Posted by Zman
One thing about being child free that manhy of our child free friends notice is that when a friend has a child they tend to forget about us. They get so wrapped up in their kids lives that they forget they have friends without kids. We have a couple friends we have not seen or heard from except on Facebook sense their first child was born and now they have two of them. Do you think they ever call or want us to do anything, Nope. We belong to a child free group on Facebook and this is a common theme. People have kids and forget or abandon their friends who have chosen not to have kids. We are not sure what causes this to happen. Seems these "friends" gravitate to those friends tho have kids and ignore those friends who don't. Maybe it is time you gave that child free friend a call and did something with them. Leave the kid with the baby sitter and get out and have some fun with a friend who has not seen you sense you became a parent. Someday your kids will grwo up and move out and you may need those child free friends someday so don't let those friendships laps.
1 comment:
When I was in my 20s, I used to wonder why my church had a "Singles' Ministry." I could understand why there was a Senior Citizens' Ministry, and a Homeless Ministry, and a Deaf Ministry, but I never understood why single people were thought to have special issues or a need for additional support from the church.
Now I understand! When you don't have a family (whether unmarried, or married but without children, the issues are similar), not only do old friends abandon you, but you also don't have those school clubs, soccer teams, couples' social events, or other automatically built-in huge pools of similarly-aged people to draw new friends from. You can join organizations or community events to find friends, but you'll likely find that it's hard to sync schedules with the other adults because they have kids.
When my friends started becoming parents, I used to offer - almost beg - to babysit for them, hoping it would at least keep me involved in their lives. It didn't work.
Thank you for this reminder and request for people not to forget their friends who do not have children. I sincerely hope that it gets to the right audiences and that people heed your advice!
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