What happens to all your friends who become moms?

Friends! We’ve been on a lovely, light kick lately talking fashion and snobbery but we’re making a tire screeching 180 this week, I hope you’ll forgive the whiplash. I saw a video on TikTok and it’s been eating at me for two weeks now. So, as any good therapized writer should, I’m going to write it out of me.

I’m trying to really limit my TikTok consumption these days but I allowed myself a little scroll last week and a young woman appeared on my “For You” page as soon as I opened the app. I say young, she looked it to me. I’d guess her age in the range of 28-32, but to be very clear, I don't know her. She was speaking directly to the camera. She started the video by asking in a light, sarcastic tone something to the effect of, “do you wait for your friend who is a new mom to ditch you or do you just ditch them first?”…….I quite literally could not scroll away after that intro.

The woman went on to describe the deterioration of her relationship with a close friend after this friend recently became a mother. Her complaints mostly centered around the new mother’s unavailability to hang out, her neglect of their relationship, and her unwillingness to spend money to hang out or go on trips.

Now, because I don’t know this woman, I’m going to try to make very few assumptions about her and her situation, but man, this video ate at me. The tension that exists in a friendship that is rapidly changing for one party and not the other comes up a lot in female relationships. A friend moves, a friend gets married, a friend has a baby….the feelings you’re left with can be all over the map: relief, anger, grief, confusion. The truth is that friendship bonds are deep and affect us in ways we often don’t even think about. According to the American Psychological Association, friendship is one of the most reliable indicators of long life—it’s that vital to our wellbeing. It’s no wonder then that when the friendship boat is rocked, it feels like the whole ship is going down.

I scrolled through the comments on that TikTok video for a while and my heart sank. Several commenters responded to the video by saying, “I’m not the village.” A rejection of the common saying that it takes a village to raise a child. Ouch. The commenters were often using #childfreebychoice. That hashtag is a social media movement in and of itself. Several newsletters could be written about it. But I’m going to try and focus on what I know to be true of my experience of balancing friendship and new motherhood and in so doing I hope I’ll convince a few people that there’s more at play than a mother simply letting a valued friendship wither and die. What broke my heart the most about this video was all the women commenting that the video creator should just bail on her friend because as many of them said, “she’ll just continue to ignore you until the friendship ends.”

I’d like to offer a counter argument. Maybe she isn’t forgetting you, maybe she just trusts you’ll be there when she comes back up for air.

Drowning and floating.

Motherhood is a proverbial suspension of body, mind, and spirit. You are, at any given moment, both drowning in the newness and the overwhelming responsibility of sustaining a life and floating on a cloud of serotonin fueled by newborn cuddles and a soft belly resting on yours. It is an experience like none other. And it is all consuming.

If you’ve not read anything about matrescence—the process of becoming a mother—I urge you to do so. Transitioning into motherhood encompasses physical, emotional, biochemical, and mental changes so significant that doctors and scientists have only scratched the surface of what the transition to mother really means for a woman. I’ve yet to meet a woman who was mentally able to give birth and jump immediately back into her personality, into her friendships. In those early days I certainly had neither the energy nor the mental capacity to remember whose text I should be returning.

I have been on the other side of this—young and childless with friends who just became mothers going suddenly silent. And it can be heartbreaking. In my early 30s when just a few people I knew were having babies I let myself drift away from them. To feel a sudden, seismic shift in a deeply rooted friendship isn’t comfortable. And instead of facing that discomfort, I did what many of the women in that video’s comment section did—I let the ties loosen. But now, years later and a member of the mom team, my best advice to those who are child free but who love a new mother is to wait and reach out often. Even if there is no response, even if it takes months. I wish I had. I use this analogy sometimes when I talk to friends about marriage but it applies here as well—sometimes you have to take your turn out on the ledge. Sometimes you have to be the one giving more and trusting you’ll receive later.

She is thinking about you.

One of the absolute falsehoods I read in that comment section was that this new mother friend probably wasn’t thinking about her child free friend at all. I thought about my friends constantly. I thought about the friend I used to be and worried I wouldn’t be able to find my way back to that version of myself. Sure, there were days I didn’t think about anything but sleeping and feeding the baby, because I simply had no brain cells to devote to anything else. But more often than not I was wishing I could summon up the courage to drag my new lumpy body out of pajamas, strap my baby into a stroller, and head to a restaurant with a friend.

The thing is, in the early days, every decision is a maze. Will people stare at my body? Will the baby have a diaper blowout in public? What if someone in the restaurant has a cold? What if the baby cries the whole time? What do I need to put in the diaper bag? How do I work around breastfeeding and nap schedules? It’s enough to stop you in your tracks before you’ve even made it out the door. But time is a teacher and getting out the door gets easier.

I’ll never forget two months after my first baby was born I squeezed into some real clothes and met a group of friends out for dinner with baby in tow. Sweet friends who encouraged me, carried the diaper bag for me, and reminded me of who I was to them. I was nervous as hell and excited at the same time. At one point the baby got very fussy and I fumbled with my breastfeeding cover and took the plunge, feeding her right there at the table. And, I kid you not, the entire table applauded. It’s a memory I’ll carry with me forever. I felt so validated and cared for. And my heart aches for the new moms who are waiting for a moment like that to be reminded that even when your world changes over night, your people see the same light in you.

Priorities will change.

This might be the part no one really wants to talk about. But I think the child free folks and the women making that video deserve some candid truth—even if your friendship survives, your priorities may be different forever. Kids change everything and that includes budgets and where free time gets spent. What I’ve found to be true is that even if my priorities differ wildly from a child free friend, as long as we prioritize each other it doesn’t actually matter. Trips and brunches do not a friendship make. Quality time can take on many forms. I’m not saying that transitions like this are not painful—if you spend hours with someone pre baby and suddenly you’re seeing each other once a month, there’s bound to be a grieving process for that frequency of closeness and sharing. Both parties have to be willing to dig deep in the time they do have. And I believe there has to be effort on both sides to connect in ways that both people enjoy (aka not just once a year at the kid’s birthday party).

Maybe it’s you.

I reflected a lot on my visceral reactions to watching that Tik Tok video. I waited to write this so I would not give you a spicy take about all those women in the comments proudly declared “I’m not the village.” But the truth of the matter is that that sentiment pisses me the hell off.

Motherhood, even if you choose it joyfully, is hard as hell. I believe in the beauty and validity of being child-free by choice. I also respect the right of women to never be asked why they aren’t having children. I think it’s WILD that in the year of our lord 2024, people still tell women they’ll regret not having kids one day. BUT mothers deserve better than “I am not the village.”

We are not meant to mother in isolation. I take such profound joy in watching my child free friends interact with my kids. Maybe it’s selfish but I want my girls to see people living in all kinds of ways and to see the intrinsic value in others. I don’t know who my girls will grow up to be but I want them to feel brave in their choices and to have role models of all types. The funny thing is I know child-free women often feel unsupported, under appreciated, and uncelebrated but I can think of another group who feels just the same, especially in this country. The truth is that women supporting women is powerful, women helping to raise the next generation of women and allied men is powerful, and not being the village will get us exactly no where.

I hope that there will be more productive dialog between mothers and women who are child-free by choice. Instead of a shouting match we need support and unconditional friendship all around.

Still thinking about…..

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