C/D: Friends with Babies

oh holding babies makes me super nervous and I haaaate it when people just shove their baby at me without asking (not that there is a polite non-awkward way to say no) or telling me how to hold it or arranging it in my arms, like "oh you're a woman*, you'll know how to hold this fragile precious wriggly thing and not have all the articles you've ever read about how fragile baby skulls are or how you need to have the neck at the exact right angle flash through your mind except devoid of the bit which says what that exact right angle is"

(* ok, ok, possibly just "oh you're an apparently more-or-less-functional adult human being, surely everyone knows how to do this")

most ppl are at their most boring between 30-50 & having a kid is less heinous than having a career imo

can concede that I am extremely boring and didn't even manage to have kids or a career :(

My two closest friends both became fathers relatively late in life (when they were in their 40s), whereas I've happily stayed childless. It was one of the motivating factors behind my move from London to Glasgow - I could see that they would have a lot less time (and energy!) to hang out, and I didn't want to find myself resenting that, or their kids. What I really like now is when I visit them in London and my pals tell me how good I am with their kids - being an uncle is the best of all worlds imho!

I am internally mildly disappointed to very disappointed when I have friends that decide to have a baby after many, many years of being vocal about not having kids. People change their minds, I get that. I once thought about having a kid after seeing that awesome baby on Series of Unfortunate Events. Just in the last five years, most of the women seemed to have changed their mind because they were pressured by family or money. I had a roommate who was always complaining that her dad helped her brothers and sisters buy apartments only because they had kids and two years ago decided to get in on that deal. I very much appreciate my friends that do not have kids.

Adulthood is friendship's greatest test.

pretty much - you lament that having kids takes you out of the scene for a while but you slowly come to realize that scene doesn't really exist anymore. my group of friends has sort of splintered off and mutated and a lot of my favorite people have become reclusive. of course having kids changes you too, I don't really identify much with non-parents anymore. I mean I'll gladly hang out with y'all but my life is so different.

Xp

That doesn't seem like a good reason to have kids but maybe you don't need one. I was conceived by accident by a couple of irresponsible teenagers and I turned out... oh wait

I do get the feelings of disappointment when friends have kids but I know it's just from a selfish place and my friends' kids are pretty cool tbh. It's not like I am that sociable these days to miss the dazzling social life we could be having instead

I probably should clarify that the disappointment partially comes from me thinking that it's still currently and generally a bad deal for women to get married or have kids. So I agree with branwell's sentiment. I have another friend that is now considering a child too. It's all pressure from the family right now because she's going to be 40 soon.

I have had two babies now. I would never consider handing them over to anyone who wasn't able to hold them or didn't want to. I don't understand why so many people do this.

yes OTM I find it difficult enough to cling on to our one myself, shoving them into the hands of someone who may or may not be willing seems foolhardy

v much appreciated not being asked to hold the baby when i visited the other week

imagine judging people for having kids

jesus do some of ye hear yerselves sometimes at all i wonder

people judge one for having kids or not having kids. welcome.

I like holding babies

i couldn't eat a whole one

imagine judging people for holding kids

MichaelJacksonBerlinBalcony.jpg

I was once watching my friends' toddler while they went paddleboarding and another couple with a toddler came over to play (I was like, oh no this is worse than forced interaction at the dog park) and they kept asking me all these questions about the child that I had no clue how to answer and I felt like such a kidnapper.

you should have just made up a bunch of bullshit answers - 'this is bort, he's 16 but looks a lot younger. he likes eating brass buttons and his favourite friends cast member is gunther'

You ever like voluntarily pick up a baby you know, or in some way entertain it and hold its attention, and its parent immediately teleports to an inaccessible pocket dimension for exactly two hours

how the hell did you find out about the pocket dimension

whenever I used to visit my parents, my brothers would automatically teleport over and mysteriously leave all the kids (5) for the entire day. My spouse would put in a good two hours of pillow fights and twister and then disappear into a well.

xxp youtubes of paul merson volleys while they bawl confusedly

re: original post: that may be your true feeling but IMO it's a pretty selfish and dick feeling.

I used to be very uncomfortable holding babies and definitely don't think it's a good idea to just pass one off to anyone, but enough friends have had kids now where I'm starting to get the hang of it. Why, just the other night I said "do you want me to take him?" for the first time.

Holding babies is terrifying.

hey lemme yeet that baby real quick

my dumping facebook has done far more to cut me off from old friends than their decisions or not to have kids has done. i'm also extremely introverted though and so are many of my friends, i have friends i never see but mostly because i hate leaving the house and they hate leaving the house. every couple months we say "we should totally get together" and then don't.

my experience with my friends who have had kids is that for the first couple years or so the life is all about that child and after that, you know, it's important but one gradually does regain a life outside of the child. i don't think there's anything wrong with becoming monomaniacal on a single topic for several years on end, but then i'm biased.

yes, kids will destroy your friends' social lives. But so will a moisture meter for their houseplants. Got to keep those spreadsheets up to date.

imagine judging a baby

https://media.secondstreetapp.com/1924812

lmao at referring to having kids as an "egotistical experiment", being a parent tramples on any sense of ego you might've had and it's not an "experiment" if it (hopefully) lasts a lifetime

The main divide among my friends with young kids seems to be whether hanging out with them completely revolves around looking at & talking about said kids, vs having at least a desire/intention to talk about other things. Sure, the kids take a lot of attention, no big deal. But most of our close friends at least want to keep up our relationship on some level.

(there are definitely a few couples that have fallen into 100% babyland, but they're the exception, and we didn't have the closest relationships beforehand anyway)

I was impressed at my cousin's baby's skill at playing fetch when I was younger.
They just bring their object of desire right back to you, you don't have to train them to drop/give like a dog.

Sucked at tug of war, though. No jaw strength at all.

got to be honest all my kids were accidents i'm not sure there was good experimental method

imagine judging a baby

that particular baby's a gentleman's 6/10 at best tbh

imagine judging a baby for having parents

i have friends i never see but mostly because i hate leaving the house and they hate leaving the house. every couple months we say "we should totally get together" and then don't.

I don't know if this is replicable for everyone, but we have hosted a small potluck for friends at our house every week for the last 10 years, same weeknight & time. I cannot recommend it highly enough as people get older, so that they can plan around it and come when they're able. Otherwise it would be impossible to keep scheduling dinners/brunches on weekends or whatever, and we wouldn't see anyone for weeks or months, I'm sure.

Granted, kids rarely make appearances, although one friend is going to start coming again with the baby I think. But it's a great way to keep up with your friends without kids.

children thrive on the incoherent tapestry of a potluck meal plate

bg i judged yr baby a 9/10 fwiw, the dropped point is for not having demonstrated sufficient interest in my puns

thx 4 feedback, i'll pass that along and ask her to seriously consider bucking up her ideas

We'd consider having a kid if we had a modicum of job stability and the slightest inkling as to where we'll be in five years.

ok ILX "rate my offspring" thread needs to happen

what could possibly go wrong

low ratings

time was a good ilx review could launch a baby's career. of course the next could also end it.

One friend (the most baby-centric of them all) has already launched her baby's modeling career. So really they pay for themselves.

whenever people are like "they're growing up too fast!" i always think to myself "not fast enough tbh"

the friends come back into rotation when their kids grow up a little, you just have to tough it out for like A DECADE
which is hard!!

and if you're a musician over, say, 28, babies will kill off the remaining bands that marriages somehow failed to kill

My band is still together, the three oldest members have kids (now ranging from kindergarten to high school). In my observation they miss more gigs, often drink more because they're out of the house having solo party-time, and appear to enjoy 4 hour drives a lot more than they used to. Obviously they have very understanding partners.

Personally I'm in way more bands now than I was in pre-kids.

But yeah it takes a lot of consideration of what my partner's up to. And I'm constantly monitoring how many Husband Points I have saved up before I agree to a practice or gig or side project. For example, I handle all morning stuff (breakfast, lunch-packing, getting people on buses). We also make sure to build in reciprocal time / space for her extrahouseular activities.

So far it's working out, and I know how to ramp down if it looks like it may become a problem.

i recall going on some kind of dumb moral crusade on a similar thread years ago but nowadays *shrugs* table i get what you are saying

does it ever?

I've got little kids - yeah it was hard for me to go out for a matter of months per child - but I think it depends on the friends. A couple of mine (with no kids) just dropped off the face of the earth once we had kids. Loads of texts trying to get them to come out but we were just no longer on their radar.

Getting to the age now where friends who are parents to young kids also have caring responsibilities to their own parents (dementia, health problems etc).

v. self-centered for people to have ailing parents without consulting their friends, who may not be into it

I admit to having "my people!" thoughts when I meet people my age (mid-40s) who do not have kids. There aren't that many of us!

there aren't that many of period. Gen Xers sandwiched between two much, much bigger generations.

many of US