Yes, Young Kids Are Friendship Destroyers. But There’s a Crucial Caveat to Keep in Mind.
This summer—the summer my child was 6—was a revelation. On the Fourth of July, some friends convened a cookout at a local state park, at a shelter by a lake that we’ve used many times for similar gatherings.
Such a party a few years ago was spent parenting. My then-toddler stayed locked to me and my husband. She was alternately shy, hot, hungry, and furious. She couldn’t go in the water without us closely supervising, and she really wanted to swim. My husband and I swapped shifts at the edge of the lake, in the blazing-hot sun, away from our friends. We were not at all free, not at all chill, not at all happy. We went home early from that Fourth of July party because those were the days of Bed by 7, or Bust—and because, frankly, we needed those few empty hours at the end of the day, between her bedtime and ours, to feel like normal people again.
This year, on the other hand, I spent the party sitting at a picnic table and chatting. The older kids—of whom J. was now one—ranged the shoreline for hours. They periodically came to the shelter to retrieve Rice Krispies Treats, or watermelon. They dragged chairs and blankets out to the edge of the water and created some kind of game with small clamshells that they’d dug up. The kids weren’t un-present. You could hear them screaming and running, a sound I love; every once in a while, a few of them came to us bickering, a sound I love less. I wasn’t totally free to go on a spontaneous walk in the woods with the cousins, the way I was at Fourth of July parties pre-child. But I was chill, and I was happy. We stayed late, because J. is old enough now that missing a bedtime isn’t the end of the world, and parenting her is mellow enough that we don’t so desperately need those last few hours of silence to stay sane.
It’s these two parties that make me want to tell Allison P. Davis, who just wrote a tremendous piece in New York magazine about the havoc babies wreak on socializing, to just wait. Just wait a few years! The piece focuses specifically on the fact that very young children can be destroyers of friendships, marooning parents and non-parents on opposite sides of a divide, and making chill get-togethers completely impossible for everyone involved. (Davis is on the non-parent side of things in her own group of friends.) Small children need so, so much, and they do not care that what you and your friends want is to have a summer gathering.
One guy Davis interviewed went on a beach vacation with his small kids and his child-free friends, and was pissed off when his friends enjoyed a day of dilly-dallying while he had to face the constraints imposed by nap jail. Another guy Davis spoke to was on the other side: annoyed to be at a party with all his child-having friends whose babies were crawling around at 8:30 p.m., somehow not yet put to sleep. The solution for both of these men is simple: Just wait a few years! Small children will not always be small, and they will not always be so demanding.
Members of my own friend group started to have kids when we were all in our early 30s. What I didn’t really get at that time is the fact that babies and toddlers (which are less portable, more powerful versions of babies) are just made different. They like to get up early (sometimes, painfully so); they respond well to structure and predictability. They need to be entertained in specific kinds of places: not too overwhelming, preferably outside, in a location that’s got a fence around it, without (oh, God) unfettered access to water. They stick stuff in their mouths, and so must be watched. They get overstimulated and overtired easily. They don’t always take to new adults well. Even though people often expect them to be able to play with peers, they don’t really care for it, and certainly aren’t quite good at it, until the preschool years hit—so you shouldn’t count on them getting swept up in a game of tag with a friend at the playground.
Even if the parent has dutifully (or “rigidly,” as Davis describes it) made sure that all of these toddler conditions are met, and has scheduled a constrained hangout, the toddler is still liable to act the shadow when a parent is trying to socialize, interrupting constantly—in a manner that must be forgiven by all, because they’re basically a baby. And because they have a limited vocabulary, when they do interrupt, they have, definitionally speaking, very little to say. I love babies and toddlers, but they are not much like us, and parenting them is not like “living,” in a way that’s recognizable to beachgoing child-free friend groups. The problem is, your friends who want to have kids are going to have to do the baby and toddler bit—by far, the hardest part—first.
In an intellectual way, Davis understands that the strain posed on her friendships by her friends’ children will lessen. She cites a study by Dutch researchers who found that negative effects of parenthood on parents’ friendships peak when their kids are 3, and are mostly over by the time they’re 5. But knowing it is different from seeing kids—and parents—come through it to the other side. I remember what it felt like to be a non-parent in a beloved friend-group vacation setup involving kids. The complex experience of trying to relax with such a group—enjoying the presence of the young kids, but also being, occasionally, quite annoyed by them—put me off of getting pregnant for a while.
That group of friends, far-flung across the country now, skipped a bunch of gatherings because of COVID, but we were able to get together this summer at a beach house. I left my own child behind (see, I’m so chill now!), but some of my friends brought their kids, the ones who used to do things like wake me up in the middle of the night. Those kids are now cheerful, helpful 5-through-12-year-olds who like to play backyard soccer and can hold up their end of a conversation. There’s one late-breaking toddler in the mix, who was mildly prone to breakdowns in the afternoons after skipping a nap, but was also so sweet and funny. It helped that every adult there was used to that, now. The whole scene was so fun, I almost wished I’d brought J., after all. Almost.
