“Babies show up in our lives like a popular girl transferring into school in the middle of the semester,” writes Allison P. Davis (@babymeatballs). “Their sudden presence, though considered a blessing to their parents, throws the social order into disarray. In 2017, the journal Demographic Research published a study that looked at how the age at which parents had a baby impacted their personal relationships. Researchers concluded that across the board, the strength and quality of friendships “typically decreases after people become parents” and that most of the quality degradation occurs around when the child is 3, during the years that kids’ needs are most demanding of their parents’ time and energy.

Friends might drift away during this era, but friendships come back. It might take six months or three years or a decade, but babies eventually become kids, and parents stumble out of those dark days with a restored freedom to commit to their social lives. The dilemma facing friends with kids and friends without them isn’t so much if they’ll ever have the time to meet up at a bar for happy hour; it’s whether all those years of being busy and disconnected have messed up their friendships so much that nobody will want to go.”

Read our latest cover story from @babymeatballs at the link in bio.