2 ms·

In my experience as father of two children (now teenagers), the most challenging part didn't have to do with raising them. It was the slow and unavoidable proce

In my experience as father of two children (now teenagers), the most challenging part didn't have to do with raising them. It was the slow and unavoidable process of disappearing from the lives of our friends. My partner and I were the first to have kids in our group of friends, even though we had them in our early thirties. Our friends waited until their early forties to have children. It didn't matter that we made an extra effort to be available for plans (not plans with kids, adult plans). Our friends would organise something but wouldn't tell us ("We didn't ask you because you must be so busy/tired"). So it wasn't my/our experience of parenting that I regret but the experience of frienship and the assumptions that many people seem to have about how being a parent changes your relationship with the rest of the world.

v-erne 4y ago
That's great observation - after 10 years with children this stings extra hard. I also think that while having children I somehow lost the ability and will to make new friends. And this is especially tough because my old group shrank to only few, and most of them is too busy working to have time for their own children. Some claim that You can meet new friends through Your children (on playgrounds etc.) but I was never able to create any kind of bond with random people that had almost nothing in common with me, so it never worked for me (all relations created this way were boring and shallow and I prefer to read a book or watch TV than wasting time on shallow relationships that are clearly artifical).