I've also struggled making new (local) friends with kids, especially working from home for a non-local company. This is one of the main reasons I go work at coffee shops--the slim chance I run into someone in the same situation as me. It seems my wife can easily find a ton of mom's groups or women's clubs, for men, not so much.

My wife and the other moms in her mom group keep saying that they want the husbands to get together and do something. They just don't understand. We have nothing in common, and the shared experience of having kids is not even close to enough.

I hear this too. But I think that making friends is about diversifing your interests and theirs as well. Humans in frequent contact with each other tends to move towards alignment.

yeah but you have to have something. A liberal computer nerd and a firefighter steeped in macho culture are just not gonna work.

Do they both like tri-tip and beer? Boom. Bbq time.

Tri-tip and beer? If you have any friend-slots open I'd like to apply. :)

For me it's been the opposite. Being stuck in a suburb with small children, I've connected properly with more people than ever before in adult life. I wasn't actively searching or joining any groups, I just headed out with the stroller a couple of times per day during six (first child) plus ten (second child) months.

I think most people find it simultaneously wonderful and extremely boring to be at home with kids for extended periods, so quite a few seize any chance of having a conversation with another adult. The playgrounds are full of bored parents, and everyone has one or more tiny, human conversation starters.

Kindergarten is pretty good as well for meeting people. When a three year old is invited to birthday party, they kind of have to have a parent along for the event.

Somewhat specific to my locality (Sweden), there is 15 hours per week of free kindergarten for kids with stay-at-home parents. In my city there are specific drop-off and pickup times for those children, which means that six times per week you meet relaxed and slightly bored other parents, who have kids in the same group as you. This essentially always means that you hang around the yard for a bit and socialize.

Socialize yes. But so far it's only been because of the kids and because it's awkward to just stand around and not talk to each other. Never found anyone I'd really wanna hang out with. YMMV obviously.

A bit late to reply... But, the magic of it for me has been that several of these repeated superficial contacts have turned into friendships.

Three new friends in two years, six if one counts spouses. That is the same amount that I made in the preceeding ten years!

It's hard to jump straight to friend-level, without first socializing and making acquaintances.

I've done this, but at the dog park. Not sure it works as well though—I hardly know anyone's name, just their dog's name.

Meetup gets thrown around as cliche advice for this sort of things, but in the last city I lived, majority of meetups were either very demographic specific (i.e. something like 60+, or women’s business) or fronts for MLM and other scams.

yeah I have never found anything on Meetup that interested me. I once went to one for "Computers and programming". Noped out of there real fast. I was the only professional and I'm not interested in helping rookies learn javascript.

this has been my biggest problem with Meetup style events too. I'm often looking for others with a level of experience or interest in a topic to match my own, only to find people trying to break into the industry and just barely scratching the surface. At that point it's not a social thing for me, it's a mentoring/work thing, and I get this feeling of disappointment in the situation, which persuades me to skip the next.

It’s easy to start a meetup. I did once and other people who were searching for something similar popped right up and formed some great friendships. It’s ok to be a light host.

Out of curiosity, what kind of meetup did you start? How did you find event space for it?

I started a meet up for local digital or tech entrepreneurs to find, learn and take their next steps together. It was a mix of techies, marketing folks, business folks. Didn’t matter as long as you were ready to learn and do your next step.

It was less of an event and more of a community of acquaintances who were good at welcoming strangers. Many of us became good friends.

Space was public venues, and once folks got to knowledge other, other suggestions of who had access to space came up pretty easily.

Today, I’d probably pick something semi different like airmeet and use it for a virtual meetup to gauge interest.

Sometimes restaurants or libraries have dedicated rooms that can be booked.

Yeah, you have to look for private clubs for the things you're into. Masters swimming. Archery clubs. Book clubs. Whatever.

They're usually not on meetup, and often only on their own websites and/or on Facebook.

I found this helpful: https://outline.com/aAmy53

follow up:

And you know what the crazy thing is? I just don't care about stuff like sports, but I'd happily go to a game if I liked the people I was with, for the the chance to hang out. But omg I just don't care about so many of the things that seem to bring people together.

That's the curse of the mild introvert, I guess.

Kids make it tough, for sure. I can't plan time for get togethers because I have to take kids to activities every evening. They're well socialized and I'm a hermit. But I'm starting to push back against the parenting industrial complex. My kids will survive if I have friends or if I'm not there at all their games. I have social needs too.

Never prioritizing your own needs is a good way to end up bitter and divorced. Also competitive sports before high school should be considered child abuse. After all kids aren't the ones signing themselves up for these intensive programs.