Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now yesterday on the show we began a series on friendships in adulthood with Jennifer Senior who wrote that widely shared article in The Atlantic called, It's Your Friends Who Break Your Heart, about friendship in middle age. We took calls with Jennifer yesterday, for those of you who weren't listening, about ways you've preserved friendships or made new ones in whatever you would call middle age. Today, we're following up with a call in on one aspect of the article about adult friendships, parenthood and friendships.

Our call in question now is, "Can you give one piece of advice to new parents who may be listening or people on the way to becoming new parents about making new friends or keeping old ones when your bundle of joy arrives?" 212-433-WNYC. That's different from that pledge line that we were giving out before. This is our on air number for the on air call ins, 212-433-9692. Can you give one piece of advice to new parents who may be listening or people on the way to becoming new parents about making new friends or keeping old ones when your bundle of joy arrives? 212-433-9692.

As your calls are coming in, Jennifer Senior tweeted this just in the last day it looks like which is something many of you might identify with. She wrote, "We may disagree about politics, but I think all of us can agree that Pete Buttigieg totally has the exhausted look of a new dad. Ha." Whether you agree or disagree with Pete Buttigieg on politics, what did that exhaustion of being a new parent do to solidify any of your friendships or put pressure on them or maybe set up the conditions for making new friends who are in that emotional bunker with you, that state of being a new parent with all the joys, but also all that exhaustion. 212-433-WNYC. Tell us a story of how becoming a parent or of a friend of yours becoming a parent, which is another wrinkle and how it changed a friendship for better or for worse. Pete Buttigieg and everyone else welcome to call in at 212-433-9692.

In The Atlantic article, Jennifer Senior wrote, "You lose friends to marriage, to parenthood, to politics." Then she told this story, "There was a friend I lost to parenthood utterly, though I was also a parent. Her child shortly consumed her world and she had many child bearing opinions. These changes alone I could have handled. What I couldn't handle was her obvious disapproval of my own parenting style, hands off, and my lack of sentimentality about motherhood itself." There's a good question right there. How much do different parenting styles get in the way of your new friendships with those parents of kids your own kids age? Does anyone have a story like that with a piece of advice on how to handle it?

Jennifer also wrote in the article, "I lost a male friend once to parenthood too though that situation was different. In this instance, I was not yet a mother, but he was a dad and on account of this, he testily informed me one day, he now had higher moral obligations in this world than to our friendship or to my feelings." Listeners, who has a story on that side of parenthood and friendship? A friend of yours becomes a parent when you are not one. How did that stress your friendship and how did you manage it or did that friendship fall away? What's one piece of advice you would give anybody about that? 212-433-WNYC.

I'll just add one other wrinkle here. Is it different for men and women?

80% of our callers yesterday were women, but men, of course, we invite your stories too, dads or some of you guys whose friends became dads when you weren't one. What happened to a friendship, tell us a story and give some advice to other men out there? I expect we'll get mostly women callers again, we'll see, but men, of course, you're also invited. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. We'll take those calls right after this.

Brian Lehrer on WNYC in Our Friendship in Adulthood series. By the way, Margaret Atwood is going to be on the show on Monday. Of course, the great Margaret Atwood, novelist and essayist. She actually responded to Jennifer Senior's article in The Atlantic that's inspiring this series because Jennifer's article was about friendship in middle age and Margaret Atwood responded with something about friendship in old age. She's going to come on on Monday's show and talk about that in this series. For now, we're taking your calls on parenthood and friendship. Ciara in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ciara.

Ciara: Hi, Brian. Thanks so much for having me. A big fan. I'm on parental leave right now and my son and I listen to you everyday.

Brian Lehrer: Parental leave, how appropriate. Tell me a story.

Ciara: Well, for my family at least, my wife and I have two kids. They're both under the age of five, so neither of them can be vaccinated. We've just found that it's been a challenge getting together with friends who don't have kids because maybe they are doing things like going out to eat at restaurants, going to theater, going to bars and things like that. We've also been pleasantly surprised about long-term friendships that we have had, that have persevered through the pandemic and how far people are willing to go to accommodate our needs with two young children, meeting us outside, coming to us instead of us going to them.

There's two sides to this and I have to say though, as a parent, as an adult, we're both in our mid 30s, we do have these long-term friendships. Those are the ones that have really endured this. We've also made friends with other parents in our neighborhood, which has been really great. We have seen those long-term friendships really endure through this. I hope other people are experiencing that as well.

Brian Lehrer: Ciara, thank you for starting us off. Nathaniel in Dobbs Ferry, you're on WNYC. Hi, Nathaniel.

Nathaniel: Hey, how are you doing?

Brian Lehrer: Good. You've got a piece of advice I see as a dad.

Nathaniel: I do. Well, first of all, it's hard to maintain friendships if people don't have kids because the timing of your life, the day-to-day timing is always different than what it is when you don't have kids. I found it very helpful to go to parent functions at the preschools that our kids went to and meet people, essentially trying to find new friends. It was really, really helpful because we found people who were compatible to me and my wife, as you know, friendship-wise, who had kids the same age as our kids. What you get is people you can hang out with and who you really enjoy, who also have kids who your kids enjoy.

During the pandemic that was absolutely life-saving because we had a little COVID bubble. We had a very small group of friends who we would invite over to our house and invite their kids over. They'd invite us over and we could have playdates and stuff like that. I think it probably saved us in a lot of ways.

Brian Lehrer: We are thinking about doing another call in in this series specifically on adult friendships in the pandemic and how the pandemic has affected them for better or worse. With kids it sounds like the story you're telling includes trusting these other families to stay when things were really bad at the same level of bubbling as you did.

Nathaniel: Absolutely. We sat down with them over email and said, "Listen, this is what we want to do. We want to have an exclusive relationship with-- It was three different families." We knew they were all friends with each other. They agreed essentially saying, "We're only going to see each other as if we were dating." Of course, we had very-- We all felt the same way about staying safe from COVID and keeping our children safe. We all just had a verbal agreement that we wouldn't be hanging out unmasked with other people.

Brian Lehrer: It's intense enough to have little kids. There's the bonding with your new parent friends that comes from that to have done that in a pandemic you're probably going to be bonded with these people for the rest of your life.

Nathaniel: Hopefully, yes. One last bit of advice I had separate from the quarantine bubble is I found that I had to be willing to let go of some friendships. The friendships that I have managed to keep sort of pre-parenthood are stronger now than they've ever been. You've only got room for so many people in your life.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Nathaniel, thank you. Thank you so much. We really appreciate you calling in. Natasha in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Natasha.

Natasha: Hi. Hi, Brian. It's great to talk with you. You might hear my little one in the background making her radio debut. I just wanted to say that as a parent of two, both of whom I had basically during this pandemic, I would say that my advice to new parents is to let your friends without kids into your life really early on. You're going to have friends who are going to want to come and hold your baby in those first few weeks to give you a nap break. You're going to have friends who are going to want to send you food baskets and just other ways, going to want to help you in ways, let them do that. That's a new iteration for your friendship as well. A baby changes so many things and it can change friendships for the better. Then after the fog of the first three to six months, reach out to those friends, set alarms on your phone, calendar, invites for yourself to reach out to friends to see how they're doing, and connect with them on their level.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. That's a good one to remember if you're a new parent and the fact of being a parent is consuming to reach out to your friends who don't have kids, because they may not feel comfortable reaching out to you. They don't know when to burst into that bubble or not.

Natasha: Yes, exactly. Brian, I just had one other quick note to say myself as a queer parent, as a queer person framing the conversation in the binary of men and women exclude some people. We know that there are people who have babies who don't identify as men and women. I think that even if they do right, I think the better way of framing it would be talking about it as the difference between the birth parent and the non-birth parent because as myself being the birth parent, there are so many different experiences that I've had that my non-birth parent partner is having in their own friendships. Framing it that way, I would just suggest doing that.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Natasha. Angela in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC. Hi Angela.

Angela: Hi Brian, how are you doing, good to speak to you again? [crosstalk] My story was I was an older parent, so like say now my son is 16 and all of my friends are grandparents. By the time I had my child, I had a lot of parental resources to turn to. I would say look at your friends who you deem to be successful parents and need them for advice. I had a parent, one of my friends who told me how to make apple sauce or had a parent who friends who helped me not freak out when my son started throwing up through his nose. Those experienced people, especially if you're an older parent, use them. They're very, very helpful. My sister read books--

Brian Lehrer: Are we losing you? I think Angela's line was cut in the [unintelligible 00:14:28]

Angela: Brian. Oh yes. I'm sorry. I got disconnected. I'm sorry. Yes. I said my sister read books to help with her parenting and I called friends. I didn't have to read books. I had friends.

Brian Lehrer: Angela, thank you very much. Appreciate it. Roxanne in Mount Arlington, you're on WNYC. Hi Roxanne.

Roxanne: Hi, Brian. It's so great to speak with you. I love this topic. I wanted to talk about. Yes. One of my dearest friends and I met 34 years ago in a birthing class back then they still called it Lamaze. She became such a good friend as it turned out, our babies were born one day apart. We were in the hospital together. Then we had thousands of phone calls back and forth over the years, pediatricians, school choices, all these things, and we've remained friends and our children are now 34 years old. Look to those other new moms who are going through the exact same thing that you're going through and you can forge some bonds that will last for decades.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Did you ever get into any of those touchy situations like Jennifer Senior wrote about that one where your parenting styles and how strongly opinionated anybody was about their parenting styles got in the way of those friendships?

Roxanne: Well, I would say that we did have different--First of all, I have sons, she had daughters, so there are some differences there, but fortunately, we really were not so strongly opinionated that we couldn't hear what the other person had to say. I would say that as they got a little bit older and my boys were interested in different things and her girls were interested in different things, we didn't have the parenting issues were different. We weren't comparing apples to apples a lot of the time, it worked out for us.

Brian Lehrer: Roxanne, thank you. Thanks to all of you who called in today. We'll continue this Friendships in Adulthood series on Monday with Margaret Atwood who's going to talk about friendships in old age, Brian Lehrer on WNYC, more to come.

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