This evening I am having dinner with a group of women. None of us has children. On this particular occasion, it was planned that way, but the dinner came about because we’d all recently attended a barbeque hosted by a mutual friend and realized that being childless was the one single thing that all the women present had in common.
If you asked me, I’d tell you that “most of my friends have children,” because that’s how it feels to me, but when I take a closer look, I see that’s not exactly true. While I have many friends who have children, the people I see most often don’t. Of the group of five women I run with several times a week, only one has children. The same ratio applies to my closest neighbors and my writing group. I have two friends from high school who I’ve stayed in touch with over the years. Neither of them has children either. And if I decided to throw a dinner party for ten people, most of the people at the top of my guest list would have either no children or grown children.
“Yes,” I’d argue, “but most of my oldest and very best friends have children.”
That’s true, but these days my oldest and very best friends are the ones I see the least. Maybe it’s because my friends with children don’t get to go to dinner or out to see a play on a whim. Or maybe that now I won’t be a parent I find that I’m gravitating towards birds of a similar feather.
Our close group of friends is mostly childless – we all have friends with children, but the core “posse” has only 4-legged rugrats. The one exception is the youngest couple of the group, who moved across country (to be near her mother) when they got pregnant, and had a baby last year. Sort of ironic that they moved away at that point! It’s funny, too, because we’re all good “parenting” types, but didn’t have children for whatever reason. We’ve always talked about being the village if any of us had children, but as that possibility fades it will be interesting to see if we all volunteer as Big Brothers/Sisters or anything.
I love the village idea. I think that some people are good “parenting” types and just because you don’t have children, doesn’t mean you don’t have valuable experiences and wisdom that can be put to good use. I wonder if there’s something you could do with that idea in your present situation.
I have one friend without children who no longer wants children, and it’s refreshing to talk with her. Everyone else has kids. Do you have any tips on how to find people without kids? I went to a RESOLVE meeting once and made friends with a fellow infertile… who got pregnant the next month. Haha… I improve everyone else’s fertility. 😉
Oh Sarah, I know that feeling. You’re happy for them but can’t help feeling like you’ve been cheated on! LOL.
There is an organization called No Kidding (http://www.nokidding.net/), which is a social meet-up group for people without children. They have chapters all over. I haven’t tried them myself, but if anyone else out there has, please let us know.
This is a good question to throw out there, so I think I will do a post about it later this week.