“Only other moms can relate.”
As soon as the strip turns pink, we search for other humans who are going through the same things. Through pregnancy nausea, through making birth plans, through teething and weaning and the late nights.
True, childless friends don’t understand what a mucus plug is, whether ferberizing is genius or child abuse. They probably don’t appreciate just how much of a luxury it is to stay out past bedtime, to hop off to Paris without thinking of the school schedule, to go to the movies last minute, without needing to locate and pay a babysitter. There are some things they will never understand!
But that doesn’t mean we have to push our childless friends out of our lives to make room for people who do understand. In fact, our friends without kids are some of our best friends, and we probably get to see them so much because they don’t have kids.
That sounds crazy, but hear me out.
We have game nights at our place, and our friends show up an hour before bedtime, then we can put the kids to bed and then hang out in our living room until 2am and then our friends go home. They show up to our kids’ birthday parties, with gifts and disposable cutlery that they went to FOUR stores to find on the way to the party. When we take the train to the beach, we have an extra pair of eyes on our two kids instead of just us.
I had the idea to write this when I ran into the friend of a friend while shopping. We were talking about our mutual friend and out of the blue, she asked me, “How do you feel about having child-free friends?” I immediately told her all of the things you’ve just read. I couldn’t let her go another second thinking that child-free friends weren’t just as valuable as mom-friends.
It takes a village, feel free to send this to your child-free friends that you appreciate!
