The friendships that survive parenthood (and the ones that don’t)
Learn why friendships change after having kids, which ones survive parenthood, and how to maintain meaningful connections through this new phase.
There’s a friend you used to see every week. Then every month. Then for a while there were plans that kept getting rescheduled, and somewhere in the rescheduling the friendship became something you maintained at a distance, catching up every few months with the vague warmth of people who used to be close and aren’t quite sure what they are now.
And there’s another friend, maybe someone you wouldn’t have predicted, who showed up when the baby arrived and has been there ever since: easier to reach, easier to be honest with, somehow more present than people you’ve known for decades.
This reshuffling of friendships after children is one of the least-discussed losses and gains of the parenting years. People talk about it obliquely, usually with some version of “you find out who your real friends are,” which is true but incomplete. What’s also true is that some friendships contract not because they were false but because they were built on conditions that no longer exist, and that’s a different kind of loss: real and not anyone’s fault.