World Childless Week 2024: Day Four: Childless Friend or Foe?

Day Four of World Childless Week 2024 is about friendship -- "Childless Friend or Foe?" From the website description: 

 Have you seen or felt the gap of friendship widen as friends become parents? Have you struggled to find mutual ground and felt pushed aside as they navigate to other mums, cancel dates or suddenly appear with a baby in tow when it was supposed to be a girl’s afternoon? Have you had a situation where a friend who you thought understood has suddenly made a comment or sent a photo that totally broke down the bond you had? Who was it who pulled away, perhaps you did and are happier for it; or maybe there is lasting sadness? Or have you stayed friends with someone who really has been there for you and tried to understand even when they truly don’t? Maybe you’ve reached out and reconnected with a past friend or created a whole new friendship circle. 

How do you feel about building friendships, are you confident to reach out to mums, the childless and childfree alike in order to build bridges and create understanding?     

This blog includes nearly 500 posts (!) labelled "family/friends."  Clearly, there's a lot to talk/write about when it comes to our friends and families, and how they support us -- or not -- as childless people.  It's also clear that I did not have the time nor the energy to comb through 500 posts in search of some good representative posts to share here...! 

I did, however, remember that I have written a lot of posts about the support I've received from childless women in online communities over the past 20+ years.. Some of them are tagged as "iVillage message board" and "SPALS email list."   

As I went through those posts -- and did a search specifically for posts about "friendship" -- I found a couple of posts that seemed worth noting:  

• From 2017: "It takes a village" 
• From 2018: "Social capital, adult friendships & childlessness"
• More recently, from August 2024: "#MicroblogMondays: Online friends are real friends :)"

Check out today's content on the WCW site, including community members' contributions, and two free, live webinars related to this subject. They will be recorded and the links will be posted later on the Day Four page for anyone who cannot make the live event.