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Woman without kids cancels trip with mom friends because she's sick of hearing about babies

"It's not the weekend for me."

via Kampus Production/Pexels

Five women hold their bellies in a baby shower photo.

Getting married and having a child is a huge life change and so when a group of friends goes through the same experience together, it’s a great way to bond. Unfortunately, for some people, these changes on the domestic front can take over their lives and become their entire personality.

People who are single and aren’t looking to have kids any time soon can have a hard time relating to their friends who are married with children because they have less in common. Further, when you don’t have children, it can be a little tedious to hear people talk all day about lactation, sleep schedules and spitting up.

These topics can be boring to people who have children, too.

children, family, friendship, vacation, childfree, having kids A woman without kids says she's tired of hearing about her friends' babiesImage via Canva

A Redditor who goes by Remarkable_Lake410, who we’ll call RL for brevity’s sake, recently ran into this problem with her friends. Instead of feigning interest in married mom life, she decided to be honest with them about why she didn’t want to join them on a trip.

“I (27F) have a group of female friends (8 of us). We have been friends for over a decade, since school. Now, we don’t live in the same place, but we meet up a couple of times a year for a weekend on an Airbnb. This used to be a weekend of good food, drinks, hot tub, etc.” she wrote on the AITH forum.

“Around five of my friends are either married or in very long-term relationships. Of these five, two either have a baby or are pregnant. I will be seeing all of my friends this year for various wedding, friend and baby events. I have been invited to this year's girls' trip, but I have said I can’t come. I didn’t originally provide a reason,” she continued.

@tmurph

When I’m on Vacation I don’t have any kids🤣…those kids are US citizens I’m Jamaican unit next week 🤷🏾‍♂️😂 . . . . #tmurph #parenting #momsoftiktok #mom #momlife #dad #dadlife #parentinghacks #millennial #reels #explorepage #fyp #adultchildren #parentstruggles #foryoupage #parenthood_moments #vacation #jamaica #parentsvacation #getaway

But a friend pushed her to find out why she didn’t want to go on the trip and she was honest: She didn’t want to be stuck constantly hearing about babies, marriage and weddings on a trip that was going to cost a significant amount of money.

“[Last time], I listened to one of my friends talk about her breastfeeding plans, with vengeance, for over an hour. She is not pregnant or trying. Truthfully, it’s boring, and it feels dismissive,” RL wrote. It’s also a really expensive way to feel bad about myself.”

When her friend heard her reason, she was “really hurt,” and it felt like RL didn’t care about her and her other friends. So, RL asked the Reddit forum if she was in the wrong for being honest and skipping a trip that would be all about marriage and babies.

The post received over 4,000 responses that were overwhelmingly supportive for RL.

family, kids, vacation, women, babies, having children, not having children The woman received a wave of support for her decision to not travel with family-obsessed friendsImage via Canva

"On the surface, this seems like it’s just about engagements, weddings and babies. You go out of your way to be constantly supportive of them. However they don’t reciprocate that for you. They can’t relate to anything or want to relate to anything outside of their lives. It would sort of be like if you just won an award, but all they talked about was the pie they just ate that morning," Dependant_praline_93 wrote in the most popular comment.

"We all change as we get older. You naturally drift apart from some friends, especially if their lifestyle changes dramatically (think married with children, in particular). I wouldn't want to spend a lot of money to spend 3 days with a group that had such dis-similar interests. And I don't think it was wrong to be truthful when your friend asked you why you wouldn't go," Smokin_HOT_Ice added.

women, vacation, kids, parenting, not having kids, vacation without kids Two women talk while drinking teaImage via Canva

One commenter with kids has a close friend who is a child-free and she has made an effort to ask her about her life and interests of just talking about parenting.

“I was 38 when I had my first child and I read an article in Working Mother magazine when I was pregnant, and it said not to be the jerk who always talks about your pregnancy and your baby to your friends, especially the ones without babies,” JellyBear135 wrote. “When I see her, I always ask about her work, her activities outside of work and recently, her new baby dog. She lives alone and doesn’t have a lot of people who always ask about her life so I make sure I always do. I check in via text every couple of weeks to ask her about her life.”

After receiving a huge response from her post, RL wrote an update revealing that another friend who’s in the same boat decided not to go on the trip as well. “I have spoken to one of my other friends invited on the trip (who is also not at the baby stage of life); she is also not going on the trip and said she is not attending for the same reason,” RL wrote.

It seems the big takeaway from RL’s dilemma isn’t just that stage-of-life changes such as marriage and having babies can create chasms in friendships. But we need to make sure that we’re not just talking about ourselves to our friends but listening to them as well. Because a one-way friendship isn’t a friendship at all.

This article originally appeared last year.

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A case worker was told she couldn't adopt this foster girl. She waited 6 years until she could.

"It was important to me that she knew that she was wanted by somebody."

via ABC Action News
'It's never too late': 19-year-old who aged out of foster care adopted by her caseworker

Heartbreakingly, there are hundreds of thousands of kids in the United States in foster care and a severe shortage of willing and capable families willing to permanently adopt them. The situation might even seem hopeless for young kids as they start to get older and become less "desirable" to adopt. But it's never too late to find your family. That's the heartwarming message being shared by Leah Paskalides and the daughter she adopted in 2021, then-19-year-old Monyay.

But this is no ordinary adoption story.

At the age of 11, Monyay was placed into a foster care group home. The pain of having to go through life without a family was always difficult, but it hit hard in her senior year of school. "My senior year is when I went through one of those, 'I don't want to do it anymore, I'm done,'" she told ABC News.

Monyay finished school a year early and took the extra time to focus on volunteering with foster children like her. But she faced a tough road ahead, as she was about to turn 18 and officially age out of the system.

According to the Children's Home Society of Minnesota, the 23,000 children who age out of foster care every year without families face many challenges. There are very few support systems in place for these now-adults. Without the watchful eye and help of their foster family and case workers, only 3% earn a college degree, half will develop a substance abuse problem, 60% of boys are convicted of crimes, and 70% of girls become pregnant before the age of 21.

- YouTube www.youtube.com

After Monyay turned 18, it looked like she would have to enter the real world as an adult without any support. But then her caseworker and mentor from the Safe Children Coalition stepped up.

Leah had always wanted to adopt Monyay but it was a conflict of interest with her work.

"She always said, 'I wish you could adopt me, wish you could adopt me,' and I couldn't because of the job and then I was watching a documentary where the person had been adopted as an adult, and I had never really heard of it," Leah said.

So she decided to adopt Monyay as her adult daughter. "It was important to me that she knew that she was wanted by somebody, that somebody loved her," Leah told Fox 13. "I could say that as many times as I want, but actions speak louder than words."

On Tuesday, April 27, 2021, a judge signed the paperwork making the adoption official.

"Being told 'no' so many times, to hear that 'yes' and to hear them pronounce her as my mom, it's something that's like, oh my gosh, this is for real," Monyay told Fox 13.

As part of the adoption proceedings, the question lingered as to what last name Monyay would like. When the 18-year-old announced it would be "Paskiledes," both mom and new-daughter began sobbing.

adoption, foster care, adoption stories, orphans, foster parents, adoptees, family, kids, children, adults, moms, motherhood Something about adult adoptions really has us crying like this. Giphy

"I would have adopted her six years ago, it was held back emotions that just came out," Leah told People.

The pair's story captured hearts all over the world when news and other media began sharing their tale.


- YouTube www.youtube.com

"A family is made of love. Love knows NO color or age. Congratulations," a YouTube commenter wrote.

"This will bring so much healing to the young lady. There's something about being wanted and knowing that someone wants you and loves you exactly as you are. That's what our parents are supposed to give us before we learn to give it to ourselves," added another.

The funny thing is the two didn't hit it off at first. Years ago, when Leah was first assigned her case, Monyay didn't like her. "She told me what she was going to be doing and helping me out with my case, and I didn't like her; she'll tell you that," said Monyay.

But over the past nine years, the two forged an unbreakable bond.

"She was very motivated and had aspirations for a future, and so I knew she just needed support," Leah said. "She was always a kid that did not deserve to go through life without a support system of a family."

This article originally appeared four years ago. It has been updated.


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Survey of 3,000 couples reveals striking link between wedding costs and 'Happily Ever After'

More proof that money can't buy happiness.

via PixaBay
"I now pronounce you, in debt. You may kiss the bride."

In 1964, Paul McCartney of the Beatles famously sang, “I don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love.” While Mr. McCartney’s sentiments were definitely a major foreshadowing of the hippie, free-love movement that was to come in the ‘60s, it appears as though he was also onto a big truth that wouldn’t be proven for another 50 years.

11 years ago, researchers Hugo M. Mialon and Andrew Francis-Tan from Emory University embarked on the first study to determine whether spending a lot on a wedding or engagement ring meant a marriage would succeed or fail.

The pair wanted to see if the wedding industry was being honest when it came to claims that the more money a couple spends, the more likely they are to stay together.

“The wedding industry has consistently sought to link wedding spending with long-lasting marriages. This paper is the first to examine this relationship statistically,” the researchers wrote.

wedding costs, expensive weddings, wedding rings, weddings, marriage, love, family, research, psychology, culture Maybe don't splurge on the big balloon release. Photo by Álvaro CvG on Unsplash

The researchers carried out online surveys with more than 3,000 people who have been married at least once and live in the United States.

After reviewing the answers to the questionnaire the researchers learned that spending big bucks on a wedding and engagement ring made a couple more likely to get divorced.

So much for the idea that "Diamonds are a girl's best friends." Thanks a lot, Marilyn!

The researchers determined that "marriage duration is inversely associated with spending on the engagement ring and wedding ceremony."

For example, couples that spent between $2000-4000 on an engagement ring were about 1.3 times more likely to divorce than couples who spent in the $500-2000 range. For wedding ceremonies, $20,000 was the big cut off — any more than that was correlated with a 1.6 times increase in divorce likelihood. Remember that this study was conducted in 2014. In 2025, the average cost of a wedding is a whopping $31,281. Clearly, an updated survey is needed.

Conversely, the research found that "relatively low spending on the wedding is positively associated with duration among male and female respondents."

Those cheap courthouse weddings that cost almost nothing? Very often, they foreshadow a long-lasting marriage!

The researchers also found that the number of people who attend the wedding matters, too. The questionnaire revealed that “high wedding attendance and having a honeymoon (regardless of how much it cost) are generally positively associated with marriage duration."

The researchers haven’t studied why people who splurge on weddings and rings have a greater chance of having to hire divorce lawyers, but they have a few theories.

wedding costs, expensive weddings, wedding rings, weddings, marriage, love, family, research, psychology, culture A romantic wedding day kiss. Giphy

“It could be that the type of couples who have a … (cheap wedding) are the type that are a perfect match for each other,” Mialon told CNN. “Or it could be that having an inexpensive wedding relieves young couples of financial burdens that may strain their marriage,” he added.

Francis-Tan believes that people who have weddings with a large number of attendees are more successful because they have a lot of support.

“This could be evidence of a community effect, i.e., having more support from friends and family may help the couple to get through the challenges of marriage,” Francis-Tan said. “Or this could be that the type of couples who have a lot of friends and family are also the type that tend not to divorce as much.”

(Interestingly, common sense would indicate that a high guest count naturally drives up the cost of the wedding — so it really comes down to how much you're splurging on food and decor.)

Could it also be that people who put a big emphasis on a flashy wedding and jewelry tend to bit a bit more materialistic? It makes sense that couples that are really into keeping up appearances may not have their priorities straight when it comes to building a loving relationship.

wedding costs, expensive weddings, wedding rings, weddings, marriage, love, family, research, psychology, culture Gwen Stefani throws a bouquet in a music video. Giphy

Of course, there are many, many factors that go into a long, happy, and successful marriage. And don't forget that not all marriages that last are happy. Spending big on a fancy engagement ring or splurging for the chocolate fountain at the wedding don't spell doom for couples that communicate and work on their relationship. Like anything in life, there are no guarantees either way.

To finish things off with another pop music analogy, “If you liked it then you should have put a ring on it,” (just make sure it’s an inexpensive one, in front of a lot of people, in your backyard).

This article originally appeared four years ago. It has been updated.


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