BabyLand is a gated community in more ways than one

I got a friend on Twitter named Leon who calls people with kids “BabyLand,” i.e. they have new friends, new activities, they focus on new things, they go to new stores, they go to new restaurants, etc. They enter a new area. You don’t see them as much.

Lest we start this post thinking that I am going to spend all of it bitching (I’m not), let me just say first that BabyLand makes complete sense. Responsibilities and time management and what you care about have shifted. Things are going to adjust for you, and some people will get left behind in that process. Maybe “left behind” isn’t even the right wording. It might be, though.

One of my favorite posts that I’ve ever done was this ditty on how everything in life changes from 28 to 35. It basically inspired the podcast I’ve been trying to do consistently, although admittedly that’s gone in different directions.

My experiences with BabyLand

Don’t have kids.

I still remember the first notification I got about one of my friends having a kid, actually. I was living in NYC and was, I think, early age 28 or late age 27. Probably early 28. I lived about seven blocks from the subway and my job was in Manhattan; my shift tended earlier so I could cover some sports stuff from overnight. A lot of times in the winter, I’d be walking those seven blocks to the train in bitter-ass cold. It was on one of those walks that I got a newborn pic and first baby announcement.

It would be incredibly dramatic and untrue to say that my life kinda split the atom in that moment, but in some ways it did. The kid sending me that picture lived in Arizona and I lived in NYC, so it wasn’t like this photo was going to impact my day-to-day life, but it impacts in the sense that like, Whoa, this is now beginning. Others soon followed: Maryland, then eventually a kid who said he’d never have kids, colleagues, old colleagues, etc.

Through a lot of these cats moving off to BabyLand, I stayed in other lands, be they BarLand, FacebookLand, WorkLand, OneNightStandLand, LinkedInLand (that’s the most boring), and various other kingdoms and domains. I lived in NYC, Minneapolis, and then Texas. Been there about six years, and now been in two relationships and seen the BabyLand wave twice (with my ex and I’s friends, although a lot of those kids came after I was out of the ecosystem; and then with my fiancee’s friends now, where I think there will be 3-4 pregnant people at her bachelorette party).

Seeing two waves of people go off to BabyLand has been interesting. Unique? Probably not that. But interesting.

A gated community?

For sure. A few Sundays ago, I was bored and killing time and my girl and I drove around looking at some houses … then looked on the local appraisal district and half-stalked the houses of people we variously know from different things. Eh, sue me.

So anyway, I got this old boss from my first job in Texas. I know she lives large, but I input her address, and when I make a right turn and Google Maps says 0.3 miles to destination, I hit a gate with a f’n armed dude. Like some military compound stuff. In reality it’s just a country club subdvision, but damn.

I grew up in NYC, which has a lot of affluence but of a different form … there are some gates and access points, for sure — more in a work sense than a physical lodging sense, probably — and I had only seen 1-2 gates in Texas. So it was a little jarring.

Literally as I’m driving away from there, we were having a discussion about one of her friends being pregnant and I kinda thought about the overlap there.

When you have kids, you do enter this kind of gated community with different outlooks and responsibilities. And even though maybe one month prior (or 10) you were on the other side of the gate and saw life that way, for many it’s like incomprehensible to look at life through the eyes of WorkLand, not BabyLand. It’s an entire perspective shift and it happens very quickly.

My July text sequence

I make this joke sometimes year-to-year, and it’s actually fairly true and a little bit sad … but a bunch of July 3rd/4th regions since my various people started entering BabyLand, I’d be buzzed/drunked somewhere and send a general life update text, like “Hey man, how’s the world?”

Literally this happens almost every time: you hear nothing that day or for a few days. Sometime around July 11th, you get a text back that almost 100% will read: “Hey man! Good here. Super busy with the kids.” That’s the first part of the text, and then it will say something like “How’s Houston?” when you live three hours north of there. (I’ve gotten that text.)

I think we all know adult friendships can be a racket, and maybe into each life a few good to great ones fall, but nothing divides adult friendships up like BabyLand. The gate comes right down when Little Braxton (“our first!”) is out in open air.

So do people not care about their non-BabyLand friends?

I would say “care less” or “prioritize less” or “cannot empathize with.” I think you could also add “long for” in the context of freedom, i.e. I’ve met up with married friends of mine, three kids, and you look over at Minute 14 at the bar and they’re three deep and half-asleep because it’s a night that doesn’t involve Frozen and scheduling. I get it. Well, I half-get-it. I’m on the other side of the gate, ya know?

What about the Joneses or relevance argument herein?

I think most people have kids for the “right” reasons, or it’s a series of happy accidents that works itself out. I do think there’s an increasing subset of the Instagram Era where people have kids as a relevance-signal, or have x-amount of kids to keep up with ladies from back in HS, sorority, or the current subdivision. Maybe that’s always been a thing and it’s more pronounced these days because so much of social media is just familial virtue bombs where you have no idea what’s going on behind closed doors anyway. BTW, if you ever meet someone divorced with kids, find their FB/IG and scroll back. I bet a month before the divorce was initiated, there’s a beautiful family photo. Social media ain’t often real.

So some people enter the gates of BabyLand for the wrong reasons, sure. And we’re overpopulated as is, so I’m not sure how I feel about that subset. But hey, ain’t my life or my body, so you do you.

Does BabyLand make non-BabyLanders sad?

It can; varies by person. In my case, sometimes it does, sure. Maybe I’ll come over through the gates eventually, though.

I think the hardest part for me has been seeing different bonds dissolve, or the assumption that I can’t possibly understand something because I lack a title (common practice at work too).

Then, there’s the BabyLand vs. BarLand dichotomy.

When I was 25, one night I was working late on a Saturday at ESPN, doing a USC football game highlight. WorkLand. My friend, now a dad but then not, called me from a bar in NYC, 106 miles away, screaming at me to “get down here.” BarLand. I could not. BarLand and WorkLand are in opposition — not always, we know how deals get signed — but the opposition is a gentle rub at best.

Now, a few years back, right after I got divorced, I was in a group text and happened to be drinking dayside. (Not proud of this, but it does happen.) So I’m in BarLand. I got into some heated political shit with one guy, told him to fuck off, and over time our relationship has never been the same. At the time, he was home helping his girls with some school thing. BabyLand. I was in BarLand, fiery, and he had no idea. He was in BabyLand, nurturing, and I had no idea. That opposition is drastic. It’s much more intense than rub. It’s a clash.

Obviously that second anecdote is my fault almost entirely, but … there are hardcore, Game of Thrones style clashes between BabyLand and other lands sometimes. And that part has been hard to experience for decades.

Your thoughts?