In 2024, I thought a lot about

"What time did you get up today?"

One of my friends is obsessed with asking this, hoping to hear tales of endless lie-ins and indulgent brunches. He imagines my child-free weekends in a bliss of luxurious nonchalance while his are filled with the chaos and thunder of three small children.

"Actually, we had a few things to do this morning so I was up at 11am…"

Of course, the truth is far more prosaic. We don’t get up at 11am that often. But my partner and I have spent a lot of time this year being reminded about the different path we have chosen to take to the majority of our friends. 

While the decision to be child-free was always pretty clear for both of us, its ripple effects through our social lives have been more surprising than we anticipated. No regrets, no judgement, just reflections on how things have changed for us as the dominant draw in our clique has transferred from friends to family.

Our lives and our friends' lives, once so interwoven, have become increasingly different. The main divergences used to be at which pub we would start an evening or at which place we would finish it. We were a loosely assembled gang of friends connected by common interests and very good times. I’ve always expected a certain amount of development and turnover in my friendships – happily maintaining some for decades whilst also being part of a social fabric that brings people in and out of my life without warning or fanfare. 

What I hadn't twigged was that parenthood puts you on the guestlist for a different kind of club.

In the early days, we happily showed up to the first birthday parties and milestone events, watching our friends emerge from the sleep-terrorised shock of keeping tiny humans alive. But as the dominant chats drifted closer to caregiving and away from our common ground, we found ourselves drifting too. If all your friends have a new obsession which you haven’t got into, there are only so many conversations you can listen and nod along to.

There were no dramatic exits, just a gentle backing away until eventually the invitations stopped coming. Meanwhile, our friends were making new connections at nursery gates and soft play centres, bonding over their shared experiences that we weren’t a part of.

And then things really started shifting. The precious few opportunities to hang out were being taken up by this new lot. While we had waited patiently for those rare parental commodities of availability and energy to appear, after school wines became a thing. Dinners started getting attached to sleepovers.

A really noticeable shift has been the increase in gender separation. The dads seem to be around more than the mums, who spend their few nights out with other mums. We miss those women in our lives, and when we do see them at family gatherings we end up only catching fragments of conversation while they juggle keeping their children safe/fed/entertained.

And look, we get it. We want our friends to be devoted fathers and mothers. That’s what should happen. We’re not complaining. But to pretend things are how they were 10 years ago would be unfair to the new humans who occupy so many of their waking and barely-sleeping hours. 

And I think we were pretending for a while. 

Being child-free means we have different choices about how to fill our time. Sometimes, it’s with nothing. Sometimes we’re more productive. My partner found she has a passion for badminton; I've been taking piano lessons, and we've had time to support people we love when they've needed us most. Holidays and travel are only complicated by finances and cat-sitter availability.

And there is time to explore new friendships. Turns out we’re not the only ones without children in the world. We’ve found more reasons to connect with people we’ve known for a long time and meet new people too. Younger people, older people, a wider spread from that tight group. Some via work, some with children too. 

Some of those new friendships have come through our old friendships – hand-picked and pre-selected from school drop-offs, filtered through social gatherings and fast-tracked through the trust process. We're steadily acquiring more mum and dad pals as if we've also been fast-tracked to the best bit of the club.

There is also an unexpected bonus that might end up being the most fun yet – it turns out some of the children might be OK too. Interesting even. We've found ourselves looking forward to seeing them, learning about them as people, hearing their opinions. Like friends do.

Friendships are supposed to change. This year we realised we’d probably expected everything to stay the same when we went another way to everyone else.

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