In their defense, they’re far too crazy and marginalized to be remotely powerful.
This is like an episode of missing-the-point theater. Good lord.
This is my default assumption whenever a friend has children. I know I will hear from them again sometime around whenever the youngest child hits high school. I just write people off. Not because I don’t want to be their friends anymore, but because I know those people will give zero fucks about anything not related to raising their children and that effort really does take up most of people’s time. I’m not upset about it; that’s the way it should be. But I do think parents are shorting themselves because maybe I love children and would make a great babysitter, but my parent friends can’t even be bothered to go to lunch during the work day, so fuck 'em. Let 'em figure out their own babysitting problems. I could have and would have helped you out, but not if you’re not going to talk to me at all otherwise.
I’m a little butthurt today. My coworker, with whom I share office space, is adopting a baby from out of state. He just returned to work, although he will travel back to finalize the adoption. While we used to talk about everything and anything, I started to tell him a story about something that happened to me last week and stopped twice. He was obviously not listening because he was getting texts about the baby/adoption process. It’s obvious he gives no fucks anymore (because me and my life are of no importance to him, appropriately so), so I might as well be talking to myself. Goodbye, friend, I’ll talk to you again in about ten years. 
“Zero fucks” is putting it a bit much. Let’s say about a third of the total fucks I could spare pre-kids, if you’ve got kids of your own, and an eighth of the total fucks I could spare pre-kids, otherwise. If you end up writing me off because I can only give 12.5% of the previous level of fuckitude, of course, that’s gonna drop down to the aforementioned zero fucks.
It sounds like he’s literally right in the middle of the adoption process. No wonder he’s a trifle distracted! Give him some time.
With parents, the area of total distraction usually is limited to the baby/toddler phase - and of course it is worst with first-timers (though only having the one, I don’t know from personal experience).
There is a little anecdote that my mom used to illustrate this process.
First-time parent: the baby dropped a pacifier. Oh no! Disinfect it with steam, quick!
Second-time parent: the baby dropped a pacifier. Ah well, let’s wash it off under the tap.
Third-time parent: the baby dropped a pacifier. Did it actually fall in dog shit? No? Then wipe it off, put it back. 
Edit: the sting in the joke: I was her third.
Huh. I figure the baby days are when you build up the old immune system. Drop the pacifier? The kid knows where it is, she can get it when she wants it again.
Once again, that’s a pyramid scheme.
That’s ridiculous. It resembles a pyramid scheme only superficially. Pyramid schemes don’t work because the number of people needed to support them eventually outstrips the number of rubes out there. Young people supporting old people doesn’t work because __________________________________________.
Because the earth’s population has to stop growing eventually.
At which point we may be in space, and population expands effectively forever (or until the heat death of the universe, whichever comes first). Or by which point we may have developed technology sufficiently that we don’t need youngsters to take care of oldsters. Or at which point the slow in population is gradual enough that changes to cultural norms are sufficient to deal with the change in demographics. Or at which point a mass nano-plague may have wiped out 99% of the earth’s population. Or at which point a death-cult devoted to eating the elderly may have swept across the planet.
Any number of things could prevent a collapse of this so-called pyramid scheme, not all of which are bad or related to the “scheme” itself. By contrast, a pyramid scheme must keep expanding at the same rate that it started expanding at, or it collapses.
It’s not only an inaccurate description, it’s not even a good analogy.
LHoD and OLP, I think perhaps you’re talking past each other.
ISTM that OLP’s point was basically what you’re saying: that the notion “everybody’s gotta have kids so we can keep having more youngsters than oldsters” is a misleading distortion of the complexities of actual demographics, and moreover that it’s impossibly unsustainable in the long run.
The “pyramid scheme” model of perpetual growth is not actually realistic for either predicted future demographic trends or society’s needs.
In other words, you two are actually in agreement, admittedly a rather dark and cluttered agreement where you have some difficulty seeing each other.
Ya think? I don’t. I see the way parents’ eyes glaze over when I start talking about the exact same topics we both used to discuss with enthusiasm, pre-kids. They. do. not. care. My silly single-life concerns (I found a dog! I found its home! She’s safe now, but I almost had another dog!) are of no consequence to people engaged in the important heady work of raising up humans.
I try, I really do. But I can only get shut out, ignored, put off, and procrastinated so much before it becomes clear to me that you (not you, Left Hand, of course I mean the collective “you”) do not have time for my trifling shit. You don’t want to hear it and suddenly I feel like I’m talking about my high school prom while you’ve moved on world peace. We no longer have the same things in common. And of course I do not have children, so despite the fact that I have a couple dozen nieces and nephews and had a thriving babysitting empire in high school, I can’t possibly know shit from shinola about children and should just shut up on all matters pertaining to them, lest I earn the patronizing stare that says, “Do you have children? No. So SFTU already.” I am not trying to be the asshole in this scenario. I like children. I don’t mind being around them. Bring them to lunch. It’s fine. I’ll help you with them.
I do have a couple close friends with whom the relationship hasn’t changed. But the more casual friends just get written off mentally as soon as they make the announcements. I try, I invite, I reciprocate, but the invitations and acceptances of those start to die down and pretty soon I realize I haven’t heard from that parent in a year or more.
Yes, he is literally slap in the middle of the process. And I did not expect his undivided attention or even any manner of “So, how’s your life? What’s going on with you?” at all. I’m just saying that, despite being prepared for that, it doesn’t hurt any less. And we’re talking about a co-worker, not a lifelong friend since childhood or anything like that. It’s a casual friendship at best. I would not expect to have much importance in his life. So I will continue to be the supportive co-worker (“Leave! I got this!”) and listen to his tales of adoption hell and so forth, but I no longer expect the reciprocation of concern there once was. Y’all parents just don’t have it to give. And that’s* okay*. It’s expected. It just smarts a bit from this side of the equation, that’s all.
Going by the fact that the one concrete example you gave was of a guy literally in the middle of adoption drama - I’m going to guess that your generalization is not 100% accurate.
Sounds to me like you are seeing what you expect to see.
Okay, maybe I’m just really lucky in terms of my friendships, but is it really that common to earn disdain or a complete shunning from friends, once they have kids?
Hell, I went to the birthday party for some friends’ 5 y/o daughter yesterday, and I brought two gifts - an Adventure Time doll and a My Little Pony figure. If not the only “childless” person there, I was definitely in the minority.
It was a pool party, so for the majority of the time, the kids were preoccupied in the pool, and parents would tend to them, but at no point did I ever feel ostracized by any of the attendees. I spent a good three hours there and made conversation with various adults, and while children were a topic, it by no means was the only thing discussed over the course of the afternoon.
Hell, one thing I’ve found is that most parents would love to discuss anything “adult”, as they get tired of the 1,000th airing of “Frozen”.
Maybe I have low standards for what it takes to maintain a friendship, but if I know friends who’ve recently had kids, of course they aren’t going to be able to go barhopping with me this weekend. I’ll send them an email or a text to reach out to them. One thing I’ve found is that communication via that is easier, because it lets them respond at their convenience. Most of my friends are pretty good about getting back to me in a quick fashion. Phone calls may not be answered for whatever reasons, but that’s understandable, because sometimes, I may not answer theirs, if only because I don’t feel like talking. It’s nothing personal against them. Sometimes, I just like to relax.
I don’t think I would ever write off a friendship, just because they announced they are expecting a baby.
Additionally, last night, I received a text of the daughter playing with the toy, along with a note telling me how much she loves the gift from her Uncle [Calatin]. Completely unnecessary, but I loved receiving the picture.
A casual co-worker is going through a life-altering process and you are experiencing “hurt” because they are distracted and not giving you reciprocation?
There is a time when, no doubt, you will likewise have something important in your life which is of overwhelming concern to you. Could be anything - a death in the family, a baby, a new relationship - and you will, likewise, be distracted by it. Parenting isn’t in any way unique in this.
Hey, I am a parent, and I’m with you. I have lots of single or non-childed friends I am still friends with.
It is true that, as a first-timer with a new baby, I wasn’t very available for a year or so. Fortunately, my friends understood that and did not demand complete reciprocation or being written off.
OLP was talking to Drunky Smurf, who has one of the most apt usernames out there. If he (?) was taking DS seriously, my apologies, sort of, because he really shouldn’t do that, so I assumed he was using DS’s drunken ramblings to reassert something wrong. Because NOBODY THINKS EVERYBODY’S GOTTA HAVE KIDS. No human being and no sober smurf thinks that.
See, when I had no kids I never experienced that from my friends with kids. Now that I have kids I talk with my non-parent friends, when we get a chance to hang out, we talk about other stuff (Dungeons and Dragons! Movies! Camping!) just like we did before. If you’re worried about parents’ eyes glazing over when they’re in the middle of an adoption, I can’t help you, but in general I don’t find that as a parent or previously as a non-parent there was the divide you’re describing.
Not in my experience, no.
God, I love the way all y’all generalize from ONE example. That was ONE example. I am not going to list them all out. But I have had this experience from more than one casual friend.