Play it forward: Why people without kids should make more time for those who do, and vice versa

As I hurtle towards my mid-thirties, the drip drip drop of friends and acquaintances taking the plunge into parenthood has become a deluge. In my circle of uni friends, most have sprogged, are sprogging, are thinking about a sprog or have a dog, which they have turned into a pampered substitute.

The ones who haven’t partnered up are increasingly looking like career singles: slightly louche at parties and banging on self-importantly about their jobs. Dinner parties have become a barrel of Bridget Jones style clichés, particularly in the rather more upper middle-class of my circles. And I must admit a wry smile to myself as once easygoing young uni mates become new parents bouncing recently gestated infants vigorously over roast lunch, wiping away the inevitable proliferation of spit up while keeping up a merry stream of dad banter with the sleepy enthusiasm of one who hasn’t yet twigged they’re running a lifetime’s marathon.

It’s not that I’m bitter that I’m no longer in the baby haze – no, I’ve taken the executive decision never to go down that merry path to martyrdom again, and am happy enough to skip off into a free and unfettered forties, unencumbered by miniature slave drivers, even though I may yet look back in regret at the other little people I might have made. Given that I was first of the bunch to become a mum, I garnered more than my fair share of congratulations and concern in equal measure, at least first time around. But re-wind the last ten years, when it came to acknowledging my child in the flesh, rather than just as a vague abstract concept, most of my friends “from before” – and I do say most – were resolutely indifferent.

I know it’s difficult to be interested in other people’s children. They can be boring, noisy, juvenilely rude and also not much interested in engaging, so busy are they managing their own bodily functions. But it’s worth the effort to develop a relationship with the next generation. They rarely forget you if you turn them upside down, even if the memory is hazily furrowed down the telescope of relative time.

Six years ago, the same group of friends who ate roast lunch yesterday at The Albert in Battersea Park (very nice, even more dog friendly than child friendly) went to stay in one of the group’s parents’ house in France. It was idyllic, if, for me tinged with sleep deprivation and late pregnancy ennui. But while my unencumbered friends sat round over hearty pot roasts and bottles of red wine and enjoyed lazy lie-ins, I perfected my scarf knitting technique sat on a beanbag with a head torch, casting off my anxieties about Tom’s recent job loss in a frenzy of purl stitches, getting up early to deal with a tantrum and push Jonah on a swing.

The others were interested enough in my pregnancy, especially the girls, and to the toddler I tried to keep as well away as possible they gave the time of day, though failed to develop the relationship much beyond a pat on the head, or a tolerant game of tiddlywinks. But one (let’s call him Bob), was less self-conscious in getting down to Jonah’s level, playing many an avuncular game of water pistols. Jonah hasn’t seen him in years, but when he sat down two chairs away, (the non parents and parents sat a careful distance away down at the other end) now the father of a three month old, (“it’s easy” he jested, wiping away a profusion of spittle) Jonah remembered him, and said an awkward, nine year old hello.

It really can be that easy to form a worthwhile relationship with your friends’ children, even if theirs might comfortably sit a generation above or beneath your own. Babies grow up in the blink of an eye when viewed from outside the nest, and those indulgent new parents will become weary-eyed as their infants are joined by less-indulged latter siblings, and tire of the inevitable chatter about milestones and sleeping routines and dichotomies about whether purées or baby-led is best for weaning (you’ll do a bit of both anyway), just as I have. But it is a golden window of opportunity to get to know them that very quickly slams shut.

Now, as my friends become parents, they form inevitable relationships with similarly gestated infants of others, yet still have little more than a passing avoidance for my infinitely more socially acceptable offspring. Now 9 and 6, they are fairly capable of holding a conversation and definitely able not to shit their pants, and could in provide willing entertainment to slightly older versions of the same babies (or even perhaps offer them a job one day) in as much time as it takes for us to organise ourselves into the same venue again in a year or so’s time.

In the meantime, I will try my best to be patient as they talk about parenting ground that is new to them, without trying to give advice – even if it may prove worthwhile; and I will listen to their stories of being puked up on in the car, while trying hard to bite my tongue about the times I heroically cleaned up vomit or changed emergency nappies en route to sophisticated pub lunches when they were still an urbane twentysomethings and I was a young mum, while pretending I was coping amazingly and all was rosy when it wasn’t.

For those who are now past the watershed of birth, your tired eyes betray they are already more understanding of the seismic shift that has occurred, and that life, or at least your vagina, will never been the same again. I will give you a break from holding their baby when your arm is tired, and I will discreetly look away as you fumble with their tops for a feed without making them feel awkward, despite sometimes feeling I had to sit, a la Farage, in the corner, so as not to draw attention to myself in a room full of non-parents back in the days when I was breastfeeding. But I will also guzzle three glasses of wine just because I can, because, when I was a new parent and you weren’t, that’s what they did. And you, no doubt will feel slightly martyred and superior, just like I did, because what you are doing is soo much more fulfilling than getting pissed at the weekend, even if you are also sightly jealous of my relative freedom. And for all the times my other half has valiantly entertained the kids so I can grab half an hour of much needed adult conversation, I will try and spare your partner the same indignity, even if sometimes it can’t be helped.

But I would ask that, now you are parents, please try to engage with my kids a bit more – I know they aren’t always that up for chatting, but if you get down to their level, and didn’t pretend they weren’t there, they will find their feet with you. And I will do the same for yours, if you let me, even when they are at that really annoying stage of being a toddler and probably, with the benefit of hindsight shouldn’t be brought to a pub at all.

Because parents  – and their children are people too. It doesn’t mean they should automatically be denied sophisticated activities (tea at Claridge’s springs to mind) or pigeon-holed into “family friendly” activities. Parents shouldn’t be or seen but not heard, and it’s tough luck for those in the market for a quiet pint, or crustless sandwich. Children are a part of life, not a brief anomaly in an otherwise self-involved existence, and the more we try and distance them as adults, the more we feel we need to do the same with our own when we become parents ourselves.

It’s my belief that no one really grows up until they become a parent (this is no criticism by the way: most of the best people are children, though kidults can be a terrible bore). When they do, it can be a shock. We can all do more to soften the blow by being more tolerant and welcoming to parents and their children, whoever they happen to be. Especially old friends “from before”, its worth making the effort with the next generation, you never know a little investment of time might start to pay dividends.