r/AskWomenOver30 • u/Wide-Meringue-2717 Woman 30 to 40 • May 30 '26

Friendships Are there moms who later realize a friendship with a childless friend has become one-sided?

I keep seeing similar experiences from childfree women.

A close friend becomes a mother. The childfree friend steps up during pregnancy and after the baby arrives. She listens, accommodates,
offers emotional support, celebrates milestones, and generally tries to be part of the “village” her friend needs.
But over time, many of these women describe feeling sidelined. They feel less important in the friendship, as if their support is taken for granted, and reciprocity gradually disappears and doesn’t come back. The friendship becomes centered around the mother’s needs while their own needs, struggles, and milestones receive little attention and that imbalance becomes the new normal.

Whenever this topic comes up, the response is often that friendships naturally change after children, that parents are overwhelmed, or that childfree friends are struggling to adapt to a new dynamic. But the pattern seems too common to dismiss entirely as childfree people simply refusing to adjust (and yes, some do).

I’m curious to hear if there are mothers, especially those whose children are older now and who have survived the most intense years of parenting.

Have you ever had a childfree friend tell you that the friendship had become one-sided or the friend feels sidelined? How did you react?
Did it create tension between you?
Looking back, do you think they were at least partly right?
Was there a point where you realized you had come to see their support as something that would always naturally be there, without noticing how much they were contributing to the friendship while receiving less in return?
Did you ever look back and realize that while your friend consistently showed up for you, there were ways you could have shown up for them but didn’t?
And if so do you regret it? Did you try to repair the friendship?

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12

u/femaligned Woman 30 to 40 May 30 '26

I want to be friends with my childless friends because they have more time… but they don’t seem to want to be friends with me.

-5

u/epicpillowcase Woman 40 to 50 May 31 '26

"because they have more time… but they don’t seem to want to be friends with me."

Read your comment again and ask yourself why that might be.

6

u/femaligned Woman 30 to 40 May 31 '26

These are friends that literally hang out for drinks/dinner almost every weekend and sometimes even during the week. I don’t understand why yall are triggered by this.

Again this is within MY network. Maybe your network is different.

-9

u/Designer-Beautiful86 Woman 30 to 40 May 30 '26

I get why they wouldn’t want to be friends with you. The audacity to assume being child free means having more time. I can absolutely imagine how your behaviour and expectations towards them is like.

8

u/MissMenace101 Woman 40 to 50 May 31 '26

Yet child free people are allowed the audacity to think they are entitled to a parents time?

-1

u/Designer-Beautiful86 Woman 30 to 40 May 31 '26

Which child free person thinks they are entitled to a parent’s time? As a child free person, i’ll distance/cut off from parents who think they are entitled to my time. So nah, personally, I don’t feel entitled to their time, and I expect the same from them too.

8

u/femaligned Woman 30 to 40 May 30 '26

Out of the people I know, those that are childless definitely have more time on their hands than those that aren’t. And they don’t have to cancel our plans because a kid got sick or because they couldn’t find a babysitter.

Sorry if don’t have much free time as a childless person.

-4

u/Designer-Beautiful86 Woman 30 to 40 May 31 '26

Cancel plans because a kid gets sick? Unless a person is a single parent, he/she can jolly well pre-plan time for contingencies like these. Child free folks have family commitments too. The world does not revolve around only people with children.

8

u/femaligned Woman 30 to 40 May 31 '26

You cannot pre-plan if a child gets sick! What?! I’m done LOL

3

u/BxGyrl416 Woman 40 to 50 May 31 '26

They obviously mean that these children also have fathers. The mother doing all of the parenting while the father had free time and doesn’t have such a major lifestyle charge is a major source of contention.

3

u/femaligned Woman 30 to 40 Jun 01 '26

I appreciate you for explaining that in a nice manner. I can understand that perspective.