Woman lays down 'rules of decorum' for talking to child-free friends everyone should follow
She had heard many people talk about it on the internet and feels that it is high-time that parents pay attention to some things while talking to child-free friends.
Finding a common thing to talk about is quite an important thing for most friends. It ensures that everyone gets a chance to talk and participate in the conversation and gets an equal chance to participate in the friendship. But sometimes a conversation might get a little too skewed towards one friend's life and the other person might not be able to relate to them. A woman who goes by @circulargurl on TikTok shared some points for people on how to talk to their child-free friends and quite a few people agree with her.
The woman had seen quite a few people talk about it, so she thought of laying down some "rules of decorum" for parents to talk to their unpartnered and/or child-free friends. "So, when you're with your child-free friends, parents with children, try to keep it to adult conversation. I know that most of you think you are not talking about your kids. Cut that back 80%," the woman began with her first rule. "I can guarantee you you're talking about your children most of the conversation. And while we want to hear about your kids ... we don't have children, so we really can't relate, so it's a very one-sided conversation." She led into the logistics after that. "We, especially, do not want to hear about logistics."
She explained that the discussions about summer camps and other activities are not very interesting and are best discussed with other people who have kids. For the third point, she mentioned, "When finally turning over the conversation to something adult because you want to know how your child-free friends are doing, try to find something other than how their dating life is going." She expressed, "A lot of us have very, very full lives. We are very busy and believe it or not, the center of our lives is not trying to have your life, trying to get partnered, trying to have kids necessarily. It's just not."
The person admitted, "Our personal lives, especially if you're dating in 2024 post-COVID, are generally not something we really want to talk about unless we offer that information up to you because the dating landscape has changed greatly and it's a bloodbath." Next up, she said, "Number four, if we visit you from out of town, please do not take us to kids' birthday parties. It's rude, frankly...you then put us into a situation where we're with a bunch of other parents and other kids, and we don't identify with that at all. And it's not a place where adult conversation can be had." For the fifth rule, the woman requested her friends not to tell her if they have to ask or figure out with their husband if they can hang out or not.
Next up, she told the parent friends, "Please, please, please, come to our events — our birthdays, our career milestone celebrations. Those are our events. We didn't have a wedding. We didn't have an engagement party. We didn't have any of that. If we have an event, it's just as important as those, and if you don't make it, that is an insult." She also urged people to make time to check in on their child-free, unpartnered friends as it can get very lonely, or they might need someone to talk to. Lastly, she remarked, “Don't be envious of the time you think we have because we don't necessarily have a lot of it. Don't be envious of our career advances because we do have the opportunity to focus more on our careers oftentimes or choose not to have partnerships and/or children to focus on our careers. We all make our choices."
People took to the comments section of the video to express their opinions. @hayleyreigh wrote, "People are losing their minds in these comments, and I feel like these are all fair and asking for very little." @celis.ttc.journey commented, "Why is this specific to people with children? Other people do this, too. People who are obsessed with their dogs or obsessed with running marathons or something. Just a thought." @spaghettisylvan remarked, "My female friends are subsumed by the demands of parenthood in a way their husbands are not. I asked my husband recently what percentage of the time his friends talk about their kids, and it was 0%!"
You can follow @circulargurl on TikTok for more lifestyle content.
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