Can friends stay close when one has kids? Turns out there is a way

There’s one picture that often forms the outline of conversations about friends having children. Whatever the circumstances – one becomes a parent and another doesn’t, someone is the first to do it, or someone is the only one to opt out – it generally goes like this: we used to stay out late and talk about anything and now we can’t/don’t/have forgotten how. We were woven into one another’s lives and now we’ve lost the thread.

In a 2023 feature by the writer Allison P. Davis, women’s culture website The Cut referred to children as the “Adorable Little Detonators”, something a friendship had to “survive”. It was the kind of tectonic piece that made everyone feel seen, inflamed, resentful and self-aware in equal measure. People with kids described how adrift they often felt, and how they could barely comprehend what had happened to themselves, let alone articulate it to a friend who didn’t share the experience.

Credit: Illustration by Robin Cowcher

Those of us who’ve stayed child-free – by choice or circumstance or something in between – are often told by our friends who used to feel so connected to us that they’re either envious of our freedom and flexibility, or that nothing we do is ever as significant or serious as giving life. That’s how the conversation generally goes, anyhow.

While revisiting a golden episode of television recently, though, I was reminded of a different model that colours in the outlines in new shades.

Needing a break from the pain of another week recapping episodes of And Just Like That… I returned to its source material and the character who didn’t make it into the reboot. In Sex and the City, Samantha Jones served as one of the series’ most vital mirrors: the single woman with no desire to marry, have children or change her lifestyle in any way. It’s the thing I find myself craving more and more as I journey deeper into my 30s sans mortgage, children or partner.

While bingeing a string of season five episodes, I found myself pausing on one called Critical Condition. This was the episode where Carrie is fixating on her reputation while Charlotte is divorcing one husband and meeting the man who’ll become her next.

But it’s the rare pairing of Miranda and Samantha that stopped me in my tracks, and gave me a new model of how to show up in my parent-friends’ lives. Miranda, the hardened lawyer, is struggling as a new mum, with no time for herself and a temperamental kid who screams the house down unless he’s being rocked by a humming, electronic bounce-chair. Samantha tries to ignore Brady and all other children – why should her life have to change just because someone else decided to procreate?

It’s one of those cliches, rarely said out loud, that new parents fear their child-free friends are saying behind their backs, and that some might occasionally think (or whisper or text) as our weekend mornings become booked up with kids’ parties.

We love the kids because we love our friends. We adjust our lives to accommodate theirs because those relationships are important and will, god willing, see a new generation through school and breakups and babies. Everything’s different, and when we’re not discussing that fact, we’re pretending it’s all still the same.

It’s also true that people on all sides of the kid divide can probably do more to make our friends feel included and understood. We can all do better at embracing change (parents have major new priorities!) while insisting some things stay the same (other things are also important!). I ask about sleep training because I know it matters to someone who matters to me. Just as they ask about dating apps and my cat because I am a walking stereotype of a spinster. It works for us.

By the end of the episode, Samantha had shown up at Miranda’s door and insisted she take a hair appointment in her place. “You want to babysit?” Miranda asks incredulously. Sam doesn’t say yes, exactly. Because sometimes being a good friend means being selfless, sucking it up, and doing something you’d rather not.

The moment baby Brady settles down with the hum of a brand new, er, “back massager” underneath his broken bounce-chair, is a symbol that while the narratives shift and personal histories get rewritten, we’ve got to embrace the change and find a new frequency at which to vibrate.