#42. Does Parenthood Change Friendships?
Some thoughts on the viral essay you might have read last week
Hey!
I’m back from my three week break and it’s fully fall here in Minnesota. I’m writing this issue from my living room on a rainy 61˚ degree day, feeling mostly refreshed and so glad I took the time off when I did. Summer ended on September 5th (yes–that is the actual day the fall chill entered my bones as I went outside in the morning to take our dog out to pee) but fall has so far been lovely.
Last week I was kicking around some ideas for today’s issue, and had a few other things in mind that I’ll probably write about next month. I was waiting in line to order coffee at one of our local haunts last Monday mindlessly scrolling Instagram when I saw it – the viral essay from The Cut that many of you have undoubtedly already read by now, and the topic of today’s issue. I started the piece while waiting for my coffee, and finished it once I got home, bringing my phone with me from room to room for the next half an hour or so. Called “Adorable Little Detonators” by the same author who wrote about her decade on Tinder, this scorching-hot essay about the divide between parents and non-parents, especially as it relates to changing friendships when people become new parents, was clearly designed to spark controversy. I wasn’t at all surprised when I looked at the comments section, filled with people’s own stories and some hot-take opinions about the topic, on both polarized sides of the argument and everything in-between.
I wasn’t sure if I would write something about the article or not (it’s admittedly one of my favorite topics) until it started following me absolutely everywhere. On Tuesday, it showed up as a 90-minute podcast episode on
, a friend sent the article to me to see if I had read it on Wednesday, and by Saturday, I had seen it mentioned in five other newsletters. Generally, the takes I read were light to heavy criticisms of Allison P. Davis’ piece, the binary view of parents vs. non-parents, and also of Davis herself. I can’t say I’m necessarily surprised by this, since a piece with a title like “Adorable Little Detonators” is bound to draw criticism, and I think the topic invites emotional, somewhat extreme points of view.For today’s issue, I’d like to offer a slightly different take. Maybe a hot one? I’ll leave that for you to decide.
In case you haven’t read it, the main question the essay asks is this: Can new parents and childless people actually maintain their friendships?
Expanding beyond her own experiences as a single, childfree person in her 30s by sharing the stories of multiple people throughout the article, Davis argues that people becoming parents “changes everything” within friendships, typically not for the better, and “throws the social order into disarray.”
The main point I think can be summed up in these two paragraphs, which I’ll include in case you haven’t read the piece yet:
“In 2017, the journal Demographic Research published a study out of the Netherlands that looked at how the age at which parents had a baby impacted their personal relationships. In probing that question, researchers concluded that across the board, the strength and quality of friendships “typically decreases after people become parents” and that most of the quality degradation occurs around when the child is 3, during the years that kids’ needs are most demanding of their parents’ time and energy. Friends might drift away during this era, but friendships come back. It might take six months or three years or a decade, but babies eventually become kids, and parents stumble out of those dark days with a restored freedom to commit to their social lives. The dilemma facing friends with kids and friends without them isn’t so much if they’ll ever have the time to meet up at a bar for happy hour; it’s whether all those years of being busy and disconnected have messed up their friendships so much that nobody will want to go.
The friendship divide is not some dramatic breakup but a slow-rolling tectonic shift that neither side notices at first (especially the parents). The fissure often starts as an abstract fear of unknown agents of change (an emerging baby and an emerging parent) and the shared realization that two lives, which had been more or less plodding along a similar path, are about to diverge. While one friend veers off into colic and diapers, navigating the way a new child gives new meaning to their sense of self while simultaneously taking a wrecking ball to it, to their ownership of their bodies, their sleep schedule, and their understanding of their careers, the other, childless friend is, yes, dealing with their own wrecking balls (partnering up, divorcing, trying to have children, deciding never to have children) but is otherwise living in a fairly unaltered state. One friend is sucking snot out of a tiny nose hole, while the other remains free to travel, socialize, work, and evolve however they want to. And like all abstract fears, the preimagined rifts have the potential to become self-fulfilling prophecies.”
It’s this last sentence– “and like all abstract fears, the preimagined rifts have the potential to become self-fulfilling prophecies”–that really stuck out to me. This essay is, in so many ways, about the fears we have in our 30s about all the change within our lives and friendships that occurs, especially when kids start to arrive in our worlds; a jostling of priorities that often leaves us feeling confused about where we stand. Am I still as important to this person as I was a year ago? Does this person still fit into my life as well as they did when we were younger? Am I getting as much out of this friendship as I am putting in? Do we even have anything in common anymore? Am I doing any of this right? By having so many anxieties surrounding these big life changes, we may inadvertently be at least partially responsible for making them play out exactly as we feared.
I’ll say upfront that I think the piece maybe went too far–some of the language feels very callous, and I understand why it made people mad. More than anything, though, it feels clear to me from reading the essay that Davis has been through it recently with some of her friendships, especially as she’s become one of the only remaining childless people in her orbit. I have a secret fear that this will become me within the next five years or so, and I feel for her.
I concluded that the inclusion of somewhat pointed language like “parents stumble out of those dark days” or “babies, those little assholes” was a somewhat pained attempt at relatable humor that didn’t exactly land, but also a truthful reflection of how Davis has seen and interpreted the experience of new parenthood in the people around her, being a person who has never experienced becoming a parent herself and doesn’t plan on ever becoming one. These two phrases in particular are ones that I saw a lot of reaction to from parents and potential future parents both in the comments section on Instagram and in criticisms of the article. Essentially saying “well, fuck you” is an understandable knee-jerk reaction to the early years of new parenthood being described that way, especially if that’s something you may fear as a potential future parent, or as a parent currently going through the period of time she’s describing. But it doesn’t exactly erase the fact that this is Davis’ interpretation of new parenthood, which she has the right to express. I’ve actually heard a few of my parent friends call babies assholes before, and I have to say, I found it funny.
Reading the article through the lens of a non-parent who intends to remain that way, I had a lot of empathy for the author and her friends. Huge life changes can be really fucking hard, no matter what they are. I read a lot of comments that kept repeating versions of, “This isn’t really an issue! If your friendships are strong enough, it won’t matter if one of you has a kid!” and while I agree with that to some degree, I think it’s an oversimplification. Even strong friendships do change over time, for many reasons, not just having kids. Parenthood does incite change–which is not to say that “change” is immediately negative–but to think that friendships won’t change in some ways when one person has a kid and the other doesn’t just isn’t true. At the most basic level, having a child means there are a lot of scheduling and logistics changes that arise for the parent; how they are handled is up to the friends involved in trying to schedule seeing each other after the baby arrives. I think we see similar issues when one friend moves across the country–suddenly you’re not available to go get brunch on a Saturday, so how do you find other ways to stay connected? Of course you can make it happen, but it requires effort and communication on both sides (something this article didn’t talk enough about).
I think an enormous amount of empathy is required on both sides of this issue–on childless people for how much changes in such a small period of time for new parents and the pressures of an added (huge!) new responsibility, and on parents for recognizing that their friends without children might feel a little left behind, like they’re constantly having to work around your (and your baby’s) schedule, or like they don’t actually know how to be a good friend to you while you’re adjusting to new parenthood, and don’t want to feel like they’re burdening you by asking. This is a biased opinion, but I think it’s much easier to feel empathy for the emotional struggles of a new parent than a childfree-by-choice person.
I’m going to throw myself under the bus here for a moment–feeling like I have no idea how to be a good friend to my friends with kids is absolutely an issue in my life at the moment. I am not a person who is naturally “good” with little kids, until they’re around eight or so and can actually have a conversation (does that even count, lol), nor do I particularly enjoy spending extended periods of time around little kids (something that makes me squirm even admitting because I feel like it’s socially taboo). I feel like I don’t even have the words to accurately convey to parents or people who want children that I lack a “parenting” instinct–which makes sense to me, as I’ve cited simply “no desire” as my biggest reason for not wanting children–but I also feel like I lack the skills and abilities to actually be an above-and-beyond friend to my friends who are also moms because it’s something I’m never planning to go through myself, so there is no “putting myself in their shoes,” so to speak. I love my friends and am extremely interested in their lives, but I have no idea how to relate to this world I will never enter. Most of my friends with kids also live in different cities than I do, so I’m also navigating long-distance friendships with them at the same time, which certainly doesn’t make it any easier.
Being a less than stellar friend to my friends with young kids is not something I’m proud of–something I’m very actively working on improving in therapy–and I’ve joked there should be a class for people like me that would teach us what kinds of gifts to send after a friend has a child, how to offer help, what to suggest/not suggest in terms of seeing each other (and the baby!) in the first few years, and what to say/not to say in the events of traumatic births, miscarriages, and canceled plans. A class on communication would be enormously fucking helpful for me. I feel like I never know exactly the right thing to say and barely get by on my gut instincts (some of which I know are “wrong,” based on some things I’ve read on the internet lately). I know I’ve failed to show up for my friends who have had kids in some ways, and I’m desperate for someone to teach me how not to let the fear of fucking up turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. I wonder if Davis feels the same.
“More than that, I worry I’m not being a good enough friend, even when I think I am, simply because I cannot fully understand how to be a good friend. And so my friends with kids decide that the only way to feel supported is to retreat into a silo of other people with kids.”
As I reached the end of the essay my first time reading it, I couldn’t help but feel a little seen. I hadn’t read the comments yet or heard anyone else’s reactions to the piece, and I haven’t been through exactly what the author or some of the people featured in it have, but I found myself more agreeing than disagreeing with a lot of what was in it. As I started consuming reactions to the article that weren’t my own, I realized they were disproportionately negative or criticisms against the author–calling her (or things she’s said or done) selfish, insensitive, a bad friend, self-absorbed, soulless, immature. Isn’t that just a lot of the same barbs we hurl against childfree-by-choice people about their desire to pursue a life without kids? I can’t help but wonder what kind of criticisms the author has heard in her own life from people she actually knows and experiences she’s had that prompted her to even write this article in the first place. The commenters on the actual piece itself were more generous (and definitely worth a read), but most other reactions I consumed and a lot of the commenters on Instagram were quicker to attack the seemingly self-centered, childfree person who feels alienated, versus the new mom who becomes so completely engrossed in her role as a parent that she forgets to be interested in the dating life of her single friend.
“I remember sitting by the pool one summer with Liz as she cradled her 1-year-old. It finally felt like our friendship was coming back to life. We had had dinner and hours of conversation for the first time in ages just the night before. I was re-rehashing the details of a recent situationship that had defined my summer. She mm-hmmed absent-mindedly and nuzzled her son as he ate a peach. It was a sweet moment between them, and though I was touched to see my friend as fully Mom, she was so distracted (or focused, depending on the perspective) she didn’t notice as I trailed off. I snapped a photo of the two of them and then just stared at my phone in silence, wondering who else I could start hanging out with.”
I have a few thoughts on why a lot of the reactions to this essay skewed negative. The number of people currently questioning whether they want kids is higher than ever, and the general sentiment seems to be that parenthood is the hardest job there is. I feel that when we’re especially sensitive to a particular topic, phrase, or thing that elicits an emotional reaction like fear (Will my friendships change once I become a parent? Am I actually ready to be a parent? Is parenthood the hardest fucking thing I will ever do?) it can be hard to actually take in another person’s point of view objectively. It’s easy to focus on our stinging emotional reaction to something that strikes a nerve instead of taking in the bigger picture an author is trying to make, or missing a point entirely (so much of this article is about Davis’ fear of being a shitty friend and feeling alienated, judged, and left behind for not wanting kids!).
One of the potential hazards I’ve learned over the years about writing opinion-based essays for public consumption is that there’s always the possibility of hurting people you care about by sharing your point of view, especially when you’re writing about your feelings on sensitive topics like this one or sharing stories about things that have actually happened to you. I’m currently wondering if the author has lost any friendships over this article, or if any of her friends feel personally attacked by it. It’s a question I can’t stop thinking about: What was Liz’s (a close friend Davis actually names in the piece) reaction to this essay? Are Liz and Davis okay in the wake of this article’s publication and its swift trip around the internet? Or, like some commenters implied, was the friendship not strong enough to withstand a piece like this due to a lack of communication?
“What I didn’t tell [Liz], and I guess she’s finding out now, is that though I didn’t mean to hurt her, the slight wasn’t completely unintentional. Her second baby had kicked off my friend group’s baby boomlet. A bigger part of me than I would like to admit was irritated. When did all of my interesting friends become so conventional and heteronormie? I felt disappointed in the squaring of my friend group. I’d imagined my adult life as a certain kind of dinner party attended by people who lived all sorts of different lives, with and without marriage and children, who sought out all different sorts of experiences, who weren’t so traditional. I thought I had the kinds of friends who would be willing to take trips on the fly, or who at the very least would engage with movies and art. Now I had to either familiarize myself with Bluey to have conversations or find new friends to fulfill that fantasy. (And it is a fantasy. I hate last-minute travel.)”
I wonder, too, why the author didn’t have a conversation with Liz or her other friends with kids before this article’s publication (she seems to imply as much in the above paragraph, though I don’t know that for sure). I don’t mean that at all in an accusatory way–I genuinely wonder why Davis felt more comfortable sharing her feelings with thousands of people for The Cut, rather than with one of the people so intimately involved in her life. I’m asking this question mostly because I think I’m slightly guilty of it too.
Answering more for myself than for Davis, I think sometimes these conversations can just be really fucking hard to approach even with people you care about deeply, especially when your “position” is in the minority. An emotionally charged mixture of fear and anxiety has definitely held me back from starting a conversation with someone I care about more than once. Specifically when it comes to the topic of having kids, I sometimes avoid conversations because I don’t want to feel defective or told various things that imply my choice is “wrong,” even if it’s never said so explicitly. Thinking about having a conversation that goes sideways gives me anxiety, whereas writing feels more like a release. I find writing helps me process my feelings as I’m having them, especially when certain topics feel emotionally charged. I sometimes tell myself “I’m fine, I’m totally fine” until I write something down and realize I’m not actually 100% fine (and not everything I write makes it to publication, for obvious reasons). Sharing my point of view with people I don’t know who might feel the same way (or not) helps me work through my feelings on a topic. I think the harder but more important thing is actually having a conversation with a friend about how you (or I) may have felt alienated, let down, hurt, or frustrated. Otherwise these kinds of emotions can build up and explode into something like this essay, which has some undertones of anger in it I wasn’t expecting.
“Some days, I look at my friends who have had children and am awash in gratitude and admiration. It’s nice to witness them parenting. Other days, I have two tickets to Shucked, and nobody can get a sitter, and my remaining childless friends have already booked themselves with three dinners and two concerts and, like, an orgy. Those days are when I really start to wonder what my parent friends must think of me. Do they see me as a proud Child-free Woman wearing my life like an Instagram caption? Or that person who relies too heavily on the Dads Who Still Go Out? Even though, statistically, the number of childless women is on the rise, the lived experience of being one still feels anomalous. I’m often surprised that even my friends seem to think it’s an “unconventional” choice. Of all the things I had prepared myself to feel marginalized for in this world in 2023, being childless was not one of them. “It’s society that makes me like a weird creepy alien outcast for choosing not to have kids, not one specific person,” says a child-free woman I talked to named Jen. “I think I carry a lot of that defensiveness with me, even in my friendships.”
I share a lot of these same feelings and fears, though a majority of my friends don’t have kids (yet). What do (or will) my parent friends think of me as I remain childless while they become parents? Will I ever be able to adequately support them as they embark on this new phase of their lives? Will I feel more or less alien as time goes on? Will I ever be the kind of friend I so desperately want to become?
At the very least, I hope this essay felt like a release for the author, and a nod to other childless people who might be feeling feelings about their friendships right now. As a reader I found it to have a lot of sharp sharp edges, but overall I felt a lot of empathy for Davis and anyone else who feels like they’re struggling to navigate this nebulous phase of life that is our 30s, filled with more change than we know what to do with.
So what are your opinions on this topic? Have you felt like the alien friend without children, or the alien friend with children? Have your friendships changed as you or your friends have started to have kids, and in what ways? Have you judged a parent or childfree person for sharing their honest point of view? What did you think about the article? Come tell me in the comments.
K bye,
Kelly
P.S. I was in a bit of a book rut most of this summer, but I finally found a book that I absolutely tore through and almost canceled plans to finish! You’ve probably already heard about Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros, but it’s as great as everyone says it is. It’s 500 pages and I finished it in three days. Three of my friends and I currently have a group chat going just to talk about it. I’m calling it a fantasy gateway drug (lol) because it’s just super easy to read, there’s sex and romance in it to reel people in, but the fantasy aspects of it still check out, even if the writing style itself is very, very, basic. I can’t wait for the sequel, which is out on November 7th.
Also, the best piece of media I consumed while I was away (other than Fourth Wing) was my friend
’ podcast episode from September 5th. I’ve known Leslie for a long time and this is, in my opinion, the best piece of content she’s ever created. And that’s saying A LOT!
This was my first gut reaction:
So much of the conversation here and in the article is the focus on what childless people need to do or feel they should do to support their friends with children. But what about the childless friends? Do we not deserve the attention and intention of conversations/planning that the friends with children get? It seems that I’m always seeing thoughts around what to do to help the friends with children but I’m someone without a child and I still have plenty of things that are stressful and hard in my life (navigating a business and building my career, dealing with financial troubles, etc) that I don’t see there being rhetoric towards that.
I’m not saying that having a business, growing a career, or financial problems without children is as hard or even comparable to having kids but can’t we shift the focus to simply maintaining or navigating friendships through life changes? Let’s all find better ways to continue supporting each other!
I think there is a bigger issue at play here - people in their 30s wondering how and where to make friends and why it seems like we don’t have as many friends as we expected to have at this age. I am a parent, and for the last several years (both before and after having my daughter) I have complained to my husband that I don’t have the close group of friends I always thought I’d have. I’m starting to wonder if I romanticized friendship as an adult and assumed I’d have a close group of friends but am coming to learn that is harder said than done. I always say, “I just want someone to stop by for a glass of wine on the couch every so often.” But after telling that to my therapist the other day she said, “maybe no one else wants to do that?” It seems like a lot of people in our generation feel this way. Maybe we all watched too many episodes of Friends and assumed we’d have a close group that would weather all of the changes over the years? But really we need to change what we expect from our friendships? Even the author of the cut article admitted that she wanted friends that would take spontaneous vacations with her, when in reality she had no intention of doing so.