"If Our Kids Weren't Friends, Would We Actually Be?"

The fucking greatest arc of adulthood.

Used to work up at a WeWork with this guy Mark. I liked him a lot. Good conversationalist. The first time my wife and I went through IVF, me and him would talk a decent amount about fatherhood. He had two kids. He told me this story one time about how his wife, who by the way let’s eviscerate some gender norms and say she about 2.5x’ed his salary, scheduled a playdate for their daughter, but she got stuck at work and couldn’t be there. So my man Mark had to go to this park and communicate with this mom — who was expecting another mom — and then they had to stand/sit there while their kids played. He told me, “It was very awkward.” (Noted.) He then added, “I kept wondering like, would I ever be sitting this close to this person if our kids weren’t the same age?”

A tremendous question. And while that specific story is not a friendship but rather a work/time management situation, there is something to that question broadly. I was struck by it this morning when I was researching some more on the Lindsay Clancy Case out of Massachusetts.

If you didn’t know, she killed her three children. It’s very sad. But it’s also somewhat nuanced, because it says a lot about post-partum and the support we give new moms and all that. Her husband gave an interview to the cops at 8:40pm on the night that (a) his three children died and (b) his wife was chained to hospital bed after trying to kill herself. Tough night for that guy. Even in that interview, he admitted that his wife “doesn’t have many friends.” One of his neighbors and couples friends said the same: “Aside from some mom groups, she doesn’t have any friends.”

But is a moms group actually a friendship, or just a similar life stage thinger?