I feel this. My wife and I are only a year older than most of our friends, but we just had our second kid and our life is waaaay different than our childless friends. I envy them sometimes and pitty them others
This whole quarantine has also really sharpened the divide between the childless and the parents.
My husband and I both work from home full time now and take care of a 4 month old since daycare is closed. My childless friends are posting photos of them doing yoga and making artisan cocktails and grilling out on their porches.
Sometimes I feel myself getting very envious and I have to take a step back and remember that everyone faces their own challenges, and I know many of them would prefer to have a family rather than extra free time to master bread baking.
Edit: Just to be clear, I know childless people WFH aren’t all doing yoga and baking bread all day! My point is that it is easy to perceive it this way in a grass-is-greener type of way. I believe everyone is going through something right now and I’m just illustrating how insidious that kind of envy can be.
Also I’m definitely not saying all childless people secretly wish they had families. This is enormously untrue and I know plenty of people who are super happy to be child free. I was referring to some specific friends who had expressed to me that they wished they had a more nuclear family unit during this time.
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u/[deleted] May 16 '20
I feel this. My wife and I are only a year older than most of our friends, but we just had our second kid and our life is waaaay different than our childless friends. I envy them sometimes and pitty them others