You make a great point, and I completely agree that deep friendships require mutual investment, and life doesn’t always make that easy. I feel fortunate to have held on to a few close friends, but I’ve also lost many connections that couldn’t survive the shifting priorities over time.

Your comment is aligned with one of my favorite books on relationships, which I’m sure many here are familiar with: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It’s shaped my mindset in many areas of life, especially when it comes to building and sustaining meaningful connections.

And you’re absolutely right—modern life can be brutal when it comes to creating space for those kinds of relationships. That’s something we don’t acknowledge nearly enough.

A relevant question is: how much effort did you put into retaining the relationships with friends that ended up 'drifting away'?

In my experience, people with kids go into a black hole socially and hardly ever reach out to do something together. Said otherwise: I always have to make an effort to go visit them, they never come visit me.

To a certain extent that is understandable, but to put the moral responsibility on the childless for keeping relationships intact is wrong.

Most people who have kids actively and consciously choose for them and the consequences of having to care for them. In those cases they effectively also choose that over spending time with friends. I would argue that they are then thus more to 'blame' for friendships 'dying' (although I would just say people grow apart by choosing different paths in life, which isn't as antagonistic as using terms as 'true friends').

I'm really enjoying this discussion, and you’re right, my choice of the word “true” wasn’t ideal. Thanks for pointing that out. What I meant was more along the lines of “making the effort to stay connected”, the kind of friendships where both parties are there through the good and the bad. That kind of connection can form early or later in life, but once it exists, I believe it’s something to be cherished.

I won’t pretend I carried the full weight of maintaining every friendship. I was young, overwhelmed, and then came the career and everything else life throws at you. But with the friends who were there through thick and thin, I did make the effort to stay in touch, because a stronger bond had been forged.

And just to be clear, I wasn't placing blame on friends without children. Whether it’s kids, pets, demanding jobs, or anything else, none of us gets a free pass. Relationships need to be nourished, or they fade. For example, when we did movie nights, we made an effort to include everyone who wanted to join. If the film was age-appropriate, our little one came along, and no one minded. If not, we’d arrange a babysitter. We genuinely tried to stay connected, not just with our closest friends, but even with those we casually saw.

So to answer your question, yes, we made as much effort as we could to maintain friendships, which I think we both agree is the key message. My original post was simply a reflection on those who chose to stay connected despite the shift, not a judgment on those who didn’t.

You're right that effort needs to come from both sides, and I agree that some parents, for whatever reasons, do unintentionally withdraw from friendships. I can only speak from my own experience, where we genuinely tried to stay connected, but I understand how it might have felt one-sided to others.

In the end, people do grow apart for all kinds of reasons, and that doesn’t necessarily make anyone the villain.

Thanks again for the thoughtful pushback; it helped me better reflect on what I was trying to express.

I've been on both sides of this fence and I beg you to reconsider. First of all, going out with small children is an enterprise not to be underestimated: packing bottles, the favorite toys, getting the kid(s) dressed... and then the same in reverse at the end of the day but with a way crankier kid. Then you anyway have to do all that for the plethora of mandatory or semi-mandatory outings with the other parents from the same group, and there's even less energy left to get another one. This is why parents prefer to invite you: because they appreciate your company, they want to keep the relationship going, but simply cannot fit much in the limited 24h of a busy day. Have you actually tried to visit them? Did you think that well-calculated chaos you found can be carried so easy some place else for two hours of visit? Yes, it can happen that a nanny is found or a grandma comes over, but neither of these are a given (financial and family statuses can vary). In the end it's not about moral or immoral, it's about mutual investment, and not pretending everything is the same with (small) children when it obviously is not.

My point was that parents with children made their choice and should thus bear the responsibility for it. It's not some accident or unexpected thing like getting a disease or something. It is far more like having some super high-maintenance pet or hobby that sucks up gobs of time and complicates everything.

Now I do make an effort and will continue to visit friends and family with kids, but it is a much shittier experience than visiting friends and family that don't have kids. The children dictate way too much of the experience and suck up all the attention in the room (although this is also an artifact of modern Western parenting).

Again though: the parents chose that life. I had absolutely no say in it. So the situation is that I (have to) put more effort into our relationship and they put less into it. Due to the choices they made.

So don't try to make me feel bad for not feeling sorry for them or being tempted to choose social outings that are free from temper tantrums, brightly colored plastic toys, short attention spans and uninteresting conversations about how 'they can already do multiplication'. We all make our choices.

Children or not, I don't believe I'd want such a friend around in any case. Which is also a choice, just based on something different than what you think.

> Children or not, I don't believe I'd want such a friend around in any case.

"Such a friend"? What do you mean?

> Which is also a choice, just based on something different than what you think.

Don't be passive aggressive. Just say what you mean.