, in my case it is my childless friends that are more likely to make the effort to come see us and adapt to our needs. My friends with kids are wonderful, but we just don't have time to see each other. We text a bit, but hanging out just doesn't happen. It's just this stage of life; it won't be like this forever.
As an aside: Mom groups in my area are the worst. They exist but only accept/cater to SAHMs, or "accept" WOHMs but meet at like 10am on Thursdays. Not terribly accessible.
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@smuckers: Yeah, this is why it's so hard for me to find mom friends! I've tried to find mom groups and they all meet during the work week.
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@skinnycow: it's like that with SO MANY GROUPS in my area. Like, all of the toddler activity groups, toddler music classes, all of the toddler swim lessons, all of the library-based fun things for toddlers. All of them are during normal working hours. My DH (who stays at home with my DD) HATES the idea of going to these things without me because of the judgement we get every time it's mentioned that he's a SAHD.
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Maybe I'm doing mom friends wrong, but I don't actually get together with my "mom friends" that often. We just spend 5 minutes together every day at school pick-up, haha! But I'm Facebook friends with them, and we'll text each other about school/kid stuff. One of them I see every other week for an hour at Cub Scouts. And one of them I'll see at PTO meetings. But I still think of them as mom friends, even though we don't get together really.
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I agree that it's really hard to make/keep friends when you have very little kids. In my area, a lot of people seem to make mom friends during pre-natal classes (like pre-natal yoga) or post-partum time (a lot of people seem to make friends in one of the local breastfeeding groups). I somehow missed the boat on those activities, so most of my mom friends are from a mom fitness class (Fit4Mom/Stroller Strides). But I also think A LOT of moms wish they had more friends, so if you post that you're looking for playdates/walking buddies/coffee meetups on your local listserv or facebook groups, I bet you will find people who are interested.
We are finding elementary school to be a good source of friends, too.
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@Adira: I don't think you're doing mom friends wrong at all! I think the big difference (at least for me) is that you have preschool/school-aged children, so you get to see people naturally at drop off
That sounds like a wonderful balance.
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@smuckers: True! This is definitely a new development for me since my oldest started kindergarten.
When they were both in daycare, I kind of FB stalked their best friends' moms (once they were old enough to have best friends) and then adopted them as mom friends, haha. We'd sometimes see each other at pick-up, though definitely not consistently. Going to every single birthday party we could was how I cultivated those friendships, but that didn't really start happening until my kids were 3. I guess before that I didn't really have very many mom friends!
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Yeah I’ll be honest I had my first kid at 30. Only a handful of people I knew had kids in their mid 20s. I was still going out to karaoke bars on the weekend and hitting happy hour after work. I tried to be a friend to my friends with kids but it’s just a different season of life. That said - I just moved cross country and have made a lot of friends with other Moms regardless of their age, I’d focus on making connects that are authentic and meaningful and that may mean looking outside your current friend group. Friendships ebb and flow, and that’s ok!
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Thank you ladies. I'm glad I'm not alone. It does stink when life changes and ebbs and flows. But I think itll get better in the friend department as time goes on. I just started going to church again and maybe that will help as well. I'm also gonna try to get out more lol. I personally get overwhelmed going out in public cause my son doesn't talk and has meltdowns a lot. And my kids are so close in age I worry itll get too crazy. But that's just my anxiety. It's much better then it used to be but I still deal with it sometimes.
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@cyoung: I've struggled with this too - my older one (now 4) can be a real handful, and many opportunities that felt like they should be "easy" to get together with other moms (moms groups, after church fellowship times, some days even the park) have been challenging. If she was melting down (which happened A LOT from the time she was 2 until just pretty recently), I just couldn't juggle her needs (which sometimes turned very physical) and my younger daughter too. I left many a moms group or get together feeling totally deflated because I was so desperate to get out of the house and be around other people, but felt like my older daughter would lose it within minutes of being there that it all just felt like too much. A few things got better over the last year (my older daughter just turned 4 and my younger one is almost 2). Some happened naturally and some that took work or me putting myself out there more. For one thing, my older one is in preschool two days a week and I use that time to take my younger one a moms group or a Gymboree class or library events or something like that. I also started inviting any mom friends I even vaguely met over to our house instead of trying to meet out and about somewhere. I have a pretty decent system for managing my older daughter's more challenging behavior at home, and it's easier for us all to actually spend time with people when we have that more under control. She's also started to mellow a bit and that makes some outings a bit easier, though gosh it depends on the day!!
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@cyoung: I agree its common. In our situation since we moved to a new state most of our friends either have much older kids in their teens or no kids. They always want to hang out but never to do kid friendly activities or not at kid friendly times.
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@cyoung: You aren't alone. I'm a semi-outgoing person naturally, in that I get energy from hanging out with other people (now that my kids are getting older, they are starting to fill that need a little, but they did not at all when they were babies/young toddlers), so I do need a certain amount of adult friend interaction. We also moved halfway across the country right before we had our first kiddo, so my pre-kids friends were not an option (my 2 besties and I are still in touch, and we have a WhatsApp chat that is ongoing where we touch base every few days). Anyway, I managed to create a group of mom friends, even though I work full time. I also live in a transient neighborhood, so every time I get my little group, someone moves out.
It's been interesting. As a single adult in my post college years, I always had a fairly large group of friends that I met through various ways, and I'm naturally a connector, so I always like to introduce my friends to my other friends. But my "struggle" is literally time and scheduling. I'm ruled by my work + kid/mom schedule, and that leaves me very little time for pure socialization. So sometimes I meet new people and they make friendly overtures, and they seem super nice and like someone I'd like to know--and I just literally don't have the time in invest. Like, if they want to meet up, it is a HUGE CHORE for me to find the time. Even a playdate can be a huge chore, just because we are so scheduled already, and the few free days we have a month would be filled with our pre-existing friends. So my circle is much, much smaller. And yet, due to the transient nature of my town, it's ever evolving. Like I have space in my life for about 3 friends, and maybe 6 peripheral friends/acquaintances and that's it. So if someone nice makes a friendly overture, I will just reject it out of just sheer time crunch. But then, I'll have a friend move away, and suddenly I have "space", but that window is closed.
It's odd. Making and Keeping friends was definitely easier before kids. I miss that freedom to just make plans last minute, or just text a whole group and be like, "I feel like a craft beer on this fine Tuesday evening--who's in?" and get 13 responses. All that's out the window.
But if someone wants to plan a playdate on the third sunday of each month, from approximately 4:00-5:30 pm, and barring any major illnesses from my kids or your kids, I'm in.
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@Anagram: I just had to say that I am 100% with you on everything you said in your post. The time struggle is real. I'm filling up March now.
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I seem to be the outlier, but I have time to nurture my friendships more now than ever!
I only have one kid, but I do work a job with demanding hours and long commutes, but I have found a good mix of work/play where I can socialize with people of similar interests.
That sounds like a wonderful balance.
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