Get a Social Life...

Following my earlier musing, I found this article in the Telegraph which imparts the not particularly mind blowing news that having babies impacts negatively upon women's social lives.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/18/nbabies118.xml

Its an interesting subject. I do feel, as I mentioned in my earlier post, that I am in the privileged position of having friends who find babies fascinating, simply because the world of poo talk and repetetive nursery rhymes is so far away from their own realities. But the other day, walking alone in Primrose Hill, I did feel a pang when I saw two women, pushing along their respective travel systems and chatting. Most of the few friends I have with children live far away enough only to be able to offer friendly advice via facebook. There are a handful of women I would describe as acquaintances, whom I met at Baby Massage at the Sure Start centre. Just as everyone was getting familiar and comfortable with each other, the course ended. I have their email addresses but I wouldn't yet quite feel comfortable organising a coffee date. I have been once to the local NCT group, and had some nice conversations with women who were planning their move either to the suburbs or back to Austrailia.

The article mentions social networking sites. Recently when I was on babycentre my curiosity was aroused by the inviting link entitled 'Make Friends.' After clicking on it I did browse a few discussion boards and even contributed on matters such as chronic wind and baby swimming. But at the bottom of so many posts, you encounter large amounts of space taken up 'tickers', and other glittery litter. It seems cute enough at first, but when 15 posters each have 3 children and are pregnant again and really think you care that 'little Mia is 4 months, 3 days and 10 seconds old' or that 'baby Johnson will be born (maybe) in 6 weeks, 2 days and 5 hours' it gets wearing and you start to understand why people with children might lose all their friends.