Can mothers and childless women ever truly be friends?
It’s a heated debate that these four writers — two with children and two without — just can’t agree on...
CAN a friendship survive motherhood? Many women believe that, more than any other, it’s the life event with the power to strain even the strongest bonds. Here, four writers — two mothers and two women with no children — go headto-head to discuss whether the two can ever truly be friends. NO AUTHOR Deri Robins, who is in her late 50s, has three children, aged 20, 27 and 28. MY BEST friend of ten years’ standing didn’t mince her words when my two-year-old threw a full-blown tantrum in a supermarket aisle. ‘You really should nip that sort of thing in the bud,’ she remarked.
Red-faced, loud, writhing in fury, even I could see he made an unprepossessing sight. It was the first tantrum I’d had to deal with. I was clueless as how to ‘nip it in the bud’, though my instinct told me to ignore and let it play out. My friend, despite having no children, felt qualified to comment. ‘You need to be stricter,’ she asserted. ‘Show him who’s boss, otherwise he’ll get the upper hand.’
I had heard this firm tone from her on countless occasions during our friendship, and welcomed it. She’d always been an empowering beacon of great advice. When I had a baby she was, as usual, bursting with opinions, but now she didn’t really ‘get’ it. Her bossy manner left me feeling insulted and inadequate.
That our deep friendship, forged over years sharing cheap rose wine, bad romances and great Madonna lyrics, should flounder once I became a mother shocked me. Now, with the benefit of two more children, and having seen friends go through the same, it doesn’t surprise me.
When it comes to the complex patchwork of women’s lives, our friends are often the stitches that hold the pieces together. But motherhood, or the absence of it, can break the threads.
There’s no doubt motherhood is an event that has a profound effect on a woman — more than any other — and in my experience, it’s almost impossible to remain friends with a woman who doesn’t have children.
As a much-loved aunt once said to me:
‘You don’t become a woman until you have held your first child in your arms.’
While I might not put it quite as bluntly, I have to agree you don’t fully inhabit every part of being a woman until you’ve had a child. Once you have had a child, nothing ever matters in the same way again.
As my friend Deborah Jackson, a mother of three and author of books on childcare, puts it: ‘Becoming a mother isn’t just a matter of giving birth; it requires you to shift your primary emotional focus away from yourself.
‘As soon as I had my first baby, I must have become really boring to friends who weren’t interested in parenthood. I was aware of it, but I didn’t care. I had another life depending on my care and attention. It’s inevitable your friendship groups will change.’
Having children makes you less selfabsorbed, a process women who are child-free never go through. I have unlimited sympathy for those whose bodies wouldn’t let them become mothers; it’s one of the most unfair curveballs life can bowl a woman.
As for those who choose not to have children, I respect and understand your choice. Children are expensive, full-on and exhausting. They’re a life sentence of worry. I understand if you love your life — your career, your partner, your social life, your two-seater car and disposable income — just as it is.
I can’t think of any other female experience that is so divisive as motherhood. Even if you have nothing in common with 90 per cent of the women at toddler groups, you share a fundamental understanding with them that you can never have with child-free mates.
What even old friends can fail to pick up on is that while no subject might have been offlimits between you in the past, everyone experiences a sense of humour failure when it comes to their children.
My friend Susie said of one pal: ‘She never had a clue how much her attitude to my children offended me. One time, I called in to visit her with my baby in a sling. I had never seen her move so fast as she sprinted to get towels to protect her furniture.
To make it even more insulting, her idiotic boyfriend had spilled red wine over our new cream carpet a few weeks before, and we’d politely pretended that it didn’t matter.’
When your children are grown up, as mine are, the gulf between us mothers and our old friends who’ve never had children narrows again — to a degree.
MY friend Debbie, who had children relatively young, says: ‘I’ve reconnected with women who aren’t mothers. We don’t talk much about my children or their pets and we have lots of wonderful things in common like free time, books and travel. However, my childless friends have retained an almost childlike ability to focus on themselves.’
I agree. While I accept having children is one of the most selfish things a woman can do — it’s almost impossible to think of one altruistic reason for having a child — once you become a mother, for the rest of your life you are not the main focus. If you’ve never had children, how can you experience what that feels like?
I can think of only one girlfriend, who would have been an exceptional mother if her life had panned out differently. She is a devoted aunt and godmother, with an almost magical empathy with children and their mothers. But she is special and untypical.
Every woman knows how much her friendships can affect her wellbeing. One Harvard Medical School study suggested the more friends a woman has, the more likely she is to have a contented, active and healthy life.
As fewer women become mothers, it seems likely more women will find their friendship groups shrinking. It’s something that makes me sad for all of us. ‘SO,’ I said to my two pals, giggling over a bottle of red on Friday night. ‘Apparently there are people out there who think we can’t truly be friends because I have no children.’ And we laughed for about five minutes at the thought that this would ever come between us.
I’ve known these women for 15 years. When we met they didn’t have children but now both have been blessed with a boy and a girl each.
The fact that they are mums doesn’t stop us from enjoying experiences together — from nights out to daytime summer picnics where the kids can come too, and even the odd birthday party.
And like many of my friends, they have been by my side through the worst of times — and the best. I have also been there to look after the newborns, to rejoice in every small triumph and sometimes even to mop the tears of the tiddlers who have been brought into my life by my pals — their mums AND their dads too.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t interfere with how these children are brought up, but it is fun to be able to buy the Christmas presents you know their parents won’t thank you for. (I still laugh about that tambourine/drum combination one small girl got for Christmas a while back.)
I’m lucky enough to have best friends in the three cities in Ireland where I lived. Some have children, some don’t. I’m still close to the girls I met at school and we’ve weathered every storm together, from teenage heartbreak, through university, to the loss of a parent.
These women are like my sisters, we speak every day about what’s going on in our lives — about work matters, what’s going on in their kids’ lives and our general ailments.
Another friend is a single parent with a daughter who is the apple of my eye, funny and smart just like her mum. I love it when they come to visit, although invariably after a day doing something fun together, my partner does the babysitting while we run off for a sneaky dinner.
Don’t get me wrong — I have met women who feel I can no longer communicate with them because I don’t have children and so ‘couldn’t possibly understand’ their lives any more. They are consumed with motherhood and that’s fine — if you’re that kind of a judgemental person then I actually wouldn’t want to be friends with you.
My friends are secure enough in themselves to know that my childlessness doesn’t make me less of a person — in fact I can bring a different perspective to their lives by having other things to talk about outside nappies and the school run. I’m also the one person who’s generally up for a last-minute night out.
And now that my wonderful goddaughter has reached Trinity, I’m glad I can be here for her, another number to call should something happen or if she needs help. And, of course, her mother — my friend of 33 years — is glad too. THE nail in the coffin of my friendship with Patricia came eight years ago when, half an hour after I was due to meet her for lunch, she sent a text: ‘Kids driving me crazy, au pair useless, just can’t get out of house. Gah. Sorry. Let’s reschedule.’
If she’d sent that message three hours earlier I’d have been annoyed, but I wouldn’t be sitting on my own in a smart restaurant getting pitying looks from the waiting staff and other diners.
I never replied and I never saw Patricia again. Friends since the age of 18, motherhood had turned her from my closest confidante to the world’s most self-absorbed and unreliable woman. Time after time she’d let me down and I realised I no longer liked or respected her.
I’d had to juggle my work around meeting her during the day — God forbid she go out at night — and yet she hadn’t considered the impact on me. Such selfishness is not a one-off. Anyone who’s ever watched When Harry Met Sally will remember the running theme of whether a man and a woman can ever just be friends.
In today’s modern world, where increasing numbers of women don’t have children by choice or circumstance, there’s another question to be posed: can mothers and childless women ever be friends? The obvious answer should be: ‘Yes, why ever not?’ The reality is that — just like those platonic male and female friendships — it rarely works out.
I’m 51 and have no children. It’s no coincidence that most of my closest friends, the ones I see all the time, who I know would have my back in a crisis, are all childless.
It’s not that a few of the women I know with children wouldn’t want to help out. It’s just that by the time they’ve arranged childcare, the chances are my crisis will be over.
There are many reasons why I prefer to make plans with my childless friends. Women with children are — like Patricia — flaky and prone to dropping out at the 11th hour with their clearly made-up excuses.
Strange how so many little treasures seem to contract last-minute illnesses when the child looked in robust health in the dozen Facebook pictures posted earlier in the day.
When they do bother to show up, they spend the evening anxiously glancing at their phones and popping out to make calls, checking on the situation back home. Deri suggests the reason the breeders and non-breeders can never be friends is because childless women can never empathise with how it feels to carry the burden of motherhood.
But there’s another, more pertinent reason: those of us without children find mothers excruciatingly boring. Gather one or more mother in a room and the only topics of permitted discussion relate to sleep routines, school or screen time.
Contrary to how some perceive
Mothers are flaky and prone to dropping out at the 11th hour with a made-up excuse
childless women, we’re not all hard-as-nails harridans who hate children. We’re likely to be devoted aunties and godmothers, it’s just we don’t live and breathe little people.
Deri quotes the cliche ‘you don’t become a woman until you’ve held your first child in your arms’, which is as insulting as it is laughably untrue. So what does that make the 25 per cent who don’t have children? Fake women?
IT’S up there with the claim that ‘being a mother is the hardest job in the world’. Really? I imagine Theresa May or Angela Merkel might argue convincingly against that.
But nothing gets my back up like being told that human tragedy cuts deeper once you become a mother. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard mothers claim that the suffering of others hits them so much harder now they have a family.
My response is always the same: ‘Maybe you weren’t a very nice person before.’
When I was hospitalised with a ruptured appendix, my single girlfriends rallied around. The mothers ‘meant’ to come and see me or send me a card but never got round to it. I suspect the reason mothers and non-mothers struggle to be friends is we’ve had their lifestyle choices impact on us in so many ways. We’ve had too many meals out ruined by mothers who refuse to take a crying baby outside.
We’ve had the back of our seat kicked for three hours on a flight to Spain. Or we’ve had to stay late at the office yet again to cover for the mother who has to leave for a parents’ evening.
There is a brief period when friendship can be resumed. When the children have fled the nest, the smug mummy bragging does diminish. But the clock is ticking before they become a granny and we’re right back to square one. MUMS and women who don’t have children can’t truly be friends? Pah! What a load of nonsense.
Yes, your priorities shift when you become a mum, and time is your most precious commodity, but something else happens. You become acutely aware of what’s really important in your life — and as the mother of two very small children, I can honestly say that my friendships are very precious indeed.
I have friends who have kids, and friends who don’t. In fact, I probably have more of the latter, and that’s a great thing. I’m surrounded by children and baby paraphernalia from one hour to the next when I’m at home, so taking a break from that when I can and indulging in conversation that doesn’t include stool consistency and sleeping patterns is music to my ears.
But it’s a hard habit to break, and there are times when I just can’t help but talk about, well, poo. In fact, one of my child-free mates has enforced a no-crap chat rule after ten minutes of the stuff, and thank God for that. I don’t want to be the person in the room who bores everyone with the complexities of their child’s bowel motions. Who does? Some say that having a child changes a woman and those without one will never understand — well, that’s an offensive allusion to both parties. Lots of women who are childless do not choose to be — and many do — but they shouldn’t be made to feel like they are left out of some exclusive ‘mum’-bers club because of their path in life.
Like most things, you have to work at friendships. And that can be hard when you’re a mum who rushes home from work to put your babies to bed. Sometimes, the last thing you feel like is shooting the breeze with your bestie who rings for a natter. At times I’m too tired to talk, or simply can’t because a child is screaming at me, but when my friends need me, I endeavour to be there for them.
Modern life is hectic, and juggling everything — whether you have children or not — is no mean feat. I truly feel that real friends will understand and bear with you during the tough times in life — kids, break-ups, bereavements, job problems.
The harsh reality is that friendships end for all sorts of reasons and vagaries, and mostly not because of children. People move on from relationships as their lives progress. Children don’t test friendships, but life does.
I’ve had a child for God’s sake, not a frontal lobotomy (although I’ve often felt like it while changing yet another dirty nappy). I’m fundamentally the same person as I was pre-children, with my own interests and opinions, who wants to spend time with the people I’ve chosen to laugh with, cry with and share life’s experiences with over the years. Why should that change?