{"id":498,"date":"2006-01-06T22:34:00","date_gmt":"2006-01-06T22:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2006\/01\/06\/498\/"},"modified":"2006-01-06T22:34:00","modified_gmt":"2006-01-06T22:34:00","slug":"498","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=498","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

THE PROBLEMS OF PARENTHOOD AND KIDLESSNESS: I’ve noticed that one of the great dividing lines between people is parenthood<\/span> versus non-parenthood<\/span>. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me that people without kids usually aren’t close friends with people with kids; and vice versa. Personally, I’m on the “without kids” side of the fence. Most of the people that I pal with don’t have kids. Most of the people that I did once pal with who now have kids don’t pal with me anymore. I’ve lost a number of good friendships (regrettably) after my erstwhile friends had kids. It didn\u2019t seem to happen all at once; there were never any terrible scenes which ended our friendships. In each case, it all just sort of faded away. <\/p>\n

Who was to blame for this? I don’t think that “blame” is really the issue. It’s just that we became different kinds of people after once being quite the same. I guess that having kids puts you into a different reality. Admittedly, in some instances (most memorably Loyd and Eve, who have three kids), married friends and their spouses really did try to integrate me into the fabric of their family life. Problem was, I didn’t want to be integrated into any other kind of fabric but my own. I guess that I just wasn’t and am still not very good with kids. (I wasn’t very good with kids even when I was a kid! Reaching college age was truly a delight). Admittedly, kids can be fun for a while. But after that while is over, I start asking myself, when are they going to grow up? And the answer is, oh, maybe 7 or 10 or 12 years from now. As Cagney used to say in his prisoner movies, regarding his life sentence: “I can’t do it, see”. <\/p>\n

Well, just that it’s too bad if it is true that parents and non-parents don’t glue together too well (maybe it’s just me). It probably doesn’t make much difference for people in their 20s, or even early 30s; but by age 40, it becomes one of those unseen but undeniable barriers. Maybe after age 60, it doesn’t make a difference. <\/p>\n

If you are a parent, let me say this: I’m not one of those childless people who gets mad at parents whenever their kids make a bit of noise or inconvenience in public. I realize that what you are doing is necessary for the continuance of the human species. I don’t blame you for believing that other people owe you some help or at least some consideration regarding the huge job of guiding your progeny through childhood. But I myself just don’t have the tools to be of much help beyond common courtesy. Interacting positively with kids is just not one of my strengths. I don’t want nor intend to hurt your kids in any way. I think that they are all entitled to as nice a childhood as my own parents provided me with. But I’m just not able to contribute very much to that process, so please don’t be offended if I don’t seem interested in them and generally stay away from them. And if that means not being close friends with you, well that’s regrettable, but I guess that it’s necessary. Perhaps someday, in another life, we’ll all understand each other and can just laugh together about it all.<\/p>\n

P.S., I did a search and couldn’t find much on the web on the topic of friendship between parents and childfree people. But I’ll leave you with this, a LINK<\/a> to a blog article written by Andrea Rubenstein, a childfree woman who calls for reason and understanding between the two factions. From what Ms. Rubenstein says, though, the divisions between kid-lovers and non-kid people are worse than I thought!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THE PROBLEMS OF PARENTHOOD AND KIDLESSNESS: I’ve noticed that one of the great dividing lines between people is parenthood versus non-parenthood. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me that people without kids usually aren’t close friends with people with kids; and vice versa. Personally, I’m on the “without kids” side of the fence. Most […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}