Little Bundles of Change
Say what you will about change, but it happens. Some changes are for good, some are for ill, and some . . . some are just changes. Some changes can be prepared for, and some are unexpected and forced upon unsuspecting people. From my perspective the two biggest changes a person can go through are marriage and children. We have a culture about giving advice to engage couples about marriage; any couple anywhere can go through pre-marital counseling, and get an idea of what things will be different and some of the changes that will take place. Funny thing is, we don't seem to have anything of the sort for having children.
Most of the married friends I have already have children. Children being what they are, in a blink of an eye and all these children of our friends are already having birthdays. Their lives have changed, but something else changed, something I never would have thought of: our relationship with our friends have been subtly altered. I'm still trying to put words to the changes I have seen, and still trying to grasp the changes that will come about in the future, as children grow older, more are added, and my wife and I start having some of our own.
An obvious change in the relationship we have with our “childed” friends is availability. They are not always free for some social time, and even then the time is not the way it used to be. If they can get a babysitter things are mostly normal, until the “reasonable hour” arrives all too soon. If babysitters are not in the picture we have kid-friendly social time, which usually equates to a poor parent distracted by checking up on their little munchkin. It's not so easy to give our friends a call on a whim and try to get together, and it's not so easy to invite friends over to a house that is not kid-friendly (and it's no fun to make my house kid-friendly).
A not so obvious change is harder to describe, and that is because it has not happened yet. I have been able to see something in my friends that I never expected I would have to see, and at first it would make me uncomfortable; I have to watch my friends discipline (or fail to) their kids. I've seen how different couples handle discipline, and I've had conversations about the philosophy of discipline with friends over the years. People are not united on this subject, and even among Christians there is still disagreement. The change is not in the discipline or lack thereof but in the circumstances of life which then reveal an underlying value.
Friendships live and die by values. When two people have a common and shared set of values they are more likely to be friends, but when they are different, even opposed, friendships become tenuous or nonexistent. What really strikes me about this issue, this one issue, is that established friends can suddenly become people I would want to distance myself from all because of a value I did not know about and was not important in the past.
I'm not sure how much this will come into play in my life, and I hope to God it will be few times. Good friends are hard to find, and I'd rather not have to part ways, ever. However, I can envision a situation where my kid clashes with another and a family feud is born. May this never be.
Marriage changes your life, and can change the relationships around you, yet we understand this. We have many counselors who are willing to talk about this, give their advice, and offer encouraging words. Children also change your life and they will change the relationships around you, probably more that just getting married. A child is a dependent, and dependents strain the fragile bonds of friendships. No one talks about these things before the kids arrive, and I wonder why. What other hidden changes will happen to me and my lovely wife when we decide to bring a life into this world?
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