Friendships change with a new baby

Armin Brott:  One of the bittersweet aspects of new parenthood is that your friendships change.  People that you used to know really well or hang out with a lot, you just don’t have quite as much in common as them and then you also start developing new friendships with people that you maybe never would have had anything in common with or never thought you would of had anything in common with before.

Here is an email that deals with exactly that issue.

Dear Mr. Dad, since becoming a father, my wife and I haven’t been able to spend as much time with our friends as we used to.  Some of them seem to understand but others don’t.  Is there anything we can do to keep our friendships alive? 

Well considering how small and helpless babies are, it’s really kind of amazing that they can have such a powerful impact on the lives of everybody around them just by being born think about what they have done.  Your baby has transformed you and your partner from a couple into parents.  And your parents and in-laws have become oh my gosh – grandparents!  And even more amazing is the impact that babies have on pre-existing friendships between the adults in their family. 

Babies can bring a couple together for example or they can create a lot of stress or at least magnify the stress that was there. They can sometimes reunite families and mend old wounds and they can sometimes open new wounds.  They even change the nature of your friendships.  Here are a couple of ways that this might play out.  First of all you and your partner aren’t going to be nearly as available for those last minute movies or those double dates and you might not be quite as happy to have your friends just drop by un announced. 

If by some miracle you do end up with a little bit of down time you are probably going to want to spend it sleeping or making love with your partner.  As a result some of your friends are going to feel a little bit neglected.  Your new less spontaneous life style can affect your relationships with your single male friends most of all. 

Having a new baby probably means fewer of those all night poker gigs and your buddies may stop calling you because they may think you are too busy and not interested in hanging out with them anymore.  Or you might stop calling them because seeing their relatively kind of care free and obligation free lives can make you feel a little bit jealous.  You and your partner might find yourselves more interested, or at least more interested than you were before, in spending time with people, couples especially who are your own age. 

You might find that you don’t have quite as much in common with your single or childless friends and they might start feeling the same way too.  Some of your friends that have children that are older than yours, might start getting on your nerves by insisting on telling you every single thing that they think you are doing wrong as a parent.  And some of your friends may be kind of disdainful or unsupportive of yours and you taking an active involved role in your baby’s life. 

They may sort of fall back on some of the old stereotypes that guys should just leave the parenting stuff to their wives or that putting your family first could have a negative impact on your career.  That is the kind of stuff that you can hear from your friends and you can also hear it from your parents, from your in-laws.  I heard it a little bit from my own father. 

As your kids get older, their impact on your friendships is going to continue to grow.  For the first little while your baby is going to kind of play with whoever you introduce her to. Her first friends are going to most likely be your friend’s kids.  But as he or she gets older and starts showing interests in other children and making friends of her own, this is going to change. 

You are going to start socializing with the parents of her friends, this is probably going to widen your circle of friends a little bit and it might even make some of your adult relationships last longer than they would of ordinarily because the kids just like playing together.  And your relationships with your new and old friends may be kind of subtly or maybe not so subtly affected by competition. 

Let’s face it, look, we all want our kids to be the biggest and the smartest and the fastest and the cutest and funniest and it’s only natural especially for guys to get just a little bit competitive about these things.  So here’s a couple things you can do to maybe smooth out the bumps in your changing friendships. 

First of all get a calendar and learn how to use it, work out a schedule with your partner so that the two of you can get some time to yourself as a couple and if you can as an individual even if it’s only for an hour or two at a time.  Watch what you say no matter how much people without kids pretend there is a limit to how much they really want to hear about all the exciting things that your baby did or can do and all the times that she soiled her diaper today, people just don’t want to hear that stuff. 

Learn to accept some change, it’s going to seem harsh but the fact is that you may lose some friends and they are going to lose you to and you are going to gain plenty of new ones in the process.  Don’t give into a lot of pressure.  Sure it’s totally socially acceptable to leave all the child care to your partner but it’s a lot more rewarding to jump in and do it yourself. Eventually your friends, if they are really friends, are going to come around and some of them might even end up asking you for some pointers.  Watch out for the competition. 

If you friends baby crawls, or walks or talks or sings or says dad a or gets a modeling contract or an earlier admission preschool acceptance letter before your baby does, you might find yourself more than a little bit envious but you know that your baby is the best one in the world.  Go ahead and let them delude themselves into thinking that theirs is. 

What do you want to burst their bubble for? If you’ve got a comment or question that you would like to get the dads perspective about you can drop me a line through the www.mrdad.com and you can find out about the various books I’ve written starting with the Expectant Father going on to the first year and the toddler years. 

I’ve got a podcast for dads, a daily podcast called the Daddy Cast and a brand new DVD called Toolbox for New Dads.  You can also subscribe to my monthly newsletter the Mr. Dad.com newsletter. You can do all of that at www.mrdad.com.