Friendship between a mother and a childless woman
There are friendships that survive moving to another city, breakups, career changes, and years without contact. And then there are friendships that begin to quietly crumble the moment one friend welcomes a child into the world and the other remains childless – whether by choice or by circumstances she didn't choose. This specific kind of estrangement is far more common than is openly admitted, yet few people talk about it out loud.
It's nothing anyone should be ashamed of. It's simply a reality that occurs when two people find themselves in completely different life stages. One is dealing with night feeds, choosing a nursery, and whether it's appropriate to give a two-year-old a tablet. The other is planning a last-minute holiday, working overtime, or simply enjoying a quiet Sunday morning with coffee and a book. Both are living full lives – but their everyday rhythms have become so different that sometimes it feels as though they're speaking different languages.
Try our natural products
Why friendships between mothers and childless women become complicated
Psychologists and sociologists have been observing this dynamic for a long time. Friendships generally rest on shared experiences, spending time together, and a sense of mutual understanding. Once two people's life situations diverge radically, these pillars begin to shake. It's not a question of ill will – it's a natural consequence of how human closeness works.
A woman who becomes a mother undergoes one of the most fundamental identity transformations a person can experience. Her priorities, available time, and physical and emotional capacity – all of this is reshaped almost overnight. Suddenly she can't spontaneously head out for a glass of wine on a Friday evening. She can't afford long phone calls in the middle of the day. And even when she wants to – sincerely and wholeheartedly wants to – stay in touch with her childless friend, she simply sometimes doesn't have the energy.
On the other side, a childless woman may feel that her friend has "abandoned" her – that she has disappeared into a world of nappies and playgrounds and their shared language has faded. She may feel misunderstood when conversations turn exclusively to children. She may feel that her own concerns and joys are suddenly less important, because "she doesn't have children, so what does she have to worry about". And if childlessness is a painful subject – whether due to infertility, pregnancy loss, or a relationship situation – every conversation about motherhood can be unexpectedly painful.
Writer and therapist Esther Perel, who has long devoted herself to human relationships, says: "Relationships don't need sameness – they need curiosity." And it is precisely this curiosity about the other person's life that holds friendships together in difficult times.
What it looks like in practice: the story of two friends
Let's imagine Lucia and Markéta. They met at university, shared a flat, experienced first loves and first disappointments together. After thirty, their paths diverged – Markéta got married and soon had two children, Lucia remained single, travels for work, and childlessness is a conscious choice for her. At the beginning they messaged each other every day. Gradually it became once a week, then once a month. Then came one meeting where Markéta spent the entire afternoon discussing whether her older daughter had dyslexia, and Lucia sat quietly, didn't know what to say, and left feeling as though she hadn't really been needed there. Markéta, meanwhile, drove home with a quiet reproach that Lucia "doesn't understand what responsibility means".
Both were right. And both were wrong. Their friendship didn't need either of them to change her life – it needed both of them to change the way they thought about the other.
The key moment in their relationship was when they first openly told each other how they felt – without accusations, without defending their own life choices. Markéta admitted that she sometimes feels isolated in her motherhood and envies Lucia her freedom. Lucia admitted that she sometimes feels like a spectator of someone else's life and doesn't know how to be a good friend to someone whose everyday reality she doesn't understand. That conversation was uncomfortable. And it was the beginning of a real friendship between adult women.
What actually helps – and what harms
Friendship between a mother and a childless woman doesn't require any special techniques or manuals. It does, however, require conscious effort from both sides – and a willingness to admit when it's hard.
On the mother's side, it helps when she realises that her friend doesn't need to share enthusiasm for every developmental milestone to love her. Friendship doesn't have to rest exclusively on conversations about children – and when a mother can return to her "pre-motherhood self" for an hour, it's a gift for both of them. It's also important not to expect a childless friend to automatically understand the logistical complications associated with motherhood. Explanation isn't weakness – it's a bridge.
On the childless woman's side, it helps when she accepts that motherhood truly changes a person – and that's not an excuse or estrangement, but simply a fact. Interest in a friend's children doesn't have to be feigned – it's enough to ask about specific things, remember names, ask how things are going. It's also perfectly fine to say when the topic of children is too difficult for her at a given moment – for example, if she is herself going through fertility treatment or a loss.
What harms, on the other hand, is comparison. The phrase "you have it easy, you don't have children" is just as destructive as "you don't understand because you don't have children". Both phrases assume that one life path is more demanding or more valuable than the other. And both phrases are lies.
What also harms is quiet estrangement – the gradual fading away without explanation, where weekly contact becomes a once-yearly birthday greeting. Friendships, like plants, need regular care. If no one tends to them, they wither – and neither party need be "to blame".
Research shows that the quality of friendships has a direct impact on physical and mental health. According to a study published in the journal PLOS Medicine, strong social bonds are associated with a significantly lower risk of premature death – regardless of age, gender, or health status. In other words: investing in friendship is not sentimentality. It is literally healthcare.
In practical terms, there are several things that genuinely help friendships across different life stages:
- Planning meetings in advance – spontaneity is a luxury that mothers of young children cannot afford
- Finding shared activities that work for both – a walk with the pram, lunch together, an online call in the evening after the children are asleep
- Talking about how both of them feel – not just sharing information, but genuinely asking about feelings
- Respecting that contact doesn't have to be daily, but must be regular and intentional
- Not comparing life choices – each of them has chosen (or accepted) her path for good reasons
Childlessness as a taboo in conversations between friends
There is one more dimension of this topic that is all too often overlooked and needs to be named. Childlessness is not always a choice. And a friendship where one woman is going through the painful journey of infertility, repeated pregnancy losses, or relationship crises around this issue, while the other is sharing photos of her newborn, can be enormously demanding for both sides – even if no one says so out loud.
Czech society still carries a certain stigma around childlessness. Women without children are sometimes perceived as selfish, immature, or unhappy – whether they are childless voluntarily or not. This social pressure filters into friendships, where a childless woman may feel she has to explain or justify her situation. And a mother may, without realising it, reproduce these prejudices through the way she speaks about the topic – or through the way she stays silent about it.
An open conversation about how each of them actually feels about her own life can be liberating. Not so that one can convince the other of the rightness of her path, but so that both know where the other truly stands. Curiosity without judgement – that is the foundation of any friendship that wants to survive adulthood.
Friendships between women at different life stages are not doomed to fade. They are, however, doomed to work – conscious, kind, and sometimes uncomfortable work to keep them alive. And that work is worth it. Because a friend who has known you since your twenties, who remembers your first failures and first successes, who loves you regardless of whether you have children or not – such a friend is precious. And precious things are not discarded simply because they require care.
