If your mom friend agrees to an adult-only girls’ night, you better not flake on her.
Why are you doing this to them. Whyyyyyy?! (Really, they’ll ask you that in this very dramatic way, so be prepared to answer). Handling this conversation will require putting yourselves in your parents’ shoes, as well as doing a masterful job of putting them in yours.
As the one who has experienced both sides of that change, being childless, and then having kids, shouldn’t my parent friends be the ones to be a bit more considerate in how they speak to their childless friends? That’s what I think. So I am often surprised when my friends with kids say these things to me.
There is this camaraderie among the moms. Those who have had babies now—they had the now mother-to-be at their baby showers. Those who will have babies know that these mothers will be at their baby shower. At one point, each one is the woman sharing this vulnerable moment, opening up the little rompers she’ll put on her cutie, and letting everyone touch her belly.
Let’s be honest: parents often put a lot of pressure on kids. Children are born into a world of expectations. There are all of these things their parents want them to be or not be. People say that having kids is to “give life” but I often see it being about telling them what life to live. I’m not doing that to anybody.
Often, those who urge me to have kids don’t really know me. The only people who should be giving any input on whether or not I would make a good mom are my best, best friend and my partner. Not my family friend I see twice a year. Not my coworker who I really only hang with at work happy hours. They only see a sliver of my personality and yet, many of them urge me to have kids.
Then there was this realization: my other aspirations better make me really happy because they’re all I have now. Whereas at first, I had a sense of freedom because I knew I could go after my goals full throttle, with no kids stopping me, then there become this pressure on those goals. Really: nothing else will fill the void but my personal aspirations now. And that’s when I became aware of the void. It’s always there, threatening us. As humans, we do things like love, prosper, and make kids as a way of, honestly, distracting ourselves from mortality. I just deprived myself of one more distraction by deciding not to have kids.
If a girlfriend talks about wanting to meet someone soon because her biological clock is ticking, we all groan, and say something about the patriarchy or feminism. We’ve somehow turned biological clock talk into a political discussion. In reality, women do only have until a certain age to have good chances of a healthy and easy pregnancy. But we look down on those who talk about that.
Out of necessity, you make some new couples friends who also have the financial wiggle room to do things with you. You don’t mean to leave your friends with kids behind but, they just always say no to your invitations.
The threat of divorce may be something your parents bring up. They could tell you that couples who don’t have kids are at a higher risk of divorce. But, in reality, childlessness is not the top predictor of divorce.
Just because a woman doesn’t want a family doesn’t mean she doesn’t like the one from which she comes. In fact, a lot of women who come from bad families particularly want to have kids to get a sort of do-over in the family department.