Friendeavours

Being referred to as ‘mum friend’ felt twee, annoying, reductive

it’s the only time my friend Tara has been properly pissed off with me. ‘Your “mum friend”,’ she said scathingly, ‘What does THAT mean?’ At the time, I was in my mid-twenties, and it meant exactly what it said. She was my “mum friend”; the only one of my close friends to have had a baby. The first canary down the mine of motherhood. Being a mum was her defining quality. Or so I carelessly thought. I’d referred to her as my “mum friend” in conversation and she was unhappy about it. She thought it was twee, annoying, reductive. I thought she was overreacting. We didn’t fall out, but it created a fissure in our love.

I’d like to say that I pressed Tara for stories from the brave new world of motherhood but, the truth is, I just saw her less. A lot less. I was still going out a lot and, apart from one memorable occasion where I turned up at a first birthday party after having been up all night, and commando-rolled through a pile of balloons, I didn’t really get to know her son.

The latter part is something I regret now. (The commando roll I stand by.) Because as the years went by and more of my friends had children, I started to lose intimacy with them and I couldn’t put my finger on why. It wasn’t just about going out or not going out. It was a fissure at a more fundamental level. I felt like they’d all joined a cult. But why? When I became a mother, in 2016, I felt as though I had a new role to slip on and off, but I was still me inside. I still needed my friends. I was in a Whatsapp group with some lovely, supportive women from my NCT classes, but we didn’t share a history.

I realised that, years ago, I’d blamed Tara for taking offence; for being oversensitive and having no real sense of where she was at. And why had I had no sense of it? Because I wasn’t a mother? No. But because society told me that I couldn’t possibly understand motherhood if I wasn’t a mother.

But I could have. There is no mystery about shitty nappies and nipple scabs. They are as common and as unremarkable as any hangover. Motherhood is not a strange new land. Let’s not exile ourselves or our friends that way. There is a dangerous binary system that puts women into two categories: mothers and non-mothers; suggesting that when you become a mother your friends who aren’t mothers suddenly aren’t as relevant in certain contexts.

But there are many ways to be maternal – it’s not just about biological procreation. And motherhood does not – as myth would have it – transform women into golden new creatures. Mums need their old mates just as much. I see now Tara needed me and I didn’t know it. I wish we’d talked it through – had a dialogue rather than going off on our own mum-ologues. Sure, different life experiences create distance between friends, but navigating that distance is part of a healthy growing relationship; not at odds with it.