Why some friendships end after kids come into the picture

You make a great point, and I completely agree that deep friendships require mutual investment, and life doesn’t always make that easy. I feel fortunate to have held on to a few close friends, but I’ve also lost many connections that couldn’t survive the shifting priorities over time.

Your comment is aligned with one of my favorite books on relationships, which I’m sure many here are familiar with: How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It’s shaped my mindset in many areas of life, especially when it comes to building and sustaining meaningful connections.

And you’re absolutely right—modern life can be brutal when it comes to creating space for those kinds of relationships. That’s something we don’t acknowledge nearly enough.

A relevant question is: how much effort did you put into retaining the relationships with friends that ended up 'drifting away'?

In my experience, people with kids go into a black hole socially and hardly ever reach out to do something together. Said otherwise: I always have to make an effort to go visit them, they never come visit me.

To a certain extent that is understandable, but to put the moral responsibility on the childless for keeping relationships intact is wrong.

Most people who have kids actively and consciously choose for them and the consequences of having to care for them. In those cases they effectively also choose that over spending time with friends. I would argue that they are then thus more to 'blame' for friendships 'dying' (although I would just say people grow apart by choosing different paths in life, which isn't as antagonistic as using terms as 'true friends').

I'm really enjoying this discussion, and you’re right, my choice of the word “true” wasn’t ideal. Thanks for pointing that out. What I meant was more along the lines of “making the effort to stay connected”, the kind of friendships where both parties are there through the good and the bad. That kind of connection can form early or later in life, but once it exists, I believe it’s something to be cherished.

I won’t pretend I carried the full weight of maintaining every friendship. I was young, overwhelmed, and then came the career and everything else life throws at you. But with the friends who were there through thick and thin, I did make the effort to stay in touch, because a stronger bond had been forged.

And just to be clear, I wasn't placing blame on friends without children. Whether it’s kids, pets, demanding jobs, or anything else, none of us gets a free pass. Relationships need to be nourished, or they fade. For example, when we did movie nights, we made an effort to include everyone who wanted to join. If the film was age-appropriate, our little one came along, and no one minded. If not, we’d arrange a babysitter. We genuinely tried to stay connected, not just with our closest friends, but even with those we casually saw.

So to answer your question, yes, we made as much effort as we could to maintain friendships, which I think we both agree is the key message. My original post was simply a reflection on those who chose to stay connected despite the shift, not a judgment on those who didn’t.

You're right that effort needs to come from both sides, and I agree that some parents, for whatever reasons, do unintentionally withdraw from friendships. I can only speak from my own experience, where we genuinely tried to stay connected, but I understand how it might have felt one-sided to others.

In the end, people do grow apart for all kinds of reasons, and that doesn’t necessarily make anyone the villain.

Thanks again for the thoughtful pushback; it helped me better reflect on what I was trying to express.