As parents continue their journey, they tend to spend more time with other parents — playdates, park meet-ups, etc. Having that one thing in common just makes it easier to get along and chat. It makes sense, right? People with mutual interests tend to gravitate towards one another. And vice versa.
I’ve heard from several of my mom friends that they’ve lost touch with their friends who don’t have children, feeling slighted and blown off once they had a family, or getting too busy to make time for everyone.
One TikTok user says that those kinds of rifts between people with kids and people who are kid-free might actually be the parents’ fault. In fact, she put together a list, noting some of the things that people with kids should never do while hanging out with kid-free friends, and…it’s got some people really riled up.
After hearing some discourse about kid-free and unpartnered people, one TikTok creator, @circulargurl, wanted to chime in with some “rules of decorum” for parents, begging to keep the conversations not solely about their kids.
“So, when you’re with your child-free friends, parents with children, try to keep it to adult conversation. I know that most of you think you are not talking about your kids. Cut that back 80%,” she said.
“I can guarantee you you’re talking about your children most of the conversation. And while we want to hear about your kids … we don’t have children so, we really can’t relate so it’s a very one-sided conversation.”
Rule number two, from the OP, states that kid-free people do not want to “hear about logistics.”
She continued, “This summer, when talking with my friends with kids, the amount of conversations I heard which are especially one-sided are about your logistics of getting your kids to activities, summer camps, all of that. That is really not something that is A) interesting. I mean, in the best case of scenario, no matter kids or not, no one wants to hear about logistics. It’s boring. Number two, it’s just like save that for your friends who have kids because you’re clearly anxious about it. It’s something you want to talk about, but it’s a one-sided conversation.”
Next, she asks parents and people who are partnered to never ask their kid-free or unpartnered friends about their dating life.
“A lot of us have very, very full lives. We are very busy and believe it or not, the center of our lives is not trying to have your life, trying to get partnered, trying to have kids necessarily. It’s just not. And so maybe try to explore other topics than wanting to live vicariously through our dating lives,” she said before also asking to never make comments about being “glad you are that you don’t have to do that anymore.”
“Our personal lives, especially if you’re dating in 2024 post-COVID, are generally not something we really want to talk about unless we offer that information up to you because the dating landscape has changed greatly, and it’s a bloodbath,” she said.
Next, she brings up kind of a weird and specific “rule,” that I, personally, would never even think about doing to a friend with no kids, but to each their own, I guess.
“Number four, if we visit you from out of town, please do not take us to kids’ birthday parties. It’s rude, frankly … you then put us into a situation where we’re with a bunch of other parents and other kids, and we don’t identify with that at all. And it’s not a place where adult conversation can be had. It’s not interesting,” she said.
“We’re generally trapped because if we’re visiting you from out of town, we’re then trapped at the location you brought us to with a bunch of kids and parents we don’t know, you know, all talking about our topic, we don’t necessarily have an interest in.”
Moving onto her next “rule,” the OP begs that partnered people never “use the ‘My husband won’t let me’ … excuse for not coming to us,’ noting that the “amount of friends” she’s had use this kind of excuse is staggering.
“I’m sorry, like, if you have to figure those things out between you two, I totally understand. But phrasing it as though you have someone whose permission you need to get is really off-putting, and there’s something in it that makes it seem like spending time with you is something that they have to somehow come to an agreement on because it’s not important,” she said.
She also asks that friends with kids “please, please, please” show up for their kid-free and unpartnered friend’s events.
“Please, please, please, come to our events — our birthdays, our career milestone celebrations. Those are our events. We didn’t have a wedding. We didn’t have an engagement party. We didn’t have a bridal shower. We didn’t have a baby shower. We didn’t have any of that. If we have an event, it’s just as important as those, and if you don’t make it, that is an insult,” she said.
Next, she expects her friends with kids to “check-in.”
The OP continues, “If you have a friend who lives alone and you go months without checking in with them, it’s just not, it’s not okay. People who are unpartnered and don’t have kids are often sent an inordinate amount of time alone. I don’t know what you think they’re doing, but they’re alone a lot of the time. It can be very isolating. So, please, please, please make a habit of checking in with them, and don’t expect them to always check in with you.”
The OP goes on to say that not checking in is an example of a friend valuing their own time more than a child-free friend “because even if they’re lonely, that doesn’t mean their lonely time is less important than your busy time. So just make time.”
Lastly, she asks her friends with kids to not be jealous.
“Don’t be envious of the time you think we have, because we don’t necessarily have a lot of it. Don’t be envious of our career advances because we do have the opportunity to focus more on our careers oftentimes, or chose not to have partnership and/or children to focus on our careers. We all make our choices,” she said.
“The best way to lose adult friends is to be envious of them. And I see that happening with so, so much tension happening between … very successful single child-free women and their mother friends who take a few years to slow down in their careers and the mother friends, all they can talk about as being a “mama,” and don’t want to hear about the focus of their female friends on their career and the successes they have as a result of that.”
“It’s just, it’s something we don’t talk about enough and we all need to get a little bit more comfortable with it. Not to say mothers cannot be very, very successful, very, very successful, but they’re there. You can’t have everything all at the same time. Or it’s very, very hard and something’s got to give.”
Whew, okay…that was a lot!
Off the bat, several TikTok users agreed with the OP, noting that they feel left out of conversations with their mom friends, talking logistics and of topics they have no pulse on. It’s like sitting at a table with a bunch of hockey players going over plays and terms that you have no clue about. This definitely makes sense.
“This is such an important topic to talk about + conversation to have. Couples have been prioritized, celebrated + centered for so long. Adults who tackle life alone need validation, respect + support,” one user noted.
However, there needs to be mutual respect and understanding. One user noted, “You dont want to hear about the biggest thing in their lives or attend related events like parties but you want them to be super interested in what you have going on and go to your milestone parties.”
“These are all great as long as it’s a two way street and the single/childless friends are also asking how the parents and kids are doing and show interest in their children. It should reciprocal IMO,” another wrote.
Another kid-free person wrote, “I always recognized that if a friend had kids that was going to be a large part of what they talk about as that is probably the biggest part of their life – same with a husband when I was single and are gonna be super hard as most people with kids have fairly little to talk about at least in my case when I had my son my hobbies were replaced with spending my free time with him etc”
Disclaimer: This story has not been edited by us and is published as shown on Scary Mommy.
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