Yes, parenting is complicated, but don't play the parent martyr.

Becoming a mother had the single biggest impact on relating to my friends. Suddenly I became extremely close to those who already had children because of the simple fact that they could nod knowingly when I bitched about my lack of sleep, breastfeeding or how difficult it is to even get out of the house to go to the grocery store … and oh, let’s not talk about the grocery store because what a nightmare.

See? I already bored you, and if you’re reading this you probably even have kids.

Conversely, after having kids you can lose touch with those childless friends who are still living that swinging single lifestyle. Either because you’re annoyed that you no longer have anything in common with them or because they’re sick of hearing you yammer on about your parenthood.

However, if you have longtime friendships that have survived you having children or if you just barely had children and are struggling to maintain valuable friendships, here are some things you should never say to friends, according to Jillian Mackenzie over at Shine Yahoo. Mackenzie doesn’t have kids but most of her friends do so she knows what she’s talking about. Continue reading »

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Now which is from Venus and which is from Mars, again?

It doesn’t exactly take a degree in sociology for one to realize that men and women are very different — a fact that occurs to me on a regular basis in my capacity here at Babble. That said, I’ve always prided myself on relating well to women (especially compared to my gender as a whole). Even so, several comments from Babble’s (predominately female) readership suggest that many of you might find that hard to believe.

My point? I really enjoy writing for Babble, but sometimes I feel that my gender makes it more challenging than it would be if I were a woman. And that’s not a bad thing. It just goes back to my first point. Men and women are extremely different. And an article I read the other day — When Moms Break Up — served as yet another reminder of that fact.

The title alone sparked two questions. Do moms really break up? And if so, what’s to blame? By the end of the piece, I was pretty sure I had found my answers. And in so doing, I may have figured something out about the way moms build their relationships as opposed to the way dads build theirs.

Continue reading »

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“The New York Times” reports on new research which shows that enemies can help children grow emotionally.

“Friendships provide a context in which children develop, but of course so do negative peer relations,” Maurissa Abecassis, a psychologist at Colby-Sawyer College in New Hampshire told The Times. “We should expect that both types of relationships, as different as they are, present opportunities for growth.”

But when is an enemy not an “opportunity for growth” but a nasty bully? Schools are increasingly vigilant against bullying after two teenage girls who were bullied committed suicide earlier this year. Is the theoretical upside of an antagonistic relationship worth the potential risks? Continue reading »

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While some might insist that the proliferation of social networking sites, email and text messaging have allowed us all to have closer connections with more people than ever before, is it possible that just the opposite is true?  Could all this technological interaction actually be turning our kids into a generation of anti-social creatures who someday might not even know how to have a real face-to-face relationship with another human being?

Psychologists and other experts say that might very well be the case.  What’s happening might more accurately be described as anti-social networking and is perhaps changing the nature of childhood friendships forever. Continue reading »

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Has parenthood cost you your single friends?

It’s one of the biggest divides we experience with our friends — the people who have kids and the people who don’t. Either you’re at that phase of life where some friends are already procreating and some are just trying to get through grad school, or you’ve been through the late-20s, early-30s thing of much of your social life being dominated by weddings and now, a few years later, there are baby showers galore.

I’ve been on both ends of the spectrum. While I apparently hang with late bloomers because few of my friends married much before 30, my husband and I refer to the summer of 2003 as “the year everyone had a baby except us” because we’d been trying for over a year to have a baby with no success, while friends and family all seemed to get pregnant right out of the gate.

So I understand how parenthood can impact your friendships on both sides. Continue reading »

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When I was a preteen back in the early 1980s, Judy Blume was a Big Deal. Her books dealt honestly with the concerns of adolesence — sexual curiosity, figuring out friendships, first love, and first period. The 1970s being the era of the “problem novel” in young adult fiction, there was no shortage of books that addressed all the pitfalls teenagers can fall into — read Lizzie Skurnick’s great writing on YA fiction  — but I liked her books because the kids in them seemed so average, like me and my friends.

According to my much younger Strollerderby colleagues, Judy Blume books have remained iconic for girls, and probably some boys, for decades to come. I know my daughter is getting a copy of “Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret” when she hits about fifth grade, and my son will get “Then Again, Maybe I Won’t.”

Double X interviewed her this week, Continue reading »

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Stop hanging your daycare-loving head in shame, Mom. A new study says what’s good for our sanity (and our paychecks) is also good for our circle of friends.

Researchers at the University of Chicago found that moms who put their kids in daycare were likely to have at least one more “good friend” than moms going it alone.

I’m going to admit I’m a teensy bit surprised by this one. Continue reading »

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