March 5, 2025

Illustration: Emma Erickson

Dear Emily,

I don’t know how the hell to talk to my friends who are new moms. It’s an age-old conundrum, certainly, but it feels like the stakes have ratcheted up significantly this year. I’m 31, so my friends have been settling down, getting married, and buying houses for years at this point. (Where I’m from, women start getting engaged at 25, sometimes earlier.) But this year was the first that I felt being the only single person in every room — family included — and it’s been really isolating. I hope to head down the path of motherhood someday, but at the moment, it feels like my mom friends and I are living in different universes.

I know ten years from now, I’ll be going to these same friends for advice when I have a child of my own. In the meantime, I just want to make sure we don’t lose or severely damage the friendship. What should I do?

Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photo: Getty Images

By Madame Clairevoyant

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A biweekly newsletter interrogating modern family life, written by Kathryn Jezer-Morton.