Before kids it was easy to judge bad parents. Then one day with child I found myself due to circumstances in a store way past my child’s bedtime. She was screaming and crying, because it was way past her bedtime.
Then I realized… I was now “the bad parent” I had so easily judged.
Then it was easy to judge parents with children younger than mine.
Until I learned that not all children have the same issues in the same order.
I still judge parents, because I compare them to other parents.
Good parents = kids not 100% glued to phones/tablets, social around friends and family, not throwing tantrums at 8-16 yrs old.
Bad parents = kids always throwing tantrums, kids basically always getting their way because they've learned parents will always give in, parents and kids 100% ignoring each other.
One set of friends - I go to visit, I play with their kids - we go out to dinner, we interact with both adults and kids
Another set of friends - I go to visit, they sent their kids to their room - we go out to dinner, they give the kids tablets and they're entirely ignored for the whole time.
It's difficult to translate what you're saying. You say "go to visit" which implies you don't see your friends with kids very often. If true you're in a poor position to make these judgements even by your own standards.
Everything you're observing is even more likely to occur if you don't see them that often. Your friends probably want to spend more time focusing on you. The kids are not that familiar with you and are less likely to engage with you. Which also makes the parents more likely to want to distract them with something else.
Whether or not you're bringing children with you matters too. It sounds like you don't because you're focusing on child-adult interactions. If someone has kids the kids run around and be kids with their loudness, and child-adult interactions are going to be much more likely. If you're not bringing kids in tow my kids are much more likely to just go off and do their own thing.
Much of what you're pointing out can also be down to individual child temperment. Which changes as children age. By your standards many parents turn into a bad parent once their kids become a teenager.
That is not to say that your observations are 100% wrong. But just that there's so many variables, most of which I didn't even mention here, makes trying to analyze your statement make my head spin.
Not to lean too much on anecdotes, but I have a friend who has extremely well behaved kids. He has said a couple times that he feels like he has placed too many adult responsibilities on his kids. Is he a good parent? Based upon outside observation, he seems good. But he seems to be questioning some of his own choices. Maybe that alone makes him a good parent? I don't know, who am I to judge?
you read very far into a relatively normal phrase "go to visit" meaning "when i visit them". Some people just say "visit" instead of "hang out" or "bum around with."
eta: it's like some people say they have to do errands.
All kids are different, my second has about 20 tantrums a day. I've no idea why. It's getting really hard to deal with. But it will pass.
Honestly the only certainty is that unless you have been 100 percent responsible for a very young child for more a few days, you have no idea what you are talking about. I don't mean that directed at you. Just my own generalisation based own experience and the opinion of every other parent I know.
Life as a parent is completely different than life before.
I saw a woman completely lose her shit in a museum with her kid. Before I became a parent I would have judged. But when it happened I just thought "poor woman, I know how it feels, just giving it her all and she's got nothing left to give right now, how many times have I felt like that, how many times have I failed to live up to my own ideals as a parent".
Definitely hard to say. I get being angry and frustrated, and circumstances surrounding being a parent might not help at all. For instance my wife and I have no family to help out. It's just us. It's hard, but we do what we can.
I'm beyond fortunate that she's fully into being a mother, calm, patient but knows where the boundaries are. And that's reflected into our kid. He's so incredibly easy to parent, it's insane.
I look at his friends - all good kids. Boisterous, outgoing, a bit wild and uncontrollable, but fundamentally good kids. They fight with their siblings, and they're learning how to navigate the world.
And then I go shopping. We live in lower socio-econimic area, and it's genuinely just saddening to see what goes on. The number of parents that are actively, in public, swearing out their kids and just having the kids stand there quietly shrinking away is heartbreaking.
I don't know what's going on in the parent's lives, and I know being a parent is immensely difficut, and none of us are equipped from the outset to really become one... but yelling at your kid for being a f*ck in the middle of a shopping center? I fail to see how any of that is OK because of 'circumstances'. At some point you have to grow up and be an adult. You put this kid here. You need to take responsibility. It doesn't mean it's easy, but if you can't self reflect enough to know that's not OK, then you're a big part of the reason the kid is how they are.
Yeah... I was thinking about what I wrote above, I came to the conclusion that actually there is a limit. Because some people are awful parents, and that is reflected in how damaged some people are. I guess I could see the woman in the museum was trying, and had just had enough. But hey she was in a museum with her kids trying to do something positive with them.
I mean, not judging other parents doesn’t come from thinking that all other parents are doing a great job, it comes from knowing that you’re doing a terrible job in your own, special ways.
Parenting children is impossible, therefore all parenting lies on a spectrum from terrible to catastrophic, and it’s hard to know how you did until they grow up (if ever) because there’s a lot of sensitivity and subtle emotional stuff, especially at very young ages, which are the most important and the ones you remember the least. I’m certain there are screen-free parents who are worse for their kids than a good chunk of tablet-hander-outers
But sometimes there are legit behavioral issues that are extremely challenging, and are not the parent's fault. Sometimes what looks like a "tantrum" on the outside can actually be autistic overwhelm and meltdown, which can happen with even the best parents. Not to mention stuff like Intermittent Explosive Disorder.
All this to say...if you see a kid in public throwing a "tantrum", you still shouldn't judge the parents without knowing the full picture.
There is a difference between kids using bad behavior to get attention or blackmail parents vs kids who have actual behavioral problems they are working through.
The first is an actual problem stemming from bad parenting and as a society we should indeed shame parents who raise spoiled kids who expect everything to be given to them.
I mean, do you even know the full story at a friend's house? I guess it depends on how closely you know them, and whether they've confided any developmental issues they're children are dealing with.
Consider how bad it would have been for you/would be for you right now had they not even tried though. Impossible to "what if" the situation now but I'm sure the effort will have made at least some difference.
Oh, believe me, I have no complaints on how they raised me. They did a great job, I turned out alright. Wife, daughter, many friends, stable job.
I am just saying that anyone would have judged them poorly if they saw me spending a sunny Saturday glued to my SNES playing Romance of The Three Kingdoms IV, or going for yet another playthrough of Diablo on the PC.
Yes, when you have a toddler undergoing a public meltdown, it is easy to see who around you is an experienced parent, and who is not. Just by the look on their faces.
> Then I learned it’s easier not to judge at all.
A skill we should all cultivate, IMO. Life is happier when you do not waste it constantly judging.
I smile a bit and give a chuckle when a toddler is giving a parent a hard time. It reminds me of simpler times. The problems and consequences are so much smaller than teenage problems.
Badly behaved kids I am more understanding of now (at least the younger ones). But there are defintely easy ways out of problems some parents take that are not good for children.
Yeah, with a kid I still judge. I'd rather see kids running around and playing and being kids in public than on a tablet. Even grocery shopping I see toddlers on tablets sitting in the cart.
My son has been actively involved with meal planning since he as a a year and a half old. "What type of bread today? What type of fruit in your yogurt tomorrow?"
I won't judge kid's behavior, so long as they are acting like kids. Sometimes that means they act out, that is normal.
But, damnit, let them live in the real world and not just try to distract them with shiny things all the time.
I remember going to restaurants in the 90s and early 2000s and kids would be running around playing with each other between tables. That is kids being kids, and it is perfectly acceptable (heck desirable!)
The only thing I'll add is that you never know what people are going through. Both of my children have pretty intense ADHD, and when I went through my divorce I definitely leaned into too much screen time for a while. It wasn't permanent though, and I managed to get back closer to the ideal you speak of (but as a single parent, it took a lot of processing of guilt to find a balance that worked).
I've decided it's safer to just never judge, that parent you see pushing the toddler around in the cart might indeed be a terrible parent, or they might be going through grief and at their breaking point.
> I've decided it's safer to just never judge, that parent you see pushing the toddler around in the cart might indeed be a terrible parent, or they might be going through grief and at their breaking point.
Agreed, I should have clarified that I'm speaking more about friends and family, people's whose situation can be spoken to directly.
I have friends with neurotypical kids who still hand the kids tablets at restaurants instead of actually teaching the kid how to take turns in a conversation, or how to actually go through a menu and order!
Like I get it, it is tiring, but we all signed for the work when we chose to have kids. (At least in my social circle where kids are very well planned for in advance).
Thanks for the clarification, I see where you are coming from and definitely agree it's a real problem.
I'm proud to say for myself that devices never leave the home now (and mine stays in my pocket except for explicit communication needs), and we are able to fully connect on road trips, dinners, and other outings. It's freeing, and I always tell the kids, that being device free means we will actually remember these moments.
I've been detained by police under suspicion of "kidnapping" for taking my kid to the park (my kid is a different "race" as me so it was "suspicious"). On another occasion my kid was interrogated because they were walking home from school on our own property, and someone wondered "why they were alone."
On the other hand, no one has ever called the police on me for handing the kid a tablet and melting their brain inside.
When I was a kid either of those people would be practically thrown in a loony bin for saying anything, let alone taken serious by the authorities. Now the CPS investigates almost every accusation and is legally barred from even telling you who made it, so these anonymous shitstains can exercise their cowardice behind a curtain as much as they like with no risk to themselves but every risk to you.
It's difficult to let them live in the real world not because some evil guy with a white van is waiting to offer "free candy" but that the evil person in a white van is actually the Karen who sees a kid on the street or the park as an inconvenience for her or an unacceptable risk and they can be the coward they are and make an anonymous complaint and cause weeks of harassments by CPS with the cell phone they have next to them at the ready wherever they might see a child.
> I've been detained by police under suspicion of "kidnapping" for taking my kid to the park (my kid is a different "race" as me so it was "suspicious"). On another occasion my kid was interrogated because they were walking home from school on our own property, and someone wondered "why they were alone."
And this is why I pay an arm and a leg to live in Seattle.
Kids here are running around outside playing soccer in the streets with parents watching guard for cars at the ends of the block.
Mixed race is not even noteworthy here.
Kids walk to/from school (up to a mile) all the time. Huge groups of kids walk together every day.
I will continue to judge my parents for abusing me throughout childhood until doing so no longer contributes to my own healing. There is no single right way to respond to a hyperactive child but there are plenty of permanently life-altering ones.
It's less blame/resentment (though I admit I'm still working on it) and more that pretending my childhood was just fine and my parents were absolved of everything just because they tried their hardest was exactly what kept me trapped in a vicious cycle for far too long. Some things go beyond "just" bad parenting and into the level of abuse and potentially lifelong physical/mental conditions. Only by admitting to myself that yes, I was not at fault for all my own misfortunes and maybe someone else did share the blame, was I finally able to start healing.
One of my goals is to isolate the healthy parts of blame from the all-consuming and unproductive ones, which I'm still working on.
For my case (and I speak for nobody else), I don't want to have children until I'm 100% certain I will not make the same mistake as my forbearers and pass down their trauma to my offspring. Some of that decision-making is out of my hands until I've had enough therapy and healing. That's just what abusive parenting does to a person's psyche.
And for what it's worth, I can't predict how my perspectives on parenting will change if I become a parent myself, but even in that case I will never stop believing my own parents were abusive. No model of how the world works makes sense to me without that understanding anymore.
Before kids, you take a look around a diner or a store or a playground and you see little ones happily eating some chips or browsing the foodstuffs or playing on a slide.
You think that this is what kids are like. They sit there, they walk a little, they giggle on the playground, they look cute as all get out, etc.
Then you have kids and you know.
You know.
Those kids sitting there in the booth sipping on their milk quietly while mom and dad happily eat their lunch? Those are the top 5% most calm kids out there. The other 95% of kids are with their adults screaming and throwing fits and covered in who knows what.
Life lied to you. It did it directly to your face, unashamed. The bias is real.
That's not the impression I hear from my many intentionally childless friends. They take the negative behavior - the screaming, tantrums, chaos - as the norm.
It sounds like you always wanted kids. I don't say this to criticize - it's great that those who want to start families do so - but I don't think your experience is universal.
> only the more well behaved kids are going out in public.
How would that work? Do you think they have life-long domiciliary arrest? All children need to go to school or like to occasionally walk or go to a shop.
Plenty of truly bad parents shrug responsibility off by making the "technically correct" claim that all kids throw tantrums, therefore they're not a bad parent. They then proceed to provide an unstable environment to raise their kids and the tantrums don't end until well into adulthood.
Having multiple kids can make things much harder too. A child that is easy alone may not be easy with siblings.
Parents flex for children because there's a lot of things we don't care about. Little Timmy wants to go first? That's fine. But now introduce Little Jane. Little Timmy can't always go first. Now he has to contend with Little Jane.
Turn taking is the standard here. Doing it at preschool is one thing, but in every day life, at home, from sunrise to sunset, when tired or sick, is another thing. There's also lots of corner cases to navigate. What if Little Jane wants to watch something that scares Little Timmy? What if Little Timmy missed a turn because he had soccer practice? And so on.
You also aren't in control of all turns. For example, birthday parties. Or frequency of seeing friends. What is seen as unfair parts of life by an 8 year old can be completely out of your control.
You can oftentimes rely on the older one being a little more flexible than the younger one, and that is a life saver. As a parent you can lean on it and reason with them. But there is a scenario where this falls apart: twins. Congratulations, have fun reasoning with two 1.5 year olds who want opposing things.
The corner cases from taking turns can get easier as they get older though. I usually offload it to them: you guys figure out whats fair, everyone has to agree, let me know when you figure it out. This can degenerate into the most stubborn winning though, so I still have to monitor the results and stop relying on it if that's what is happening.
I dunno, it feels kinda exhausting for being easy.
Before having kids, I expected it to be this huge life changing thing. That it would effectively end the part of my life where I was free to do whatever I wanted, and start the part where I was just Daddy, doing nothing except serving my childrens' needs.
But that didn't happen. We just carried on being Jason and his partner, but with a baby in tow.
I had spent most of my 30s cramming in as much "living" as possible, to make sure I'd stocked away a lifetime supply of it. After all, I'd probably never get another chance to travel for long periods, keep up with climbing, and all that other stuff that Independent Jason could do.
But it was all for naught. We just packed the kid along and went traveling anyway. He had eleven stamps in his passport by his first birthday.
Life is just as much fun as ever. But now we have some kids to play with.
> Before having kids, I expected it to be this huge life changing thing. That it would effectively end the part of my life where I was free to do whatever I wanted, and start the part where I was just Daddy, doing nothing except serving my childrens' needs.
There are some huge changes.
The largest is a lack of the mental downtime where deep thought and problem solving could occur.
I can't get off work, hop on my car, and drive around for an hour mulling over technical work. I can't stay an hour past with coworkers and noodle solutions on a white board. I can't get up at 2 am to try something out that just popped into my head.
I need to be in bed by 10pm every day. I have to get up at 7am every day. On weekdays 2 meals a day need to be planned, on weekends 3 meals a day. I can't try experimenting with some random new recipe that may fail, my kid needs to eat lunch on time not 2 hours late.
Yes it is a lot of fun (theme parks! Trick or treating!), but I'm thankful I did a ton of amazing engineering work before I had a kid because there is no way I can dedicate the absurd amount of time to innovating/solving hard problems, that I used to.
> Before having kids, I expected it to be this huge life changing thing. That it would effectively end the part of my life where I was free to do whatever I wanted, and start the part where I was just Daddy, doing nothing except serving my childrens' needs.
Had a very similar feeling. When my wife told me the "getting pregnant" worked I mourned a little bit. I recognize we were exceedingly lucky to have had such a wonderful kid, and it has worked out very well.
For the first 6 mos. a lot did change, but after that things seemed to skew back to a new "normal".
It will be 13 years in May since we had our daughter. I'm so glad we did it.
I know that it could have gone a lot differently, though. I'd never suggest that it'll be great for everybody.
> He had eleven stamps in his passport by his first birthday.
I was raised overseas (Dad[0] in the CIA).
Both good and bad. First, if it's just "traveling," and not "living" overseas, I suspect that it's not so bad, but military brats have common quirks, for a reason. Our lives get torn up and replanted regularly. It's hard to make friends, and we often end up having a difficult time, retaining long-term relationships, later in life.
But, man, the life story that it gives you. There's few cures for xenophobia, better than immersion.
It happened to me and now, after more than 8 years, I find myself still in the situation where I am serving my children's needs and not having time to satisfy my personal ones.
They go to bed when I am also tired. Trying to having an hobby past their bed time means sacrifying sleep time.
Travelling is also a challenge, since they lack interesting in seeing something new, but just want to have fun playing, especially playgrounds.
we didn't do that much traveling with our kids but we move to new places. when traveling you have to consider your kids interest, so museums are probably out. fortunately i don't care much for that either. we travel to visit family and friends and then do interesting things together, which is much more exciting for the kids.
as a freelancer, instead of sacrificing sleep time i reduced my work time.
I'm 6 months in and it has definitely ended my life as it was and nothing is the same. I'm pretty lucky that my wife gives me almost 16 hours of free time daily, from which 8 I work and 8 is for sleep. If I want to work out or do something else I need to steal it from the sleep time.
It's pretty early though so I might be looking back in a few years and think that it was not that bad actually :)
> We just packed the kid along and went traveling anyway. He had eleven stamps in his passport by his first birthday.
How do you keep a baby happy and quiet on long international flights? I currently have no kids but I may find myself in this situation in the next couple years. I'm dreading being the guy with a screaming infant on a 13-hour trans-Pacific flight that keeps everyone from sleeping.
Babies want nothing more than to sit on your lap snoozing and feeding. It's more or less what you do at home anyway. The hardest part about flying with a baby is dealing with the added luggage (stroller, carseat, overpacked diaper bag, etc).
It's only once they're old enough to have more sophisticated feelings (like boredom) but not old enough to communicate them (except by screaming) you get in trouble.
First two years they can fly for free, but they have to ride in an adult’s lap and that gets tiring. Don’t believe the bassinet offerings - as soon as a plane gets turbulence, you have to get the sleeping baby out of the wall bassinet and good luck appeasing them. Age 1-2 is hardest for travel, so you can skip it. The only thing that worked was getting their own seat with the cosco scenera next car seat (or their own if they like it, but that one is $50 and light to carry). They would sleep nicely for large chunks and you get to enjoy travel again. After age 3 it’s much easier (they can ipad if that’s the only ipad time they ever get).
Don't go straight to screens in this situation. You can introduce novelty by purchasing a number of cheap toys, even from the dollar store, which they have never seen before. Keep them hidden until the flight.
Absolutely. Also, kids end up helping you focus on the travel, experiences and things that are truly worthwhile. You drop a lot of activities and TV and other activities that was frankly a waste of time anyways.
I think people struggle with losing their identity when they no longer get long periods of focus time or can participate in their hobbies with the dedication they would like.
Yeah mine was colicky and every time getting him to sleep involved rocking him for an hour+ while he screamed in my ear. And he woke up so easily. So I spent about 2 hours a day rocking and patting for the first year or so, not checking off a dozen countries on my passport.
I’m curious what made you conclude that he was colicky as opposed to something else?
I was labeled colicky as a baby and my own children turned out to have some digestive issues with certain common foods that make them cry a ton when they or their mother eat them (and they get it via the milk). If I hadn’t debugged the food issues I might have labeled them “colicky”, but when we avoid those foods religiously they only cry when it makes sense and when the issue is solved they stop. I’m guessing I had a similar issue as a baby, my parents definitely didn’t attempt to debug it.
No judgement by the way I’m just curious if you tried debugging things like that as I imagine “colicky” could encompass issues that aren’t possible to debug also, and it’s also understandable if you couldn’t put in the resources to debug it as in my case it’s been a gigantic and expensive pain in the ass.
Well when you go to every specialist and try every type of milk and every diet change imaginable it gets there through a diagnosis of exclusion.
Trust me, the debugging is a big part of the trouble. Everyone is telling you to debug, but that is actually the thing you have to learn to stop doing. Your brain is telling you to debug. But it can't be debugged. I watched multiple women have mental breakdowns trying to debug a baby with a 6 month streak of colic. Eventually their brain just goes psychotic because a baby screaming 6+ months non-stop with nothing wrong while people frantically try to solve the problem is basically sever mental torture. It is not the hours, or days, or even weeks of screaming that get to you, it is the months of never ending ear-pearcing torture that nothing will fix, and they will not fucking sleep because they just want to scream for all of their sleep as well and naturally the caregivers won't be sleeping either due to this. And you cannot rely on crying to figure out when to feed, when to change a diaper, when the baby needs sleep, or some gentle motion -- all of your indicators are worthless.
It is a hell for the baby and it is a hell for the parent. People struggling with this generally do not have any more children. Any other stage past baby for such child is 99% easier, I laugh when people say babies are the easiest stage.
Our first was colicky for the first 18 months or so. A nightmare, really, just like you described. Back arched, face red, for hours every day, no comforting.
We went on to have more kids. They were all quiet and easy. We sometimes wondered if there was something wrong with them.
It can be. And it also places strain on the people around you too if the kid isn't settled and easy to travel with.
Not the kids fault, but last time I travelled, there was a couple travelling with a child that was crying, hysterically the entire trip. This was a 20 hour trip all up, from NZ to SA, crossing NZ to AU then to SA, and they were with us all the way. The kid was going for the entire thing - I watched the parents take turns to look after her, standing near the toilets. I feel sorry for them having to deal with that, and for the girl being that upset (presumably sore ears? dunno), but that would not have been fun for the people around them either.
I was always super wary of travelling with ours in case that happened. We were lucky that they just slept through all the flights, but it could have easily gone the other way. I would have felt pretty stink subjecting the surrounding 40+ people to a very upset child.
Good on you. We were 'one and done'. Two sounds more than 100% more difficult, if only just because the number of edges in the relationship graph going up.
My parents managed four kids, albeit for most of that time there were only 3 living in the home at a time (13 years between the oldest and youngest).
A friend of mine had eleven (!!!) siblings. That horrifies me. Cliques could form in that size population! Utter craziness.
That doesn't appear to be a common story. I now have to schedule phone calls with my retired mother because between my sister and her partner who both work, and her, with 2 kids - one small but active that needs constant minding and one that needs chaperoning to activities - she often doesn't have one uninterrupted hour in the evening for an entire week.
Nearly everyone I know with kids is more similar to this story than yours.. to each their own but it's certainly not for me:)
This is one of my favourites from PG, not least because it's a bit antithetical to what I perceive as a growing trend among smart, ambitious people (for whom children might represent friction, inconvenience, etc)... as well as folks for whom COL is making the question irrelevant due to practical concerns.
Actually, it's really striking that even in America -- the developed country with the #1 highest birthrate -- still falls below the replacement rate. What is it that's inversely correlated between growing wealth and having children? Especially since it was likely to opposite for most of human history? (i.e. large families were a sign of wealth and power).
PS - I can't resist offering my own experience as a parent - what a treasure to have discovered that I'm capable of such love, and to get to watch this love transform me into a better person than who I was before. This kind of love demands everything of you, but through it you discover a truer and stronger version of yourself too.
More wealth and education gives people the option to choose which I think is a good thing. People who don't want kids shouldn't be forced to have them. Before, people had kids because they needed them to work on their farm or it's what was expected of them as a housewife. Now that we have a choice, less people want to commit to taking care of a human for 18+ years. It's great so many people want to be parents but having a kid doesn't automatically make someone a great parent.
Due to the extremely competitive nature of the US economy, a lot of people have to choose between career success (having money) and starting a family (which is expensive). I know a lot of women who want to have a family, but have struggled to get to a comfortable economic position where they can actually do it. Compounded by the wage stagnation, which makes it hard for most people to support a family on a single income. We have hollowed out our third spaces, so its difficult for people to relax and socialize. Even vibing ends up being a kind of competition because of the high costs. Not to mention the perverse incentives in the housing market.
I think the two-income household (two full-time paying jobs, specifically) is a lot of it, and seems to go along with "rich" countries.
Having all the stuff that could happen during the day if it were (if you will) someone's full-time job, instead get crammed into evenings and weekends when you're trying to also do non-chore stuff with your kids (or, for god's sake, maybe get just one measly hour to do something you want to do, alone... or spend time with your spouse, without kids...) and take care of things that have to happen each evening (dinner, bed time stuff) really, really sucks.
Not having chores piling up through the week to ambush you both on the weekend would be amazing. I can hardly even imagine how much more free we'd feel. With two working parents it's like neither ever gets any actual time off that they're not carving out by neglecting something they really ought to be doing (usually several somethings)
> Actually, it's really striking that even in America -- the developed country with the #1 highest birthrate -- still falls below the replacement rate. What is it that's inversely correlated between growing wealth and having children?
I think a lot of people miss the simple fact that some people just don't want kids and are unable to reconcile their personal experience with anyone else's.
My partner and I are both wealthy enough that we could both afford children and we can afford to not have children. But neither of us think our lives would be improved by having them.
I think that's really, really hard to understand for a lot of parents and people who want to be parents: being (relatively) wealthy creates choice, and that a growing number of people are choosing different things now that they have the ability to do so.
Kids cost time, not money. So the wealthier you are, the more difficult it is because you probably have less free time. You can pay someone else to raise your kids (daycare/etc.) but then you lose a lot of the value of having kids.
This bullshit excuse that somebody can't afford to have kids is proven wrong by the fact that poorer people have more kids than rich people. You can even be unemployed. Gone are the days of destitute single mothers having to give up their child to the church and work in the poorhouse. We have social welfare for that.
Maybe the fact that poor people can have lots of kids has taken away their value as a status symbol for wealth?
Um, wtf is this rambling statement that doesn't seem to be based in any kind of truth at all?
In the past both poor and rich tended to have tons of kids, this is because kids tended to die young regardless of being rich or poor.
Then you're trying to compare massive social changes in the west that occurred around the same time. For example womens suffrage, women being allowed to work, sexual revolutions and birth control.
If you look at countries that tended to develop later, the rate of childbirth tends to drop with accessibility to birth control and education.
> On the other hand, what kind of wimpy ambition do you have if it won't survive having kids? Do you have so little to spare?
I don't know, it seems like parenthood asks for a lot to be given up. Younger people like myself are already struggling to live on their own where I am. There's not a lot that can be spared by most of us.
To me, having a child means heavily straining your financial safety - here, care for this other person that can't do anything and has some of the most expensive needs in society. Not only that, but you need to be sure that you can provide for the child for the next 5, 10, 15 years. Who has that sort of confidence? Then there's the part where all your free time is sacrificed to care for the child. The time burden decreases, but it's always a lot of time. And you always have to be extremely risk-averse - if you were just responsible for yourself before, now you have someone you need to take into account for every thing you do in life. Moves, job changes, major risks or investments, career changes, taking on additional responsibilities. All of these things probably become much less doable for parents. And this is a one-way road with no backing out, you commit to it and are stuck with that choice for several decades. By the time your child lives on their own, you've already spent a large portion of your adult life. And there's no guarantees that your child is someone you like, or that your parenthood isn't soured by something else. There's plenty of parents who are stuck in parenthood and hate it.
The thought of having a child scares me. I'm happy that the author is content with how his life turned out, but I'm okay with just watching from the sidelines. Maybe the biological instinct (forced coping mechanism?) is so strong as to justify living through the horrors above in exchange for watching your kids play and participating in similar things. But I don't want to learn what that's like.
The best thing our(I’m in US) society can do to dispel fears like yours is to offer public daycare where kids are well cared for and socialized.
I’m a child of Soviet Era and our parents did not think twice if they can afford children with their meager salaries. I remember going to a kindergarten as soon as I could walk.
The reality is that a family can always make choices that enable them to care for a kid, but there are of course trade offs.
Public daycare would mitigate one of those trade offs
Even if I'm philosophically in agreement with you, I'm pretty sure insulting other people choices or insecurities has never been a great way to increase birth rates.
I didn't realize who he was until I looked up the name. I'm just too young to have heard it from real life, and also I'm not great at names. I assumed he was someone known in the industry, but not literally the founder of Y Combinator.
Caveat emptor. I am a grandparent now, so I think I have some perspective on this.
Of course we love our kids, and we had (and still have) a lot of good times with them. But kids can really break your life and marriage, too - amongst my peers I can't tell you how many have a struggling young adult kid or two (with relatively serious mental or physical health problems), with no resolution in sight.
So stay lucky - having a child is a wild act of optimism. And if you want kids, don't wait too long. There is never really a good time to have a kid (just different trade-offs), so for the best chances for health, be as young a parent as possible. And men have a biological clock, too: e.g.: https://neurosciencenews.com/genetics-sperm-mutation-neurode...
The serious mental and physical health problems are real and a societal concern. Everyone "notices" the trends, but maybe it's not you so you just think there's nothing you can do about it and do your best to stay healthy.
Then you have a child and you are suddenly hyper-aware of everything going into the body and brain. Everything they eat, every doctor visit, every time they get sick and what could have exposed them, every word spoken on TV, every friend they have and how they act or how that friend passes along their parents influences, etc.
And suddenly you're very concerned about societal level macro influences on food, medical, etc because those influences are going to affect your child's life.
There's definitely a balance here. Not giving a shit, which seems to have been the tradition I was raised in, is not great. Recognizing problems is good. Acting on all of them is bad. You need to raise grounded kids who can grow into resilience so by the time they're adults they're able to navigate this strange world.
Especially trying to control who their friends are and what they hear. Questionable behavior from friends at younger ages can actually be a good thing: it lets you plant the seed early when your kids still listen to you.
I often wonder in these threads what proportion of the commenters is male. HN skews heavily male, and statistically speaking, fathers are spared a huge chunk of the physical and mental burdens of pregnancy, birth, and parenting. Being a mom and being a dad are not equivalent, and I have a feeling that not many male HNers would readily swap places if such thing were possible.
Isn't it convenient that nature has already placed us in our respective roles and given us the necessary strengths to handle our different but equally important roles?
It's such a tragedy that one might feel compelled to weigh the burdens of motherhood vs fatherhood as if either side had a choice in the matter or as if there is some kind of competition to be won.
The only roles that nature put you into are carrying the baby and giving birth (and possibly breastfeeding). Everything else can be done by both parents.
(I'm a dad, who does do half of everything with the kids. It is possible, it's just a lot of stuff to do.)
I don't mean to inject politics, but there's a huge mental burden on fathers with more conservative values that take their role seriously.
Unfortunately, there's no way to elaborate what I mean on HN or much of the web without stirring up a ton of pointless argument. People will just get defensive and refuse to consider perspectives they can't agree with.
That huge mental burden is entirely self-inflicted, though. It's not a fair comparison to the physical burden that is unavoidable.
Growing up in a more conservative society, I've seen many people with that parenting style, who often pop a proverbial blood vessel trying to ensure that their children are more like army cadets that perfectly reflect their worldviews and don't take an unapproved step in any direction. Their rationalizations ranged from real safety concerns to arbitrary opinions like what religion is right (and exactly how someone needs to act at all times, with no limits on specificity or ridiculousness) or what large groups of people are evil (nationality, religion, identity - any group is fair game, just pick one and wall off your child from ever knowing about them). Regardless of motivation, ideology is a choice, and they could've relieved a whole lot of this burden on their own at any point.
Yeah, I agree, if you’re talking about the role of the patriarch as a stoic provider who isn’t allowed to be a vulnerable man with his own emotional needs.
It has been encouraging to see how much more men now seem to desire being engaged and nurturing in their children’s lives (even among those who otherwise consider themselves conservative or traditionalist).
Assuming the income stays the same, I'd happily swap places. I suspect many people would.
There are 2 further points:
1. I'd say the ideal setting is for both parents to work and hire a sitter even though it might financially net the same (or affordably negative) as having one stay-at-home parent. Because a human needs community and diverse things to do, not just one thing over and over everyday for years. Both of the parents will be much happier.
2. When people say taking care of baby/toddler is difficult, it's almost always about not eating well and/or not sleep well. Eating would take an hour of spoon-feeding because the kid wouldn't eat by themselves. Kids wouldn't be able to sleep by themselves. You must focus on solving these 2 areas first. Once they are solved, it gets a lot easier to take care of a baby/toddler.
While stay at home parenting isn't, and shouldn't have to be, for everyone, it also isn't somehow a downgrade from being in the working world. If anything is doing something 'over and over', it's trudging to some job to push papers/keyboard keys around for 8+ hours.
granted our kids were easy, but kids don't need to sleep by themselves. see attachment parenting. we let the kids sleep in our bed which solved the sleeping problem and the feeding problem because the kids could get milk at night without my wife having to get up and be wide awake.
i can't speak for my wife's experience directly, but while she complained about other issues, lack of sleep was never her problem.
and the idea that work gives you more community than staying at home is nonsense. we always had family and friends around, and taking the babies to events or visit others is also a non issue.
about swapping places, i did. when our first was 1 year old, my wife started to work. i was always working from home, and i loved the idea if taking care of the kids at home, it's been something i wanted to do all my life, except when it actually happened i was lost. i didn't know what to do with the kids and things only got better for me when i started working part-time and we hired a maid. but this was my problem, it wasn't at all my wife's problem while she was at home. also, as the kids got older, things got easier, and i'd happily repeat the experience now that i am better prepared for it.
practically speaking the most annoying part of my wife working for both of us was breastmilk pumping. the benefits of going to work are not worth that hassle.
Such a corny take. People should have kids when they know for sure they want to become parents. If they are unsure because the life they want for themselves seems incompatible, then it becomes a gamble. So many miserable parents out there who hide their experiences because they are afraid of social punishment or because they need to convince themselves that this permanent life-altering decision was the right one. That's my take as someone who for 35 years didn't want kids and one day woke up knowing for sure I wanted a kid in my family.
I think I see what you mean in terms of everyone having life difficulties. But I disagree because of cases where bad childhood environment causes/exacerbates significant issues with kids' wellbeing, such as mental health disorders. This is not something that everyone experiences as "part of life" right?
My problem with that wording is that it comes across a bit arrogant or "I know better". I think many people _do_ understand what you mean even if they don't have kids, they're just not that interested in those parts of life, which also should be fair.
At one of my earliest jobs (I must have been 19), I had a boss who was incredulous that I didn't drink alcohol and said that I would when I was 21 because it was "part of being an adult". I was pretty sure that making my own decisions rather than letting myself get pressured by others into what they assumed was best for me was a more important part of being an adult, and over a decade later I still don't drink.
Comments like the parent one (pun semi-intended) basically sound the same to me as what my boss had said to me that day. Assuming that your own experience is universal is a flawed way to view the world, even if your experience is relatively common. If there are exceptions, it's not going to be easy to see them if you have an assumption already about it being universal, and if the people in the majority are loud enough and annoying enough about it, those who aren't will be even more incentivized not to share their experiences with you; I'd argue that people who regret having kids will potentially be reluctant to publicly say so. Most importantly, doing something because of societal pressure rather than genuine desire is going to greatly reduce the chance that someone truly finds it fulfilling, and there's an emotional cost for children who are raised by parents who basically regret having them.
It's totally reasonable to say "I never truly understood how much I'd enjoy having kids until I did, and I suspect it's the same for a lot of other parents". There's no reason to go further than that unless you're pushing an idealogy rather than actually trying to say something you know is correct.
My problem with that problem is that, well, people who have kids definitionally know (better?) about having them. Like being able to experience a book in its original version vs a translation.
It's okay if you don't want to learn Spanish, but when people discuss the struggles and delights of reading Cien Años de Soledad they're not necessarily being arrogant, just stating their lived experience.
But do you also go around and claim everyone that hasn't read that book in Spanish is losing out in life, or do you also recognize it's just not for everyone?
Each one's a reverse-lottery-ticket, though. Get the wrong draw and it's not a gift. Can easily massively reduce the QOL for everyone around, including other siblings.
Mostly due to chronic illnesses, of either the physical or mental variety.
There is significant suffering in the world. You and everyone else are drawing lottery tickets everyday. Kids are far from its only source or cause. I'm ill equipped to unpack the meaning of life, but I am certain that suffering is fundamental--your comment is probing at this idea.
This is a very difficult subject since there exists un-imaginable suffering and it's hard to reconcile that. That life is a gift under the umbrella of un-imaginable suffering. Perhaps, that's what spirituality tries to do, I don't know.
I think a lot of folks don't consider that each child comes with a high-enough-to-worry-about risk of negatively affecting the life of everyone in your family to a level on par with one of the adults in your family becoming permanently and severely disabled relatively early in life.
Yeah sure we also risk some micromorts and the life-altering-disability equivalent every time we drive a car or get a sunburn, all right.
A good friend of mine holds the belief that "having friends with kids is better than having kids of your own", and I definitely feel the "can't explain" part - there is an unexplainable reality when you have kids of your own.
Great way of putting it. It's the sort of thing you just have to trust others and jump into. If you think about it too much it just doesn't make sense.
As a parent I'm kinda cool with that. Adults, especially middle-age family adults, are not really supported in this world and they should enjoy whatever the peace they can get. If my kid gets too grumpy I'd bring him out for a walk and he is usually happier after that.
Ofc no escape on trains/buses, but he loves those, so that's fine.
We celebrate the other option so why not celebrate child free lives? It seems like historically a lot of people have had to make this decision not by their own will or need. Showing people that they can have just as compelling lives as parents is a net-good.
> But I've always find it weird to "celebrates childfree lives".
It's more about making it clear to other people that hassling me to have kids is not okay.
My bestie is Australian-Italian. My god the shit she's got from her family over her life. At one point in her early 40s she told me she stopped going to family gatherings, such was the incessant pressure from relatives.
We need to understand that some people – me and my partner are two of them – do not like and do not want children. So please, for the love of god, stop asking women about it. (Nobody asks me, a dude, fwiw.)
Reading the post and >100 comments I've just realized there are differences between dad and mom mental experience.
Looks like many dads are changing mentally when their first child is born or a bit later. Mine changed somewhere during the second trimester.
Bonding is also almost automatic for mothers (especially who breastfeed), whilst it's delayed or never happens at the same level for fathers. My first child has never been close to father because he worked "9-9-6" and got 2 day leave. He could never really calm down crying baby or put her to bed. With the second child, thanks to large corp policy, he got 15 weeks bonding leave and it was a very different experience for father and child - baby didn't care on whose lap to fall asleep.
I’ve always wanted kids, ever since I was a kid myself, but I was never really sure what it would be like to be a parent.
Turns out it’s quite strange, because my kids bring me more joy than anything else. I’ll sit there for hours watching them play. You may think “that’s not strange—tons of parents say that”, but for my sort of personality, it’s very strange. I’ve always thought of myself as sort of overly analytical, detached, ambitious, and a bit obsessive. Not the sort of touchy-feely person who chases a two year old around with a smile on my face and likes watching videos of cute babies. Yet here I am. I enjoy it so much I’ve even tried to figure out if there’s a way I can take a sabbatical from work to spend the last two years with my youngest at home before he goes off to school (seems unlikely given how questions about a random two year gap on my resume might affect my long-term career).
It’s funny that as a kid I always wanted to work at a tech company for the interesting tech, but now as an adult my favorite thing about it has been the 4 months of parental leave I was able to have with each newborn.
You just write "spent two years raising my youngest kid [building tree houses and whatnot]". If you keep a bit up with tech, why would anyone think twice about that? They wouldn't where I live.
I also had kids, and while I love my kids I haven’t loved spending time with my kids. This will hopefully change as they age, but the first six years have so far been very much a drag on my life and productivity, and not much else. They haven’t provided fulfilment, and they haven’t provided satisfaction. Some joy is there from time to time, definitely, but nothing in the way the author describes. Happiness for me typically starts after my kids are in bed or when I can escape them during work hours. My wife finds great happiness in our children, and I find happiness in that, but I’m desperately waiting for my kids to be old enough that I only need to spend time with them instead of constantly caring for them. Sorry if this is a bit of a dark comment, but I just wanted to say it’s not always the experience this author had, even if it seems common. Edit: Generally, I regret having kids (because of the impact on my life, not the kids themselves), but I also can’t change that decision and I would never back away from my choice - that’s completely unfair to them, as well as my wife. Such is life. I try to keep looking forward to when they’re older as a way of staying positive.
I truly do give my kids my all though, and they have a wonderful life and are loved and cared for in all senses of those words. They’re great kids and I give them everything necessary to be a great dad.
I can definitely relate. There's nights my wife and I get to bed and sorta just look at eachother and go "what the hell was that". Those days are hard.
I find the days that I forget myself and throw myself into trying to be a good dad are the days I find joy in fatherhood. Weekends especially I try to forget the stresses of work and productivity and everything else and try to spend as much time with them as possible. Playing, teaching, and learning with them.
Not saying it's universal. Just a datapoint from me.
If it makes you feel any better, you're not the only one that feels that way. I don't think it's said very often because it almost feels taboo to say it.
Sometimes I feel like there is this sense that you are a bad parent if you ever express that there are times you might wish you weren’t a parent, even if the feeling is much more “I wish I didn’t have to be a parent RIGHT NOW”. You can even see in this thread that people are expressing how they feel sorry for the commenter’s children because he feels regret sometimes about being a parent.
I wanted to be a dad more than anything in the world, and I absolutely love my kids and I love being a dad.
Most of the time.
There is a TON of things you have to do as a parent that objectively sucks, and you have to do it no matter how you are feeling and no matter what else you also have to do. It is impossible not to feel trapped, at times, by the understanding that it never ends, that you are a parent 24/7/365.25 and that your kids dominate your life. I don’t care how much you love your kids, you are going to feel that sometimes (or you are so strongly into the self-denial that you force yourself to pretend you always like it).
That doesn’t mean you aren’t a good parent, or even that you made the right choice to be a parent. Most of the best things in life involve sacrifice, and doing things you don’t want to have to do, and powering through even when you want to give up. It’s cliche, but the struggle makes the rewards even sweeter. Doesn’t mean the struggle doesn’t suck sometimes, and you might want to give up, and you have to use all your self-control tricks to maintain.
I feel even worse for parents who did IVF or other fertility treatments, or who adopt. In my conversations with some close friends who are in those situations, they talk about how much pressure they feel to never complain when it is hard. They spent a ton of money and effort and used insurance money and many doctors and procedures (or all the interviews and inspections and money for adoption) so they could have kids, and now they want to complain about being a parent? Of course, they still have all the same struggles and pains and nostalgia for their before life, no matter how much this is what they want.
Anyway, I am not sure what my point is. I just want people to be honest with themselves, and other parents and future parents, about what the entire parenting experience really is. Sometimes I think parents don’t want to scare potential parents off of being parents, which I think is understandable but overstated. There is simply no way to convey to non-parents what it is actually like to be a parent, and this applies to both the good and bad things. I thought my wife and I were prepared and knowledgeable and ready, and we were to the extent we could be. But so many things we imagined about what it would be like is not the reality at all, but even if we had a Time Machine I couldn’t explain to my previous self what it is actually like. You just have to experience it… if you want to. I would never tell people they should have kids, because it is such an all-encompassing thing that everyone has to decide for themselves… all without knowing what it will actually be like.
The curse of parenting is that when they're small you can't wait for them to grow up so you can get more time for you, and when they grow up you're nostalgic of their childhood when they were willing to spend more time with you.
So my advice is: find activities to do with them that you would both enjoy. Maybe going to parks, museums, have them help you on house chores... You only have a few years left under they get to middle school and start becoming more distant.
Interesting, my experience has been the opposite. Before getting kids, I thought that I would only enjoy having kids once they were the age where you could have conversations with them, etc., that the first one or two years were more something that mothers would like. But for me it was not like that at all, aside from some sleepless nights, it's so cool to be part of them discovering the world.
have so far been very much a drag on my life and productivity, and not much else
At some point when our kid was still young, I started working 4/5 FTE, taking the afternoons off after ~14:00. I feel like that provided a lot of mental space. Since I was working part-time, I did not feel bad/guilty about not working the afternoons and I would be focused on being very productive from 8:30 to 14:00. The free hours were for doing stuff together or accommodating their playdates (picking up from school, ensuring the house doesn't get torn down).
Now they are an age where they want to do things without parents, so I am working full-time again, but do miss those early days where she would be with me in her seat on my bike and we'd cycle to the city and she'd be singing aloud from joy.
But every person is different and I think that there are also parents that start enjoying having kids more when they are older. So, your years may still come :).
dark comment
My dark comment would be: we are all learning on the job and I feel like I could do some things better with the experience I have now.
I have a few kids, raising them is a mix of good and bad, like everything else. it took a toll on my career, pushed my temper to the edge, and stressed me out all these 20+ years, but I also enjoyed many moments. it does not go away when they got older by the way, it's a life long strong bond, at different phases there are different challenges.
If I have a second life, I don't know what to do though, I probably will first make enough money before having kids at least.
I probably will first make enough money before having kids at least.
I think you’ve hit the key difference.
I waited until I was 40 before having kids, and it just feels like I’m doing it on easy mode.
We had time and money sorted out, and tons of free baby stuff donated from all our friends who had done it already.
It’s still lots of work, but you’re at a place in life where you can handle it. I can’t imagine trying to raise kids in my 20s, with my crappy stressful office job and no money in my little studio apartment.
On the flip side, you'll still have a 20yo university student to take care of at age 60, while all your friends will have an independent adult child earlier...
While I have always loved being a dad, I can certainly relate to the things you describe.
I will say that a lot of those issues have gotten better as they have gotten older (they are now 10 and almost 7). They don’t require the same level of constant attention that they used to, they are getting more and more interesting to talk to, and have developed interesting personalities and senses of humor.
I’m glad to hear that - it backs up what I’m hoping/expecting will happen. I think I’ll enjoy time with them much more as they age, especially once they’re 7+.
You're not alone and I'll even say this is evolutionary.
Men haven't evolved to be overly attached to babies or small kids like mothers did - that'd have been a weakness in the survival race. Men skills were completely different, usually related to being away from the kids most of the time.
Translate to modern day, that is men not really wanting to have kids (sometimes just going along with the wife's biological clock), and pretty much "feeling nothing" when the kids are born. There's a million documented examples of that.
However, once kids leave the "little puppy" phase and grow beyond the basic needs care that mothers provide, it's when the fathers start to really relate to them.
If your older kid is maybe 5-6 you're about to start that new phase. That's what happened to me, and I find (maybe not so extreme) examples of that on almost every guy I talk to.
Give it a second chance, maybe having kids is just not for you. But don't assume it's already the case, you may miss out whole new world.
I think it's important to share the difficult / hard experiences of having kids as much as the good ones. I've noticed that there is a huge bias towards only sharing the good moments and white-washing all of the bad as something you can "laugh about later." To be frank, not enough people were honest with me about what it would be like having kids before I had them - and I was incredibly upset when I realized that (several years into being a parent).
I now make it a point to be honest with people when they ask "Should we have kids?" and tell them about how hard it can be, etc. Most importantly, I tell people that they shouldn't have kids unless they would still want to do it if their experience doesn't land in the middle of the bell curve. We tend to romanticize the decision, and expect that everything "just gets even better" with kids. There are all sorts of ways your experience can be less than ideal. Unless you're evaluating your decision with those potential outcomes in mind, you're doing yourself, your partner, and even your future children a disservice.
Thank you for posting this. It’s totally understandable and believable that you simultaneously love them and regret some things about it. There’s this insane pressure in our society to never acknowledge the toll that kids have and to never speak out about this. I remember when this article was first posted and how I received it, like I was wrong for not being sure about kids, and that some change would come over me when I had them. Truth is, that doesn’t happen with everyone. Then the world tries to gaslight those people who don’t feel that way into feeling like they’re broken somehow.
I’m sure you love your kids and take great care of them, and it’s not your fault that you feel this way.
It would benefit all of us if this taboo was lifted, so that we could speak truthfully about the impact of kids on families, and maybe then we’d have to provide more support and encouragement to convince people to have them. Not everyone has free daycare from their grandparents or a large social network to babysit or the finances that make having a child less of a burden.
I can't wait to play with my 3 year old and 1 year old. I get so mad at work when I have an odd late meeting because it is keeping me from them.
My three year old helps me build furniture (he gets screws started, counts out parts, helps apply glue). I love showing him synths and instruments and seeing his face light up.
My one year old is a cuddle monster who likes listening to jazz with me. She also really enjoys when the cat climbs up on our lap and she gets to pet it.
I don't know your situation, but most miserable parents I know see their kid as something to manage, like some kind of annoying work underling.
I see my kids as little detectives.
My goal isn't to solve their case or even help them approach it in the right way. It's to give them an occasional hint (or step stool), keep them from danger, and help them discover the correct way to behave.
Everyone is different, and even though I don't share your experience, I don't view yours as either good or bad, it just is what it is. My experience is different but I'm not planning on ever telling anyone "Oh don't worry about it just have kids it'll be the best experience of your life" in blind faith.
Having kids becomes a lot easier if you can do the things you enjoy with them. For me that includes all sorts of stuff such as D&D, warhammer, painting miniatures, drawing, magic the gathering, board games, etc. I also include them when I have to fix something around the house or some random electronic device that broke.
If the only thing you can enjoy is adult stuff or working then you might have a rougher time at it if you don't find joy in the pure act of raising a kid. For me the first few months were meh, but once they started to get a personality I found it more entertaining.
Many of those are things I greatly enjoy, as well as many other things from a very diverse range of hobbies. My kids aren’t old enough to join in on those things yet (6 and 4), so I only find time to do those things once every few months, as opposed to once or twice a week pre-kids. It’s improving as they get older though, hence my hopefulness.
I would like to hear in what sense you love your kids, given that "he first six years have so far been very much a drag on my life and productivity, and not much else. They haven’t provided fulfilment, and they haven’t provided satisfaction. (...) Happiness for me typically starts after my kids are in bed or when I can escape them during work hours."
Do you say "I love my kids" because that's what everybody says, or is there any truth in it?
EDIT: Just to be 100% clear: I mean absolutely no judgement. I'm not going to tell you off or try to change your mind. I ask out of pure curiosity.
I go above and beyond to give them a great life - to care about providing them with a rich education, as well as a wide variety of life experiences, to immerse them in quality time with friends and family, to travel with them and spend time amongst various cultures and amongst nature. I’m there for them whenever they need me, and also when they don’t. I take the time to give genuine answers, to feed their curiosity, to make them great people. I give them the tools to explore things on their own and foster their independence. I also encourage risk taking while supporting them when it doesn’t work out.
Critically: I give them my full attention.
I could choose to spend all that mental effort on myself, but I choose to spend it on them. That’s as good a demonstration of love as any, in my book anyway.
Edit: no offence taken! I didn’t interpret it that way at all.
It’s not forced, and we do show by example. I also disagree that they’re too young to be immersed in a love for education, culture, and people. Oh and music too. We listen to a lot of music (for fun!).
My family and friends are multi-cultural so they’re naturally exposed to several cultures, for example. It’s also important to my wife and I as the world itself is multi-cultural, so having an appreciation that different people live their lives differently is important. We lead by example simply by living in a multi-cultural life and embracing it.
Take that same approach and apply it across the rest of the points I made. Nothing is forced, I promise.
> Do you say "I love my kids" because that's what everybody says, or is there any truth in it?
It is true that some people are not really cut out to be parents. But unfortunately it is difficult to tell whether that will be you or not. I see people looking at comments in threads like this and then chiming in with sentiments along the lines of "see, this is why I never wanted to be a parent." There is no way to know that, and such statements strike me as cope. Becoming a parent changes you, but you won't know how until you do it. There is a lot of biology and psychology in play, for certain.
As I tell my own kids, however, be careful because you only get to become a parent one time. Cannot blame someone for opting out of the risk, even if the counterfactual is that they would have been amazing parents with amazing children and been much happier.
Do not despair, I felt the same. Mine are halfway to 18, still feel the same, unsure if it changes. I love them, just not the experience. I have friends who feel the same, so I/we are not alone.
I tell others not to do it unless they are prepared to suffer. You won't know if its for you until you've already gone through the one way door. I wish others luck. For the unlucky, I wish grit and stoicism.
Would be interesting to see if there is other personality overlap with people that feel this way, which people could use as a pre-test for whether or not they would enjoy the experience of having kids.
I wonder if there would be something identifiable in common if we fMRI'd your brains, as while you are definitely not alone it does seem like a pretty strong exception that makes the rule.
Sure, give me a verified badge on dating marketplace apps (Feeld, Fetlife in my case) based on my fMRI imaging interpretation. Use it as input for the matching algo. Way more useful than simply putting "neurodivergent" in a profile imho. Adjacent to "If your policy doesn't exist in code, it doesn't exist."
The reason isn't because it is more difficult or people enjoy having kids less (like the parent). Its because children used to be a way to provide security for your family and community. More hands to help or sent off to earn money younger for example.
Now with smaller family units and less community interaction they represent a risk to security, mainly financially.
Children still provide security for the family and community, it's just that it's done in a way where the people creating the benefit and the people realizing it are almost entirely different. This is due to the way social security works. Creating a tragedy of the commons where everyone wants more kids but no one wants to be the sucker that has them (from the financial viewpoint, obviously not from others). Obviously this sort of communism where society takes the profits in form of social security but provides almost nil (except some pittances in property taxes for school) for the investment creates a collapsing system.
Having children for yourself provides more security for all the other families but barely anymore for your own. Meanwhile you bear most the costs and everyone else bears very little. So the incentives are totally reversed, and even worse the coupling between investment in children and payoff is cut which means the people in the best position to help their kids be successful are the least incentivized to do so.
Given the post you’re replying to, it seems you’re implying a specific reason, but what if it’s a different one? How about “I love children but having kids is super expensive”?
Every mouth to feed costs more. Baby formula seems like a racket. Diapers are expensive.
My oldest will need a laptop for school next year. It isn't optional or provided.
Maybe you need a bigger car because car seats take up a lot of room.
What if your kid decides they want to join a sports team? A friend of a friend told me they did the math on a year of competitive swimming. It was $10,000 by the time they were done with equipment and travel.
A trip to the dentist for my family of four is about $1000 for just cleanings. Braces for my oldest were $3000 if I could pay cash or $4000 to finance. You could skip dental care, but some might consider that neglect.
What if the school tells you to get your child tested? That costs about $3000 in my part of the world. Half of the kids on my block are neurodivergent somehow. What do you do?
In a less well off part of the world, most of these "concerns" probably disappear. I think we have pretty high expectations of parents that aren't poor.
Your arguments (explanations?) would seem way more relevant if they didn't go 100% counter to observation.
I don't know why you're trying to explain an outcome that is opposite of the observed outcome.
Are you saying that while more money is correlated with less fertility (the fact), that somehow even more money will reverse the trend and start going the other way?
Based on observed data, one could almost make the case that if only billionaires start stealing from the poor even more, then birth rates should go up.
It wasn't really supposed to be about money vs fertility rates. I was trying to provide some observed examples of why having more money might mean more expensive kids. Or how being poor means the cost and expectations are lower.
I've always believed that it isn't money itself, but access to healthcare and education that lower fertility rates. Money correlates really strongly with access to healthcare and education.
Having good education and healthcare leads to birth control and maybe an abortion if the BC fails.
When a family of three is making $15K a year, do you believe baby four, five and six were planned out in agonizing detail? Or do you think maybe they weren't planned at all?
And I do believe more money going around would help. If the perspective is "I can't afford it", those who are doing OK will not have children if they can help it.
The highest income you have, the more pressured you are to give them an expensive education, activities, etc. Everyone want their kids to do at least as well as themselves.
So it's expensive no matter what income bracket you're in.
Kids need to be out of the house and so do you. From the 2 kids I have (currently teen/tween) outdoors - as in unpaved trails, state parks or such if you have them close by - were the best.
They find enough there to keep themselves entertained. It’s amazing how much interest deer poop can generate.
Please don't ever, ever let them know this, or even allow them to figure it out. Especially before they're at least ~30 and able to begin to understand.
I would never let them think I regret them - that’s such a cruel thing to inflict upon them, and it’s certainly not their fault. I also don’t regret the joy it’s brought my wife.
I regret the loss of my mental energy and personal time, but not them, if that makes sense.
For me it helped to realize that the things I would have done with the extra time and energy would not have been that great. Some occasional dopamine bursts for a very mediocre outcome. Having kids is a better investment, but a less fun one.
It's mysterious to me that you write all this _and_ that you do truly love your kids and are great. If I was in your position I'd at least concede that people do deserve parents that don't regret them. Do their thoughts toward it even matter?
I would really like to have kids, but I don’t have my act together. I also feel like my partner is not suitable or capable of properly taking care of our kids. Feels pretty awful and am scared to not have any kids as I grow older. I worked hard to get a good relationship with my partner, and now that we have one I worry kids will only ruin what we have now
I hope you’re in a position where you can have an honest conversation about it with your partner. I’ve come to realise over time that honest and open communication is the most critical thing in any relationship. I really hope it works out for you both!
I never felt that and I attribute whatever happens to most people there as the reason why I never understood parenthood quite the way most people do. It seems as if most parents have some kind of 'drug' that dumps in their veins when they are around their kids. It's interesting to read about because it's like hearing an alien tell me what life is like.
This is an easy perspective to have if you are of the generation that got into a home purchase before they went out of control. Gen Z is being priced out of creating families.
Hacker news has a bias because most people here are working in software and probably make more than the median household income (solo).
I have a ~6 years old boy and I'm quite neutral about that -- that is, if I somehow go back to a few years ago, I may or may not go forth for a kid -- which was my attitude back then anyway.
There are some upside, but they are...tangible. The downside is concrete and solid. From hindsight, having a kid has nothing to do with my long-term objectives, but since I can’t dial back in time, I'll try to be at least a median good father -- I have gotten the financials covered, and I'm pretty sure in that part I'm better than the median, but for the focus part I'm not sure.
I'm in the thick of it right now as a serial founder with a 5 and a 1 year old. One thing I'm surprised paulg didn't touch on is how much it can evolve your relationship with your partner (for the better!).
Watching my wife have special moments with our kids fills my heart like nothing else.
Seeing her be an amazing mom is like watching your cofounder take on a completely new role outside of their previous experience and crush it. Except it's even better since you're in love with them and have all these biological/chemical signals to help kick that in high gear.
My big learning from having a kid, was that there was more maturing and growing up for me to do (A ton to be honest). Once there was somebody else I had to keep alive and care for and think about I learned to better de-center myself in the universe. I am sure you can get to this perspective many other ways, but having children seems to be the easy mode for getting into the mindset of "it's not about me any more."
My 2c is that it is not 'joy' or 'happiness' that kids bring to parents universally (although they might bring those things for some parents), but 'meaning'. Meaning is harder to define than joy/happiness, perhaps because it is less objective and more subjective.
Kudos to you! I have one and it's been the hardest thing I've ever done and it has broken us entirely. We can never imagine having more than one given the difficulty, and are now finished at one 100%. Very huge admiration for parents of > 1. It's 10x the work and not just 2x the work
I love them and I spend a lot of time with them, but I have no idea what you're talking about.
My 11 year old has Level 2 Autism, ADHD, and crippling anxiety. The pediatric psychologist & psychiatrist team we've assembled between Johns Hopkins & Kennedy-Krieger have finally lowered his suicide risk status from high to low last week.
My 9 year old has such extreme ADHD that you would think he has Akathisia; compulsive running. He's constantly fighting with his younger sister because... why not? Dopamine is dopamine.
The best part is that we have the privilege of doing it all on our lonesome despite having retired parents and no siblings with children of their own. Perhaps babysitting costing us more than the date night itself is the satisfying part.
Oh, no, I've got it! The satisfying part is not having a real vacation in 11 years.
I wonder how satisfying it's going to be when we finally have to face the reality of never being able to have an empty nest.
If you have easy kids everyone wants to help. If you have difficult kids no one else is going to want to help you, especially if they fight because that's liability they don't need (CPS will blame the caregiver if one of the child is beat up by their own sibling). Also if you have difficult kids not only will no one help, they will damn you for having been a terrible parent for circumstances outside your control, crushing your self esteem even though you're trying harder than perhaps most others. This is part of what makes difficult children exponentially harder. Sucks but that's the reality.
I noticed as soon as our child became better tempered things were 100x easier because suddenly people that were previously out of the picture were willing to look after the child. For every 1% better the child behaves life is 10% easier for everyone.
I see a lot of different opinions here, from very positive to very negative.
I think the answer is, it's both.
When I was an employee sometimes I was happy, like when a promotion was lurking, and sometimes I was unhappy and stressed, when getting fired, when facing deadlines, ....
But when I started working for myself the amplitude of emotions became way stronger, every week I would fluctuate between feeling doomed forever or feeling like a genius.
Life with and without kids is the same: The emotional highs of having kids are way higher than anything I experienced without kids, but sometimes the lows are very low.
People can also have very different experiences because kids can be very different.
My kids have been really easy, no big problems, but sometimes I see other parents dealing with really serious issues with their kids.
It starts with babies, some of them sleep easily while other cry all the time, to teenagers who can be nice kids with no problem at school to being called to the director's office all the time and have to seriously worry about their future.
While there are always those lows, when the kids are sick, scream, have tantrums, do something stupid, I would not trade a second of that away. A lot of happiness and laughs as well, along the way.
They grow and you're privileged to live with them for a while. Also you'll grow with them.
> Partly, and I won't deny it, this is because of serious chemical changes that happened almost instantly when our first child was born. It was like someone flipped a switch. I suddenly felt protective not just toward our child, but toward all children. As I was driving my wife and new son home from the hospital, I approached a crosswalk full of pedestrians, and I found myself thinking "I have to be really careful of all these people. Every one of them is someone's child!"
One thing Ive observed about Americans is how less of this feeling exists, without having kids etc. Like why the f does he not care for pedestrians before having a kid? Did he believe that adult humans just apparated out of nowhere? I see this a lot in how people drive, too.
I believe it is a result of the hyper-indivialistic and hyper-capitalist society rather than something innate in the people. I do think Americans deserve (and should demand and build) a better system.
100%. I had to drop about half my interests and hobbies after having kids, to remain sane (trying to continue juggling all of them was plainly just going to lead to never doing anything, really), and adjust all the others to fit better with kid-having.
If you can't hire "help", it's like losing 20 waking hours from your week, at least, just for the not-at-all fun or "quality time" parts of having a kid (extra housekeeping [so... very much more], extra shopping, taxiing the kids places, extra household planning, basic hygiene stuff, et c). And on top of that you need to spend "fun" time with them, too, like that part may be more enjoyable but it's non-optional and a lot of stuff an adult might want to do or accomplish doesn't integrate well with it.
Slice ~30-40 hours off the waking hours of both adults in the household, on top of 45-50 hours of work and other stuff necessary for work (commute, et c.) and... yeah this is just bullshit if you can't hire help.
[EDIT] Oh, this reminds me of a certain genre of LinkedIn post that I especially hate: the CEO bragging about how they find time for family despite having five jobs. The real answer to this mystery is that zero of those jobs are actually full-time work, and, the part they never mention, is that they pay others to do tens of hours of work per week that normal people have to do themselves, like lawn care, housekeeping, fixing broken shit in their house, shopping, keeping track of and making appointments and such, et c.
This. Don't forget that HN is extremely biased towards High income/net worth viewpoints. The reality for a lot of parents is much worse than most commenters here
I wish there was a way to make this decision rationally. My wife and I are coming up to the point of no return. We either do it now, or never.
Now let's try to figure this out: Do we have enough money? Yes, probably. We could survive 10 years without making another dime. I don't know what kind of safety net is recommended, but people do it with a lot less. We live in a country with free health care, so illness won't end our lives like it does in the USA.
With that out of the way, let's get to all the other points:
How much do I want children? Personally, I don't get it. If my wife wasn't dead-certain she _must_ have at least one child, I would never, ever consider it. I hate noise and chaos. I even find co-habitation challenging.
I was an only child and I think I'm mildly autistic. To me, 'alone time' and 'quiet time' are sacred and required for my sanity. Well, I know that goes out the window with children. My wife is the opposite: Many siblings, has always been around noise and chaos. Loves giving love. To me, the dog, to anyone. And that is why she seems to have this need. So, the decision is: Do I give up what I want, to make her happy?
Her happiness is about as important to me as my own. So that's a stalemate. She keeps saying how worried she is that it will ruin my life. But I also don't want us to split up over this, knowing that I have 'taken' her fertile years. She won't have a kid except with me. So that's also a stalemate.
I have had a pretty terrible childhood. So I know I'm biased. I don't want to let fear dictate my life.
Almost any occasion where I've stepped outside my comfort zone or done things I didn't want to do out of fear turned out to be things I was grateful to have done.
I can also see how raising children could be very rewarding. Even my therapist said it can be very healing to have children. It's an opportunity to do better than my parents. That's valuable, for sure.
And then I think of the state of the world. Awful. I wouldn't want to bring children into this. I'd even probably say to my own mother 'don't bother' if she'd come to consult me about whether to have me first. But then I spoke to my granddad, who was a teenager during the 2nd world war. He is also probably mildly autistic. He said it was the best thing he ever did. Had multiple kids.
If I look at my wife's family, they are all happy, successful, harmonious people (now). I look at my wife's parents and think "what a blessing". The richness of life they get to experience is just magical. If I could somehow guarantee that it'd go that way for me as well, then I'd have kids already.
But there are no guarantees, just uncertainty. Uncertainty of the "life changes forever, irrevocably" kind. That is brutal and scary.
The last time I made a similar decision was when starting a business. I knew I went down a road that would require stability and dedication. I'm a volatile person who quickly gets bored of things and wants to move on to other things.
Thanks to my wife I've done a bunch of things I never thought I'd do, because they require dedication and consistency. Something I don't really have. Renovating houses, starting businesses. I surprised myself with what I was capable of. All thanks to my wife.
I also think it's basically a crime to not let her raise a human being. I am certain anyone raised by her would be a net positive to society.
But then there's me and my issues. I don't know how I'll deal with it. I don't know what will happen. There's a chance I can't do it. And what then? Divorce? Repeat the cycle of putting children into the world and abandoning them, like my parents did, because they also couldn't handle it?
They were very young and had no money or support. Their relationship was also broken. My wife and I are 'old' and we have money and we have been an unbeatable team for well over a decade. We also have support. Grand-parents are basically next door and dying to help with raising a kid. So we are in a privileged position.
But my fear of taking this step is not going away. And I won't know what it'll be like. Parents look so tired. Many of my friends are parents. They all seem to offer the same advice "it's hell on earth, I hate every moment of it, it's the best thing I've ever done".
Awesome. What am I supposed to do with that? It's useless advice. It seems nobody can really tell you whether to do it or not.
Any people here who were equally fearful and then did it, NOT regretting it? And I mean truly. I don't want to hear the "I love my kids"-mantra. It's an automated thing everyone has to say. I mean truly.
You can talk to the foremost mango growers on cultivating mango trees and learn everything there is to know about making mangoes. You can consult with the best chefs about how to make the best mango dishes and desserts and learn the absolute best way to prepare and eat mangoes. You can learn from the masters of how to paint a mango so lifelike that you'd think the painting was real. Etc. You can learn and truly master everything surrounding the act of eating a mango.
But until you sink your teeth into a mango and actually eat it, you've no idea what you're talking about.
So, until you actually have the kid, all this worrying is for naught.
You will be just fine, the kid will be just fine (they have their own agency too, you know), the world will keep turning and you have the agency to put a person in it and teach them what they need to know.
The real question is if you want to eat a mango or not.
Haha, agreed. Like I alluded to in my post, many of the best things in my life have come from just being thrown into the deep end. If standing at the edge of a pool and ruminating over whether to jump or not, one may never do it. If the choice is made for you, well, then there's no ruminating.
But we're too old for accidents now, this is going to happen with intention, or not at all. Which is also fine, but I am interested in hearing other people's experiences.
Dude, don't do it to yourself. Deep inside you know that you don't want it. That won't ever change, oh that inner voice will be even louder when you're exhausted.
There is a politically correct thing to say about having kids. It is wonderful, I love them, it made me want to be a better person. That's all true.
I'm not going to be politically correct. I'm going to be honest. For some of us, it is a hard reality check.
As children, many of us had various kinds of hard experiences. You can get a rough idea of how hard your background likely was by tallying up the different kinds of Adverse Childhood Experiences that you had. The result is your ACE score, and it is a standard risk assessment tool. You can find the list near the end of https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/24875-adverse....
My ACE score is 9/10. Most of you won't have had that level of challenge, but a lot of you had problems. I've done a lot to deal with my background, work on my mental health, and so on. I swore to break the cycle, to give my children a better start than I had.
I mostly succeeded. Only mostly. The impact of my failures became obvious when COVID turned many homes into hothouses for mental illness. My kids were not unique in their struggles. But within their peer group, it was my kids that were hit first and hardest. And then I did not cope well with the result. As a result I, also, have been having mental health problems.
For people like me, I recommend a long and hard think before having children. If you do have children, you will naturally try to do your best. I certainly did. You are extremely unlikely to succeed as well as you'd like. I certainly didn't. And so you should also prepare to give yourself grace for the ways in which you might fail. If I had done better on that, then I would have been better able to carry on and try to pick up the pieces when the shit hit the fan.
To everyone who is beginning on this journey, I wish you luck. Cherish what you have. Do your best.
And if your best did not turn out to be as good as you wanted, you have my sympathy.
You know what I hate? Those reels on social media telling parents how to raise kids, while using perfectly timed video clips of kids behaving themselves, sitting nicely on a highchair, picking freshly chopped fruits, etc.. good for them. In real life, I have to repeat myself 1000 times everyday they have to sit at the table and eat!
But at the end of the day, there’s nothing better than having kids.
I once had neighbors above me whose kids yelled all the time. all the time. and sometimes they were sick of the yelling and they put their girls outside of the apartment door. and she was just punching hard the door over and over and yelling “MAMAAAA!”.
Sure I feel sorry for the kids being distressed for one reason or another. but these guys did literally nothing.
There just has to exist someone on the planet for which the title “shit parents” does objectively apply no matter how you look at it.
As a female founder I want children, but I know that I'll be seen as less ambitious if I have them. I will be seen as less, and will be more overlooked for opportunities than I already am now. I will have them one day, but they'll be in secret. People won't know until the business reaches a certain revenue and level of success. It is like this for women and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar.
I'm 36, and unlikely to ever have kids. I'm both very grateful for the freedom that's afforded me in life, and occasionally feel grief for parts of the human experience I'll never feel.
I have a kid and it's the greatest joy ever but I am very lucky. It's totally okay to grieve that, but I often tell other childfree folks: there are many things you can do to feel a similar kind of joy. Mentoring, volunteering, caring for friends etc. Having the joy of working for others and emotionally investing doesn't have to be exclusive.
> The fact is, most of the freedom I had before kids, I never used.
That just seems like close to the definition of freedom. I have the freedom to go outside right now and eat dirt. I've never used it.
If you didn't do something then I guess you didn't want to, more than the things you did choose to do instead.
The only way you'd have enough life to do "most" of the things you'd be free to do, is if you're not free to do but a tiny thing.
> See what I did there?
Yup. Made no sense at all, is what. A UAE passport makes you free to visit 181 countries either visa free or visa-on-arrival. It's still freedom even if you don't take the time to visit all 181 countries.
It's not even an interesting paradox. It's just an obvious part of freedom.
Most people don't visit more than 35 countries. An Afghanistan passport gives you access to 35 countries.
One of the most challenging aspects of being a parent (at least for me) is dealing with the kids not interested in cooperating or listening/learning. Their mother and I spent a great deal on music lessons and it was a challenge to get them to practice, and I was unable to coerce them to practice so they could reap the rewards of being able to create music themselves.
And just in general, giving guidance and seeing that look on their faces that means they're just waiting for you to stop talking so they can go on with their lives.
> One of the most challenging aspects of being a parent (at least for me) is dealing with the kids not interested in cooperating or listening/learning.
> And just in general, giving guidance and seeing that look on their faces that means they're just waiting for you to stop talking so they can go on with their lives.
Instead of seeing this as a challenge perhaps reflect on it and take it as an opportunity to learn more about your kids. Not everybody is the same, and not everyone will have the same aspirations.
I know of many who got the full ride in terms of music lessons but do not have any intrinsic passion for it. Overall it was a total waste of time in terms of their life satisfaction and fulfillment. Me on the other hand, I was very into music but didn't have the option of getting any lessons.
FWIW I was one of those kids who was very compliant and cooperative but in retrospect I can see that it harmed my development / self-concept. It's only now as an adult that I'm able to grapple with this.
As a 52 year old I specifically avoided having kids.
For decades I have been convinced that we are speed-running into a global environmental crisis that we will continue to ignore until it is far too late and this will result in associated resources wars and I never wanted to doom other people into having to live through that.
I sincerely hope for the sake of those of you who made a different choice that I turn out to have been overly doomerist, but watching the Trump 2.0 years play out I now think that I wasn't doomerist enough.
There is nothing more narcissistic and selfish than having kids. There is nothing noble about fulfilling your biological imperative to leave a descendant. Quite the opposite, really, it's a rather primitive egoistical desire to somehow continue oneself after death.
Before kids it was easy to judge bad parents. Then one day with child I found myself due to circumstances in a store way past my child’s bedtime. She was screaming and crying, because it was way past her bedtime.
Then I realized… I was now “the bad parent” I had so easily judged.
Then it was easy to judge parents with children younger than mine.
Until I learned that not all children have the same issues in the same order.
Then I learned it’s easier not to judge at all.
I still judge parents, because I compare them to other parents.
Good parents = kids not 100% glued to phones/tablets, social around friends and family, not throwing tantrums at 8-16 yrs old.
Bad parents = kids always throwing tantrums, kids basically always getting their way because they've learned parents will always give in, parents and kids 100% ignoring each other.
One set of friends - I go to visit, I play with their kids - we go out to dinner, we interact with both adults and kids
Another set of friends - I go to visit, they sent their kids to their room - we go out to dinner, they give the kids tablets and they're entirely ignored for the whole time.
It's difficult to translate what you're saying. You say "go to visit" which implies you don't see your friends with kids very often. If true you're in a poor position to make these judgements even by your own standards.
Everything you're observing is even more likely to occur if you don't see them that often. Your friends probably want to spend more time focusing on you. The kids are not that familiar with you and are less likely to engage with you. Which also makes the parents more likely to want to distract them with something else.
Whether or not you're bringing children with you matters too. It sounds like you don't because you're focusing on child-adult interactions. If someone has kids the kids run around and be kids with their loudness, and child-adult interactions are going to be much more likely. If you're not bringing kids in tow my kids are much more likely to just go off and do their own thing.
Much of what you're pointing out can also be down to individual child temperment. Which changes as children age. By your standards many parents turn into a bad parent once their kids become a teenager.
That is not to say that your observations are 100% wrong. But just that there's so many variables, most of which I didn't even mention here, makes trying to analyze your statement make my head spin.
Not to lean too much on anecdotes, but I have a friend who has extremely well behaved kids. He has said a couple times that he feels like he has placed too many adult responsibilities on his kids. Is he a good parent? Based upon outside observation, he seems good. But he seems to be questioning some of his own choices. Maybe that alone makes him a good parent? I don't know, who am I to judge?
you read very far into a relatively normal phrase "go to visit" meaning "when i visit them". Some people just say "visit" instead of "hang out" or "bum around with."
eta: it's like some people say they have to do errands.
Trust me. Don’t judge.
Even if you compare to other parents, you are judging the reference-parents.
If you have data over time you can draw conclusions on things you want to try as a parent.
Giving young children a tablet to silence them is still on the parents, irregardless of how the child turns out later.
What about judging judgers?
Judge the judging judgers
Agreed. It's not nature vs nurture, it's nature (with nurture sanding off some rough edges).
All kids are different, my second has about 20 tantrums a day. I've no idea why. It's getting really hard to deal with. But it will pass.
Honestly the only certainty is that unless you have been 100 percent responsible for a very young child for more a few days, you have no idea what you are talking about. I don't mean that directed at you. Just my own generalisation based own experience and the opinion of every other parent I know.
Life as a parent is completely different than life before.
I saw a woman completely lose her shit in a museum with her kid. Before I became a parent I would have judged. But when it happened I just thought "poor woman, I know how it feels, just giving it her all and she's got nothing left to give right now, how many times have I felt like that, how many times have I failed to live up to my own ideals as a parent".
Definitely hard to say. I get being angry and frustrated, and circumstances surrounding being a parent might not help at all. For instance my wife and I have no family to help out. It's just us. It's hard, but we do what we can.
I'm beyond fortunate that she's fully into being a mother, calm, patient but knows where the boundaries are. And that's reflected into our kid. He's so incredibly easy to parent, it's insane.
I look at his friends - all good kids. Boisterous, outgoing, a bit wild and uncontrollable, but fundamentally good kids. They fight with their siblings, and they're learning how to navigate the world.
And then I go shopping. We live in lower socio-econimic area, and it's genuinely just saddening to see what goes on. The number of parents that are actively, in public, swearing out their kids and just having the kids stand there quietly shrinking away is heartbreaking.
I don't know what's going on in the parent's lives, and I know being a parent is immensely difficut, and none of us are equipped from the outset to really become one... but yelling at your kid for being a f*ck in the middle of a shopping center? I fail to see how any of that is OK because of 'circumstances'. At some point you have to grow up and be an adult. You put this kid here. You need to take responsibility. It doesn't mean it's easy, but if you can't self reflect enough to know that's not OK, then you're a big part of the reason the kid is how they are.
Yeah... I was thinking about what I wrote above, I came to the conclusion that actually there is a limit. Because some people are awful parents, and that is reflected in how damaged some people are. I guess I could see the woman in the museum was trying, and had just had enough. But hey she was in a museum with her kids trying to do something positive with them.
I mean, not judging other parents doesn’t come from thinking that all other parents are doing a great job, it comes from knowing that you’re doing a terrible job in your own, special ways.
Parenting children is impossible, therefore all parenting lies on a spectrum from terrible to catastrophic, and it’s hard to know how you did until they grow up (if ever) because there’s a lot of sensitivity and subtle emotional stuff, especially at very young ages, which are the most important and the ones you remember the least. I’m certain there are screen-free parents who are worse for their kids than a good chunk of tablet-hander-outers
> Bad parents = kids always throwing tantrums
But sometimes there are legit behavioral issues that are extremely challenging, and are not the parent's fault. Sometimes what looks like a "tantrum" on the outside can actually be autistic overwhelm and meltdown, which can happen with even the best parents. Not to mention stuff like Intermittent Explosive Disorder.
All this to say...if you see a kid in public throwing a "tantrum", you still shouldn't judge the parents without knowing the full picture.
There is a difference between kids using bad behavior to get attention or blackmail parents vs kids who have actual behavioral problems they are working through.
The first is an actual problem stemming from bad parenting and as a society we should indeed shame parents who raise spoiled kids who expect everything to be given to them.
The point is that if you just see a kid on the street throwing a tantrum, you don't know which of those situations you're actually looking at
OP was referring to observations at friend's houses. Presumably they'd be aware of any underlying issues.
Judging random people on the street isn't wise. Judge your friends and loved ones instead! :D
I mean, do you even know the full story at a friend's house? I guess it depends on how closely you know them, and whether they've confided any developmental issues they're children are dealing with.
Sometimes it's entirely on the kids.
My parents always tried to make me socialize, tried to unglue me from videogame/PC when I was a teenager, etc
Turns out I was always an introverted prick.
Consider how bad it would have been for you/would be for you right now had they not even tried though. Impossible to "what if" the situation now but I'm sure the effort will have made at least some difference.
Oh, believe me, I have no complaints on how they raised me. They did a great job, I turned out alright. Wife, daughter, many friends, stable job.
I am just saying that anyone would have judged them poorly if they saw me spending a sunny Saturday glued to my SNES playing Romance of The Three Kingdoms IV, or going for yet another playthrough of Diablo on the PC.
I was the worlds best parent...before I had kids.
Thanks for making me laugh - great poetry :D and so true. I can‘t stand people w/o kids complaining about their parents.
Yes, when you have a toddler undergoing a public meltdown, it is easy to see who around you is an experienced parent, and who is not. Just by the look on their faces.
> Then I learned it’s easier not to judge at all.
A skill we should all cultivate, IMO. Life is happier when you do not waste it constantly judging.
I smile a bit and give a chuckle when a toddler is giving a parent a hard time. It reminds me of simpler times. The problems and consequences are so much smaller than teenage problems.
Louis C.K had a routine about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cr1aAYOhFsQ
I can relate. Thank you.
Badly behaved kids I am more understanding of now (at least the younger ones). But there are defintely easy ways out of problems some parents take that are not good for children.
Yeah, with a kid I still judge. I'd rather see kids running around and playing and being kids in public than on a tablet. Even grocery shopping I see toddlers on tablets sitting in the cart.
My son has been actively involved with meal planning since he as a a year and a half old. "What type of bread today? What type of fruit in your yogurt tomorrow?"
I won't judge kid's behavior, so long as they are acting like kids. Sometimes that means they act out, that is normal.
But, damnit, let them live in the real world and not just try to distract them with shiny things all the time.
I remember going to restaurants in the 90s and early 2000s and kids would be running around playing with each other between tables. That is kids being kids, and it is perfectly acceptable (heck desirable!)
The only thing I'll add is that you never know what people are going through. Both of my children have pretty intense ADHD, and when I went through my divorce I definitely leaned into too much screen time for a while. It wasn't permanent though, and I managed to get back closer to the ideal you speak of (but as a single parent, it took a lot of processing of guilt to find a balance that worked).
I've decided it's safer to just never judge, that parent you see pushing the toddler around in the cart might indeed be a terrible parent, or they might be going through grief and at their breaking point.
> I've decided it's safer to just never judge, that parent you see pushing the toddler around in the cart might indeed be a terrible parent, or they might be going through grief and at their breaking point.
Agreed, I should have clarified that I'm speaking more about friends and family, people's whose situation can be spoken to directly.
I have friends with neurotypical kids who still hand the kids tablets at restaurants instead of actually teaching the kid how to take turns in a conversation, or how to actually go through a menu and order!
Like I get it, it is tiring, but we all signed for the work when we chose to have kids. (At least in my social circle where kids are very well planned for in advance).
Thanks for the clarification, I see where you are coming from and definitely agree it's a real problem.
I'm proud to say for myself that devices never leave the home now (and mine stays in my pocket except for explicit communication needs), and we are able to fully connect on road trips, dinners, and other outings. It's freeing, and I always tell the kids, that being device free means we will actually remember these moments.
I've been detained by police under suspicion of "kidnapping" for taking my kid to the park (my kid is a different "race" as me so it was "suspicious"). On another occasion my kid was interrogated because they were walking home from school on our own property, and someone wondered "why they were alone."
On the other hand, no one has ever called the police on me for handing the kid a tablet and melting their brain inside.
When I was a kid either of those people would be practically thrown in a loony bin for saying anything, let alone taken serious by the authorities. Now the CPS investigates almost every accusation and is legally barred from even telling you who made it, so these anonymous shitstains can exercise their cowardice behind a curtain as much as they like with no risk to themselves but every risk to you.
It's difficult to let them live in the real world not because some evil guy with a white van is waiting to offer "free candy" but that the evil person in a white van is actually the Karen who sees a kid on the street or the park as an inconvenience for her or an unacceptable risk and they can be the coward they are and make an anonymous complaint and cause weeks of harassments by CPS with the cell phone they have next to them at the ready wherever they might see a child.
> I've been detained by police under suspicion of "kidnapping" for taking my kid to the park (my kid is a different "race" as me so it was "suspicious"). On another occasion my kid was interrogated because they were walking home from school on our own property, and someone wondered "why they were alone."
And this is why I pay an arm and a leg to live in Seattle.
Kids here are running around outside playing soccer in the streets with parents watching guard for cars at the ends of the block.
Mixed race is not even noteworthy here.
Kids walk to/from school (up to a mile) all the time. Huge groups of kids walk together every day.
Yes the park thing happened to me while visiting a white suburb of a very racially segregated city.
I will continue to judge my parents for abusing me throughout childhood until doing so no longer contributes to my own healing. There is no single right way to respond to a hyperactive child but there are plenty of permanently life-altering ones.
> until doing so no longer contributes to my own healing
Resentment is a poison willingly retained; I hope you find healing some day in letting go of those memories
Thank you for the kind words.
It's less blame/resentment (though I admit I'm still working on it) and more that pretending my childhood was just fine and my parents were absolved of everything just because they tried their hardest was exactly what kept me trapped in a vicious cycle for far too long. Some things go beyond "just" bad parenting and into the level of abuse and potentially lifelong physical/mental conditions. Only by admitting to myself that yes, I was not at fault for all my own misfortunes and maybe someone else did share the blame, was I finally able to start healing.
One of my goals is to isolate the healthy parts of blame from the all-consuming and unproductive ones, which I'm still working on.
For my case (and I speak for nobody else), I don't want to have children until I'm 100% certain I will not make the same mistake as my forbearers and pass down their trauma to my offspring. Some of that decision-making is out of my hands until I've had enough therapy and healing. That's just what abusive parenting does to a person's psyche.
And for what it's worth, I can't predict how my perspectives on parenting will change if I become a parent myself, but even in that case I will never stop believing my own parents were abusive. No model of how the world works makes sense to me without that understanding anymore.
Before kids, you take a look around a diner or a store or a playground and you see little ones happily eating some chips or browsing the foodstuffs or playing on a slide.
You think that this is what kids are like. They sit there, they walk a little, they giggle on the playground, they look cute as all get out, etc.
Then you have kids and you know.
You know.
Those kids sitting there in the booth sipping on their milk quietly while mom and dad happily eat their lunch? Those are the top 5% most calm kids out there. The other 95% of kids are with their adults screaming and throwing fits and covered in who knows what.
Life lied to you. It did it directly to your face, unashamed. The bias is real.
That's not the impression I hear from my many intentionally childless friends. They take the negative behavior - the screaming, tantrums, chaos - as the norm.
It sounds like you always wanted kids. I don't say this to criticize - it's great that those who want to start families do so - but I don't think your experience is universal.
Oh then it's even worse! As again, only the more well behaved kids are going out in public.
> only the more well behaved kids are going out in public.
How would that work? Do you think they have life-long domiciliary arrest? All children need to go to school or like to occasionally walk or go to a shop.
Uhm, who walks around believing kids are well behaved?
lol. Kids are animals. Parents have to teach them manners and behaviors
I'm glad you at least determined the root cause.
Plenty of truly bad parents shrug responsibility off by making the "technically correct" claim that all kids throw tantrums, therefore they're not a bad parent. They then proceed to provide an unstable environment to raise their kids and the tantrums don't end until well into adulthood.
Dunno, I didn't judge before having a kid. After having a kid, it's 100x easier than people made it out to be and it's hard not to judge.
Maybe your kid is easier than most.. I would not generalize
Having multiple kids can make things much harder too. A child that is easy alone may not be easy with siblings.
Parents flex for children because there's a lot of things we don't care about. Little Timmy wants to go first? That's fine. But now introduce Little Jane. Little Timmy can't always go first. Now he has to contend with Little Jane.
Turn taking is the standard here. Doing it at preschool is one thing, but in every day life, at home, from sunrise to sunset, when tired or sick, is another thing. There's also lots of corner cases to navigate. What if Little Jane wants to watch something that scares Little Timmy? What if Little Timmy missed a turn because he had soccer practice? And so on.
You also aren't in control of all turns. For example, birthday parties. Or frequency of seeing friends. What is seen as unfair parts of life by an 8 year old can be completely out of your control.
You can oftentimes rely on the older one being a little more flexible than the younger one, and that is a life saver. As a parent you can lean on it and reason with them. But there is a scenario where this falls apart: twins. Congratulations, have fun reasoning with two 1.5 year olds who want opposing things.
The corner cases from taking turns can get easier as they get older though. I usually offload it to them: you guys figure out whats fair, everyone has to agree, let me know when you figure it out. This can degenerate into the most stubborn winning though, so I still have to monitor the results and stop relying on it if that's what is happening.
I dunno, it feels kinda exhausting for being easy.
Before having kids, I expected it to be this huge life changing thing. That it would effectively end the part of my life where I was free to do whatever I wanted, and start the part where I was just Daddy, doing nothing except serving my childrens' needs.
But that didn't happen. We just carried on being Jason and his partner, but with a baby in tow.
I had spent most of my 30s cramming in as much "living" as possible, to make sure I'd stocked away a lifetime supply of it. After all, I'd probably never get another chance to travel for long periods, keep up with climbing, and all that other stuff that Independent Jason could do.
But it was all for naught. We just packed the kid along and went traveling anyway. He had eleven stamps in his passport by his first birthday.
Life is just as much fun as ever. But now we have some kids to play with.
> Before having kids, I expected it to be this huge life changing thing. That it would effectively end the part of my life where I was free to do whatever I wanted, and start the part where I was just Daddy, doing nothing except serving my childrens' needs.
There are some huge changes.
The largest is a lack of the mental downtime where deep thought and problem solving could occur.
I can't get off work, hop on my car, and drive around for an hour mulling over technical work. I can't stay an hour past with coworkers and noodle solutions on a white board. I can't get up at 2 am to try something out that just popped into my head.
I need to be in bed by 10pm every day. I have to get up at 7am every day. On weekdays 2 meals a day need to be planned, on weekends 3 meals a day. I can't try experimenting with some random new recipe that may fail, my kid needs to eat lunch on time not 2 hours late.
Yes it is a lot of fun (theme parks! Trick or treating!), but I'm thankful I did a ton of amazing engineering work before I had a kid because there is no way I can dedicate the absurd amount of time to innovating/solving hard problems, that I used to.
i haven't written a real song in a decade, and the previous decade only had a half dozen. 3 decades ago we and i wrote about a dozen albums.
Can you guess how old all my kids are? Write it on a slip of paper and put it in your hat for later.
> Before having kids, I expected it to be this huge life changing thing. That it would effectively end the part of my life where I was free to do whatever I wanted, and start the part where I was just Daddy, doing nothing except serving my childrens' needs.
Had a very similar feeling. When my wife told me the "getting pregnant" worked I mourned a little bit. I recognize we were exceedingly lucky to have had such a wonderful kid, and it has worked out very well.
For the first 6 mos. a lot did change, but after that things seemed to skew back to a new "normal".
It will be 13 years in May since we had our daughter. I'm so glad we did it.
I know that it could have gone a lot differently, though. I'd never suggest that it'll be great for everybody.
> He had eleven stamps in his passport by his first birthday.
I was raised overseas (Dad[0] in the CIA).
Both good and bad. First, if it's just "traveling," and not "living" overseas, I suspect that it's not so bad, but military brats have common quirks, for a reason. Our lives get torn up and replanted regularly. It's hard to make friends, and we often end up having a difficult time, retaining long-term relationships, later in life.
But, man, the life story that it gives you. There's few cures for xenophobia, better than immersion.
[0] https://cmarshall.com/miscellaneous/MikeMarshall.htm
It happened to me and now, after more than 8 years, I find myself still in the situation where I am serving my children's needs and not having time to satisfy my personal ones.
They go to bed when I am also tired. Trying to having an hobby past their bed time means sacrifying sleep time.
Travelling is also a challenge, since they lack interesting in seeing something new, but just want to have fun playing, especially playgrounds.
we didn't do that much traveling with our kids but we move to new places. when traveling you have to consider your kids interest, so museums are probably out. fortunately i don't care much for that either. we travel to visit family and friends and then do interesting things together, which is much more exciting for the kids.
as a freelancer, instead of sacrificing sleep time i reduced my work time.
work and personal time | family time | sleep.
whatever you do, don't sacrifice on sleep time.
Since I can't sacrifice work time as employee, I can only sacrify my personal time, if I don't want to reduce family time.
We do travel only to kids-friendly destinations for the time being
I'm 6 months in and it has definitely ended my life as it was and nothing is the same. I'm pretty lucky that my wife gives me almost 16 hours of free time daily, from which 8 I work and 8 is for sleep. If I want to work out or do something else I need to steal it from the sleep time. It's pretty early though so I might be looking back in a few years and think that it was not that bad actually :)
A lot of gyms will watch your kids while you work out. Great opportunity to give both of you a break.
Very questionable quality child care.
> We just packed the kid along and went traveling anyway. He had eleven stamps in his passport by his first birthday.
How do you keep a baby happy and quiet on long international flights? I currently have no kids but I may find myself in this situation in the next couple years. I'm dreading being the guy with a screaming infant on a 13-hour trans-Pacific flight that keeps everyone from sleeping.
Babies want nothing more than to sit on your lap snoozing and feeding. It's more or less what you do at home anyway. The hardest part about flying with a baby is dealing with the added luggage (stroller, carseat, overpacked diaper bag, etc).
It's only once they're old enough to have more sophisticated feelings (like boredom) but not old enough to communicate them (except by screaming) you get in trouble.
First two years they can fly for free, but they have to ride in an adult’s lap and that gets tiring. Don’t believe the bassinet offerings - as soon as a plane gets turbulence, you have to get the sleeping baby out of the wall bassinet and good luck appeasing them. Age 1-2 is hardest for travel, so you can skip it. The only thing that worked was getting their own seat with the cosco scenera next car seat (or their own if they like it, but that one is $50 and light to carry). They would sleep nicely for large chunks and you get to enjoy travel again. After age 3 it’s much easier (they can ipad if that’s the only ipad time they ever get).
Don't go straight to screens in this situation. You can introduce novelty by purchasing a number of cheap toys, even from the dollar store, which they have never seen before. Keep them hidden until the flight.
I think it depends on the baby and the parents' personality, but kudos to you.
This amounts to “works on my machine”.
I’m happy for you, but your circumstances are unusual and incomparable to most.
Absolutely. Also, kids end up helping you focus on the travel, experiences and things that are truly worthwhile. You drop a lot of activities and TV and other activities that was frankly a waste of time anyways.
Travel with a baby isn't that bad.
I think people struggle with losing their identity when they no longer get long periods of focus time or can participate in their hobbies with the dedication they would like.
Depends on the baby. Some are nightmarish.
That’s the main thing - each family and each child are different, so it’s kind of hard to base your decision on what you see and hear from others.
Yeah mine was colicky and every time getting him to sleep involved rocking him for an hour+ while he screamed in my ear. And he woke up so easily. So I spent about 2 hours a day rocking and patting for the first year or so, not checking off a dozen countries on my passport.
Never had a second for some reason.
I’m curious what made you conclude that he was colicky as opposed to something else?
I was labeled colicky as a baby and my own children turned out to have some digestive issues with certain common foods that make them cry a ton when they or their mother eat them (and they get it via the milk). If I hadn’t debugged the food issues I might have labeled them “colicky”, but when we avoid those foods religiously they only cry when it makes sense and when the issue is solved they stop. I’m guessing I had a similar issue as a baby, my parents definitely didn’t attempt to debug it.
No judgement by the way I’m just curious if you tried debugging things like that as I imagine “colicky” could encompass issues that aren’t possible to debug also, and it’s also understandable if you couldn’t put in the resources to debug it as in my case it’s been a gigantic and expensive pain in the ass.
Well when you go to every specialist and try every type of milk and every diet change imaginable it gets there through a diagnosis of exclusion.
Trust me, the debugging is a big part of the trouble. Everyone is telling you to debug, but that is actually the thing you have to learn to stop doing. Your brain is telling you to debug. But it can't be debugged. I watched multiple women have mental breakdowns trying to debug a baby with a 6 month streak of colic. Eventually their brain just goes psychotic because a baby screaming 6+ months non-stop with nothing wrong while people frantically try to solve the problem is basically sever mental torture. It is not the hours, or days, or even weeks of screaming that get to you, it is the months of never ending ear-pearcing torture that nothing will fix, and they will not fucking sleep because they just want to scream for all of their sleep as well and naturally the caregivers won't be sleeping either due to this. And you cannot rely on crying to figure out when to feed, when to change a diaper, when the baby needs sleep, or some gentle motion -- all of your indicators are worthless.
It is a hell for the baby and it is a hell for the parent. People struggling with this generally do not have any more children. Any other stage past baby for such child is 99% easier, I laugh when people say babies are the easiest stage.
Our first was colicky for the first 18 months or so. A nightmare, really, just like you described. Back arched, face red, for hours every day, no comforting.
We went on to have more kids. They were all quiet and easy. We sometimes wondered if there was something wrong with them.
Sure, the default for travel shouldn't be it'll be a nightmare though or impossible.
It can be. And it also places strain on the people around you too if the kid isn't settled and easy to travel with.
Not the kids fault, but last time I travelled, there was a couple travelling with a child that was crying, hysterically the entire trip. This was a 20 hour trip all up, from NZ to SA, crossing NZ to AU then to SA, and they were with us all the way. The kid was going for the entire thing - I watched the parents take turns to look after her, standing near the toilets. I feel sorry for them having to deal with that, and for the girl being that upset (presumably sore ears? dunno), but that would not have been fun for the people around them either.
I was always super wary of travelling with ours in case that happened. We were lucky that they just slept through all the flights, but it could have easily gone the other way. I would have felt pretty stink subjecting the surrounding 40+ people to a very upset child.
IME babies are the very easiest for almost everything.
It's way more work to travel with a 10-year-old than a 1-year-old. Then quadruple that difficulty for each additional kid of roughly that age...
You have just the one kid, right?
We were the same ;-)
Two now. That’s still manageable.
Good on you. We were 'one and done'. Two sounds more than 100% more difficult, if only just because the number of edges in the relationship graph going up.
My parents managed four kids, albeit for most of that time there were only 3 living in the home at a time (13 years between the oldest and youngest).
A friend of mine had eleven (!!!) siblings. That horrifies me. Cliques could form in that size population! Utter craziness.
That doesn't appear to be a common story. I now have to schedule phone calls with my retired mother because between my sister and her partner who both work, and her, with 2 kids - one small but active that needs constant minding and one that needs chaperoning to activities - she often doesn't have one uninterrupted hour in the evening for an entire week.
Nearly everyone I know with kids is more similar to this story than yours.. to each their own but it's certainly not for me:)
This is one of my favourites from PG, not least because it's a bit antithetical to what I perceive as a growing trend among smart, ambitious people (for whom children might represent friction, inconvenience, etc)... as well as folks for whom COL is making the question irrelevant due to practical concerns.
Actually, it's really striking that even in America -- the developed country with the #1 highest birthrate -- still falls below the replacement rate. What is it that's inversely correlated between growing wealth and having children? Especially since it was likely to opposite for most of human history? (i.e. large families were a sign of wealth and power).
PS - I can't resist offering my own experience as a parent - what a treasure to have discovered that I'm capable of such love, and to get to watch this love transform me into a better person than who I was before. This kind of love demands everything of you, but through it you discover a truer and stronger version of yourself too.
More wealth and education gives people the option to choose which I think is a good thing. People who don't want kids shouldn't be forced to have them. Before, people had kids because they needed them to work on their farm or it's what was expected of them as a housewife. Now that we have a choice, less people want to commit to taking care of a human for 18+ years. It's great so many people want to be parents but having a kid doesn't automatically make someone a great parent.
Due to the extremely competitive nature of the US economy, a lot of people have to choose between career success (having money) and starting a family (which is expensive). I know a lot of women who want to have a family, but have struggled to get to a comfortable economic position where they can actually do it. Compounded by the wage stagnation, which makes it hard for most people to support a family on a single income. We have hollowed out our third spaces, so its difficult for people to relax and socialize. Even vibing ends up being a kind of competition because of the high costs. Not to mention the perverse incentives in the housing market.
None of this is conducive to starting a family.
I think the two-income household (two full-time paying jobs, specifically) is a lot of it, and seems to go along with "rich" countries.
Having all the stuff that could happen during the day if it were (if you will) someone's full-time job, instead get crammed into evenings and weekends when you're trying to also do non-chore stuff with your kids (or, for god's sake, maybe get just one measly hour to do something you want to do, alone... or spend time with your spouse, without kids...) and take care of things that have to happen each evening (dinner, bed time stuff) really, really sucks.
Not having chores piling up through the week to ambush you both on the weekend would be amazing. I can hardly even imagine how much more free we'd feel. With two working parents it's like neither ever gets any actual time off that they're not carving out by neglecting something they really ought to be doing (usually several somethings)
When someone asks me if starting a family is worth it, I borrow words from Agent K and tell them, "Yes, if you are strong enough"...
But as you say, I suppose everyone ends up becoming strong. Because there is no other way...
Oh, if you read some of the headlines in the news... no, not everyone.
> Actually, it's really striking that even in America -- the developed country with the #1 highest birthrate -- still falls below the replacement rate. What is it that's inversely correlated between growing wealth and having children?
I think a lot of people miss the simple fact that some people just don't want kids and are unable to reconcile their personal experience with anyone else's.
My partner and I are both wealthy enough that we could both afford children and we can afford to not have children. But neither of us think our lives would be improved by having them.
I think that's really, really hard to understand for a lot of parents and people who want to be parents: being (relatively) wealthy creates choice, and that a growing number of people are choosing different things now that they have the ability to do so.
I think a lot of people are also pessimistic about the future.
It's fairly obvious the world will be very different and much less pleasant place by 2050. A lot of people don't want their kids to live through that.
It's possible aliens will arrive before then and fix all our problems, or some other Salvatio Ex Machina, but it's not exactly a high-odds bet.
birth control also plays a role in it
Kids cost time, not money. So the wealthier you are, the more difficult it is because you probably have less free time. You can pay someone else to raise your kids (daycare/etc.) but then you lose a lot of the value of having kids.
This bullshit excuse that somebody can't afford to have kids is proven wrong by the fact that poorer people have more kids than rich people. You can even be unemployed. Gone are the days of destitute single mothers having to give up their child to the church and work in the poorhouse. We have social welfare for that.
Maybe the fact that poor people can have lots of kids has taken away their value as a status symbol for wealth?
> Kids cost time, not money.
There's a well known aphorism about this...
Um, wtf is this rambling statement that doesn't seem to be based in any kind of truth at all?
In the past both poor and rich tended to have tons of kids, this is because kids tended to die young regardless of being rich or poor.
Then you're trying to compare massive social changes in the west that occurred around the same time. For example womens suffrage, women being allowed to work, sexual revolutions and birth control.
If you look at countries that tended to develop later, the rate of childbirth tends to drop with accessibility to birth control and education.
Yea, educated women have fewer kids because they prefer to spend their time making money, and money isn't what you need to raise kids.
> On the other hand, what kind of wimpy ambition do you have if it won't survive having kids? Do you have so little to spare?
I don't know, it seems like parenthood asks for a lot to be given up. Younger people like myself are already struggling to live on their own where I am. There's not a lot that can be spared by most of us.
To me, having a child means heavily straining your financial safety - here, care for this other person that can't do anything and has some of the most expensive needs in society. Not only that, but you need to be sure that you can provide for the child for the next 5, 10, 15 years. Who has that sort of confidence? Then there's the part where all your free time is sacrificed to care for the child. The time burden decreases, but it's always a lot of time. And you always have to be extremely risk-averse - if you were just responsible for yourself before, now you have someone you need to take into account for every thing you do in life. Moves, job changes, major risks or investments, career changes, taking on additional responsibilities. All of these things probably become much less doable for parents. And this is a one-way road with no backing out, you commit to it and are stuck with that choice for several decades. By the time your child lives on their own, you've already spent a large portion of your adult life. And there's no guarantees that your child is someone you like, or that your parenthood isn't soured by something else. There's plenty of parents who are stuck in parenthood and hate it.
The thought of having a child scares me. I'm happy that the author is content with how his life turned out, but I'm okay with just watching from the sidelines. Maybe the biological instinct (forced coping mechanism?) is so strong as to justify living through the horrors above in exchange for watching your kids play and participating in similar things. But I don't want to learn what that's like.
The best thing our(I’m in US) society can do to dispel fears like yours is to offer public daycare where kids are well cared for and socialized.
I’m a child of Soviet Era and our parents did not think twice if they can afford children with their meager salaries. I remember going to a kindergarten as soon as I could walk.
The reality is that a family can always make choices that enable them to care for a kid, but there are of course trade offs.
Public daycare would mitigate one of those trade offs
You exist solely to procreate.
I could not imagine an emptier life, than one without children.
I reject your premise, but your conclusion is not surprising considering it.
I couldn't imagine an emptier life than one where the only thing that matters is procreation. We're not Pacific Salmon.
I'm sorry for your loss.
I could not imagine having such a myopic worldview. Feel for you brother. There's beauty everywhere in life if you open your eyes
You don't exist for something. You simply exist. What you choose to do with that existence is up to you. I've yet to see any evidence to the contrary.
Even if I'm philosophically in agreement with you, I'm pretty sure insulting other people choices or insecurities has never been a great way to increase birth rates.
I think this is an unconsidered opinion.
For example, I wonder how many monks or priests would agree with you.
Men that make sacrifices to serve.
You're very confident in what you pull out of your butt.
It’s like nobody knows who the author is, and that he’s rich. It’s different from when you’re not rich. (Not even saying poor.)
I didn't realize who he was until I looked up the name. I'm just too young to have heard it from real life, and also I'm not great at names. I assumed he was someone known in the industry, but not literally the founder of Y Combinator.
Caveat emptor. I am a grandparent now, so I think I have some perspective on this.
Of course we love our kids, and we had (and still have) a lot of good times with them. But kids can really break your life and marriage, too - amongst my peers I can't tell you how many have a struggling young adult kid or two (with relatively serious mental or physical health problems), with no resolution in sight.
So stay lucky - having a child is a wild act of optimism. And if you want kids, don't wait too long. There is never really a good time to have a kid (just different trade-offs), so for the best chances for health, be as young a parent as possible. And men have a biological clock, too: e.g.: https://neurosciencenews.com/genetics-sperm-mutation-neurode...
The serious mental and physical health problems are real and a societal concern. Everyone "notices" the trends, but maybe it's not you so you just think there's nothing you can do about it and do your best to stay healthy.
Then you have a child and you are suddenly hyper-aware of everything going into the body and brain. Everything they eat, every doctor visit, every time they get sick and what could have exposed them, every word spoken on TV, every friend they have and how they act or how that friend passes along their parents influences, etc.
And suddenly you're very concerned about societal level macro influences on food, medical, etc because those influences are going to affect your child's life.
There's definitely a balance here. Not giving a shit, which seems to have been the tradition I was raised in, is not great. Recognizing problems is good. Acting on all of them is bad. You need to raise grounded kids who can grow into resilience so by the time they're adults they're able to navigate this strange world.
Especially trying to control who their friends are and what they hear. Questionable behavior from friends at younger ages can actually be a good thing: it lets you plant the seed early when your kids still listen to you.
I often wonder in these threads what proportion of the commenters is male. HN skews heavily male, and statistically speaking, fathers are spared a huge chunk of the physical and mental burdens of pregnancy, birth, and parenting. Being a mom and being a dad are not equivalent, and I have a feeling that not many male HNers would readily swap places if such thing were possible.
Isn't it convenient that nature has already placed us in our respective roles and given us the necessary strengths to handle our different but equally important roles?
It's such a tragedy that one might feel compelled to weigh the burdens of motherhood vs fatherhood as if either side had a choice in the matter or as if there is some kind of competition to be won.
The only roles that nature put you into are carrying the baby and giving birth (and possibly breastfeeding). Everything else can be done by both parents.
(I'm a dad, who does do half of everything with the kids. It is possible, it's just a lot of stuff to do.)
I doubt OP would agree with your assessment nor your use of the word "only" but I appreciate you. ;)
I don't mean to inject politics, but there's a huge mental burden on fathers with more conservative values that take their role seriously.
Unfortunately, there's no way to elaborate what I mean on HN or much of the web without stirring up a ton of pointless argument. People will just get defensive and refuse to consider perspectives they can't agree with.
That huge mental burden is entirely self-inflicted, though. It's not a fair comparison to the physical burden that is unavoidable.
Growing up in a more conservative society, I've seen many people with that parenting style, who often pop a proverbial blood vessel trying to ensure that their children are more like army cadets that perfectly reflect their worldviews and don't take an unapproved step in any direction. Their rationalizations ranged from real safety concerns to arbitrary opinions like what religion is right (and exactly how someone needs to act at all times, with no limits on specificity or ridiculousness) or what large groups of people are evil (nationality, religion, identity - any group is fair game, just pick one and wall off your child from ever knowing about them). Regardless of motivation, ideology is a choice, and they could've relieved a whole lot of this burden on their own at any point.
"it's easy, just stop believing so much in your religion and attempting to pass on your learned life lessons to your kids". Well said.
Yeah, I agree, if you’re talking about the role of the patriarch as a stoic provider who isn’t allowed to be a vulnerable man with his own emotional needs.
It has been encouraging to see how much more men now seem to desire being engaged and nurturing in their children’s lives (even among those who otherwise consider themselves conservative or traditionalist).
Instead of the ceremonial complaint and preemptive whining, why don't you consider making the argument coherently and see how people respond?
Ironically, the pointless arguments you so despise (and refuse to invite) offer more than whatever utility this comment has.
Assuming the income stays the same, I'd happily swap places. I suspect many people would.
There are 2 further points:
1. I'd say the ideal setting is for both parents to work and hire a sitter even though it might financially net the same (or affordably negative) as having one stay-at-home parent. Because a human needs community and diverse things to do, not just one thing over and over everyday for years. Both of the parents will be much happier.
2. When people say taking care of baby/toddler is difficult, it's almost always about not eating well and/or not sleep well. Eating would take an hour of spoon-feeding because the kid wouldn't eat by themselves. Kids wouldn't be able to sleep by themselves. You must focus on solving these 2 areas first. Once they are solved, it gets a lot easier to take care of a baby/toddler.
While stay at home parenting isn't, and shouldn't have to be, for everyone, it also isn't somehow a downgrade from being in the working world. If anything is doing something 'over and over', it's trudging to some job to push papers/keyboard keys around for 8+ hours.
Taking care of kids without a sitter means you have to watch the kid 24h/day. Every waking moment needs to be supervised.
> some job to push papers/keyboard keys around for 8+ hours.
There are tons of socializing during the work time. Nobody sits and types for 8 hours a day without moving.
granted our kids were easy, but kids don't need to sleep by themselves. see attachment parenting. we let the kids sleep in our bed which solved the sleeping problem and the feeding problem because the kids could get milk at night without my wife having to get up and be wide awake.
i can't speak for my wife's experience directly, but while she complained about other issues, lack of sleep was never her problem.
and the idea that work gives you more community than staying at home is nonsense. we always had family and friends around, and taking the babies to events or visit others is also a non issue.
about swapping places, i did. when our first was 1 year old, my wife started to work. i was always working from home, and i loved the idea if taking care of the kids at home, it's been something i wanted to do all my life, except when it actually happened i was lost. i didn't know what to do with the kids and things only got better for me when i started working part-time and we hired a maid. but this was my problem, it wasn't at all my wife's problem while she was at home. also, as the kids got older, things got easier, and i'd happily repeat the experience now that i am better prepared for it.
practically speaking the most annoying part of my wife working for both of us was breastmilk pumping. the benefits of going to work are not worth that hassle.
Such a corny take. People should have kids when they know for sure they want to become parents. If they are unsure because the life they want for themselves seems incompatible, then it becomes a gamble. So many miserable parents out there who hide their experiences because they are afraid of social punishment or because they need to convince themselves that this permanent life-altering decision was the right one. That's my take as someone who for 35 years didn't want kids and one day woke up knowing for sure I wanted a kid in my family.
Do you honestly think those miserable parents stay miserable for the long term or might that be a temporary bump in the ride?
Messing up your kid's life is a temporary bump? Plenty of dysfunctional/traumatised families out there, just look around...
Every parent “messes” up their kids life, its a matter of degree. Its part of the human experience.
I think I see what you mean in terms of everyone having life difficulties. But I disagree because of cases where bad childhood environment causes/exacerbates significant issues with kids' wellbeing, such as mental health disorders. This is not something that everyone experiences as "part of life" right?
Having kids is a gift. But this is one of these kinds of knowledge that once you know you immediately can't explain to others who don't.
My problem with that wording is that it comes across a bit arrogant or "I know better". I think many people _do_ understand what you mean even if they don't have kids, they're just not that interested in those parts of life, which also should be fair.
At one of my earliest jobs (I must have been 19), I had a boss who was incredulous that I didn't drink alcohol and said that I would when I was 21 because it was "part of being an adult". I was pretty sure that making my own decisions rather than letting myself get pressured by others into what they assumed was best for me was a more important part of being an adult, and over a decade later I still don't drink.
Comments like the parent one (pun semi-intended) basically sound the same to me as what my boss had said to me that day. Assuming that your own experience is universal is a flawed way to view the world, even if your experience is relatively common. If there are exceptions, it's not going to be easy to see them if you have an assumption already about it being universal, and if the people in the majority are loud enough and annoying enough about it, those who aren't will be even more incentivized not to share their experiences with you; I'd argue that people who regret having kids will potentially be reluctant to publicly say so. Most importantly, doing something because of societal pressure rather than genuine desire is going to greatly reduce the chance that someone truly finds it fulfilling, and there's an emotional cost for children who are raised by parents who basically regret having them.
It's totally reasonable to say "I never truly understood how much I'd enjoy having kids until I did, and I suspect it's the same for a lot of other parents". There's no reason to go further than that unless you're pushing an idealogy rather than actually trying to say something you know is correct.
My problem with that problem is that, well, people who have kids definitionally know (better?) about having them. Like being able to experience a book in its original version vs a translation.
It's okay if you don't want to learn Spanish, but when people discuss the struggles and delights of reading Cien Años de Soledad they're not necessarily being arrogant, just stating their lived experience.
But do you also go around and claim everyone that hasn't read that book in Spanish is losing out in life, or do you also recognize it's just not for everyone?
Each one's a reverse-lottery-ticket, though. Get the wrong draw and it's not a gift. Can easily massively reduce the QOL for everyone around, including other siblings.
Mostly due to chronic illnesses, of either the physical or mental variety.
There is significant suffering in the world. You and everyone else are drawing lottery tickets everyday. Kids are far from its only source or cause. I'm ill equipped to unpack the meaning of life, but I am certain that suffering is fundamental--your comment is probing at this idea.
This is a very difficult subject since there exists un-imaginable suffering and it's hard to reconcile that. That life is a gift under the umbrella of un-imaginable suffering. Perhaps, that's what spirituality tries to do, I don't know.
I think a lot of folks don't consider that each child comes with a high-enough-to-worry-about risk of negatively affecting the life of everyone in your family to a level on par with one of the adults in your family becoming permanently and severely disabled relatively early in life.
Yeah sure we also risk some micromorts and the life-altering-disability equivalent every time we drive a car or get a sunburn, all right.
Amor fati.
A good friend of mine holds the belief that "having friends with kids is better than having kids of your own", and I definitely feel the "can't explain" part - there is an unexplainable reality when you have kids of your own.
I'm also told that being a grandparent is a lot better than being a parent - you can give them back.
Great way of putting it. It's the sort of thing you just have to trust others and jump into. If you think about it too much it just doesn't make sense.
I understand the idea but I take issue with the wording.
I CAN explain to others who don't. It's just that most of the time others aren't interested in hearing.
Love. Kids. Marriage. Divorce. Heartbreak. Death of a close partner.
Things you can’t explain to other people. But others with the experience just know.
Before having kids, you think everything will change forever.
After having kids, you realise that things only appear different for a while, and you simply flow into the new reality.
Everything really changed forever, but not as drastically as you might have thought.
Remember how everything changed when you got or lost a job? Yeah. Well, maybe not exactly, but you get the point.
Kids aren’t for everyone. Please don’t guilt-trip people for not having them. (I know this article isn’t doing that.)
https://wearechildfree.com/
Disclosure: Zoë is my cousin.
No guilt trip but hard to say this is a timeless and universal approach.
Of course people are free not to have kids... But I've always find it weird to "celebrates childfree lives".
And I'm frankly annoyed by the growing activism to ban kids from public places in the name of "adults quietness".
As a parent I'm kinda cool with that. Adults, especially middle-age family adults, are not really supported in this world and they should enjoy whatever the peace they can get. If my kid gets too grumpy I'd bring him out for a walk and he is usually happier after that.
Ofc no escape on trains/buses, but he loves those, so that's fine.
We celebrate the other option so why not celebrate child free lives? It seems like historically a lot of people have had to make this decision not by their own will or need. Showing people that they can have just as compelling lives as parents is a net-good.
many adults nowadays are less resilient than my baby
> But I've always find it weird to "celebrates childfree lives".
It's more about making it clear to other people that hassling me to have kids is not okay.
My bestie is Australian-Italian. My god the shit she's got from her family over her life. At one point in her early 40s she told me she stopped going to family gatherings, such was the incessant pressure from relatives.
We need to understand that some people – me and my partner are two of them – do not like and do not want children. So please, for the love of god, stop asking women about it. (Nobody asks me, a dude, fwiw.)
> Tired of doing this alone?
That's some pretty ironic copy xD
Reading the post and >100 comments I've just realized there are differences between dad and mom mental experience.
Looks like many dads are changing mentally when their first child is born or a bit later. Mine changed somewhere during the second trimester.
Bonding is also almost automatic for mothers (especially who breastfeed), whilst it's delayed or never happens at the same level for fathers. My first child has never been close to father because he worked "9-9-6" and got 2 day leave. He could never really calm down crying baby or put her to bed. With the second child, thanks to large corp policy, he got 15 weeks bonding leave and it was a very different experience for father and child - baby didn't care on whose lap to fall asleep.
Having kids may not be for everyone, but it is the best thing that I have ever done in my life.
Love seinfield's quote about kids -
"One of the nice things God does, is that he doesn't let people who don't have kids know what they're missing"
One of the nice things about not having teenage daughters is you don't have to worry about Jerry Seinfeld hanging around.
I’ve always wanted kids, ever since I was a kid myself, but I was never really sure what it would be like to be a parent.
Turns out it’s quite strange, because my kids bring me more joy than anything else. I’ll sit there for hours watching them play. You may think “that’s not strange—tons of parents say that”, but for my sort of personality, it’s very strange. I’ve always thought of myself as sort of overly analytical, detached, ambitious, and a bit obsessive. Not the sort of touchy-feely person who chases a two year old around with a smile on my face and likes watching videos of cute babies. Yet here I am. I enjoy it so much I’ve even tried to figure out if there’s a way I can take a sabbatical from work to spend the last two years with my youngest at home before he goes off to school (seems unlikely given how questions about a random two year gap on my resume might affect my long-term career).
It’s funny that as a kid I always wanted to work at a tech company for the interesting tech, but now as an adult my favorite thing about it has been the 4 months of parental leave I was able to have with each newborn.
You just write "spent two years raising my youngest kid [building tree houses and whatnot]". If you keep a bit up with tech, why would anyone think twice about that? They wouldn't where I live.
I also had kids, and while I love my kids I haven’t loved spending time with my kids. This will hopefully change as they age, but the first six years have so far been very much a drag on my life and productivity, and not much else. They haven’t provided fulfilment, and they haven’t provided satisfaction. Some joy is there from time to time, definitely, but nothing in the way the author describes. Happiness for me typically starts after my kids are in bed or when I can escape them during work hours. My wife finds great happiness in our children, and I find happiness in that, but I’m desperately waiting for my kids to be old enough that I only need to spend time with them instead of constantly caring for them. Sorry if this is a bit of a dark comment, but I just wanted to say it’s not always the experience this author had, even if it seems common. Edit: Generally, I regret having kids (because of the impact on my life, not the kids themselves), but I also can’t change that decision and I would never back away from my choice - that’s completely unfair to them, as well as my wife. Such is life. I try to keep looking forward to when they’re older as a way of staying positive.
I truly do give my kids my all though, and they have a wonderful life and are loved and cared for in all senses of those words. They’re great kids and I give them everything necessary to be a great dad.
I can definitely relate. There's nights my wife and I get to bed and sorta just look at eachother and go "what the hell was that". Those days are hard.
I find the days that I forget myself and throw myself into trying to be a good dad are the days I find joy in fatherhood. Weekends especially I try to forget the stresses of work and productivity and everything else and try to spend as much time with them as possible. Playing, teaching, and learning with them.
Not saying it's universal. Just a datapoint from me.
If it makes you feel any better, you're not the only one that feels that way. I don't think it's said very often because it almost feels taboo to say it.
Apparently there are even private Facebook groups dedicated to this purpose.
Sometimes I feel like there is this sense that you are a bad parent if you ever express that there are times you might wish you weren’t a parent, even if the feeling is much more “I wish I didn’t have to be a parent RIGHT NOW”. You can even see in this thread that people are expressing how they feel sorry for the commenter’s children because he feels regret sometimes about being a parent.
I wanted to be a dad more than anything in the world, and I absolutely love my kids and I love being a dad.
Most of the time.
There is a TON of things you have to do as a parent that objectively sucks, and you have to do it no matter how you are feeling and no matter what else you also have to do. It is impossible not to feel trapped, at times, by the understanding that it never ends, that you are a parent 24/7/365.25 and that your kids dominate your life. I don’t care how much you love your kids, you are going to feel that sometimes (or you are so strongly into the self-denial that you force yourself to pretend you always like it).
That doesn’t mean you aren’t a good parent, or even that you made the right choice to be a parent. Most of the best things in life involve sacrifice, and doing things you don’t want to have to do, and powering through even when you want to give up. It’s cliche, but the struggle makes the rewards even sweeter. Doesn’t mean the struggle doesn’t suck sometimes, and you might want to give up, and you have to use all your self-control tricks to maintain.
I feel even worse for parents who did IVF or other fertility treatments, or who adopt. In my conversations with some close friends who are in those situations, they talk about how much pressure they feel to never complain when it is hard. They spent a ton of money and effort and used insurance money and many doctors and procedures (or all the interviews and inspections and money for adoption) so they could have kids, and now they want to complain about being a parent? Of course, they still have all the same struggles and pains and nostalgia for their before life, no matter how much this is what they want.
Anyway, I am not sure what my point is. I just want people to be honest with themselves, and other parents and future parents, about what the entire parenting experience really is. Sometimes I think parents don’t want to scare potential parents off of being parents, which I think is understandable but overstated. There is simply no way to convey to non-parents what it is actually like to be a parent, and this applies to both the good and bad things. I thought my wife and I were prepared and knowledgeable and ready, and we were to the extent we could be. But so many things we imagined about what it would be like is not the reality at all, but even if we had a Time Machine I couldn’t explain to my previous self what it is actually like. You just have to experience it… if you want to. I would never tell people they should have kids, because it is such an all-encompassing thing that everyone has to decide for themselves… all without knowing what it will actually be like.
It is a hell of an adventure, though.
The curse of parenting is that when they're small you can't wait for them to grow up so you can get more time for you, and when they grow up you're nostalgic of their childhood when they were willing to spend more time with you.
So my advice is: find activities to do with them that you would both enjoy. Maybe going to parks, museums, have them help you on house chores... You only have a few years left under they get to middle school and start becoming more distant.
Interesting, my experience has been the opposite. Before getting kids, I thought that I would only enjoy having kids once they were the age where you could have conversations with them, etc., that the first one or two years were more something that mothers would like. But for me it was not like that at all, aside from some sleepless nights, it's so cool to be part of them discovering the world.
have so far been very much a drag on my life and productivity, and not much else
At some point when our kid was still young, I started working 4/5 FTE, taking the afternoons off after ~14:00. I feel like that provided a lot of mental space. Since I was working part-time, I did not feel bad/guilty about not working the afternoons and I would be focused on being very productive from 8:30 to 14:00. The free hours were for doing stuff together or accommodating their playdates (picking up from school, ensuring the house doesn't get torn down).
Now they are an age where they want to do things without parents, so I am working full-time again, but do miss those early days where she would be with me in her seat on my bike and we'd cycle to the city and she'd be singing aloud from joy.
But every person is different and I think that there are also parents that start enjoying having kids more when they are older. So, your years may still come :).
dark comment
My dark comment would be: we are all learning on the job and I feel like I could do some things better with the experience I have now.
I have a few kids, raising them is a mix of good and bad, like everything else. it took a toll on my career, pushed my temper to the edge, and stressed me out all these 20+ years, but I also enjoyed many moments. it does not go away when they got older by the way, it's a life long strong bond, at different phases there are different challenges.
If I have a second life, I don't know what to do though, I probably will first make enough money before having kids at least.
I probably will first make enough money before having kids at least.
I think you’ve hit the key difference.
I waited until I was 40 before having kids, and it just feels like I’m doing it on easy mode.
We had time and money sorted out, and tons of free baby stuff donated from all our friends who had done it already.
It’s still lots of work, but you’re at a place in life where you can handle it. I can’t imagine trying to raise kids in my 20s, with my crappy stressful office job and no money in my little studio apartment.
Hats off to anybody who can do that.
On the flip side, you'll still have a 20yo university student to take care of at age 60, while all your friends will have an independent adult child earlier...
I see no issues with that. I don't think that your friends should decide your parenting plans.
That's funny becasue if I could do it again I'd have my kids younger.
I think this is a fairly common experience but many people are afraid to admit it.
While I have always loved being a dad, I can certainly relate to the things you describe.
I will say that a lot of those issues have gotten better as they have gotten older (they are now 10 and almost 7). They don’t require the same level of constant attention that they used to, they are getting more and more interesting to talk to, and have developed interesting personalities and senses of humor.
I’m glad to hear that - it backs up what I’m hoping/expecting will happen. I think I’ll enjoy time with them much more as they age, especially once they’re 7+.
You're not alone and I'll even say this is evolutionary.
Men haven't evolved to be overly attached to babies or small kids like mothers did - that'd have been a weakness in the survival race. Men skills were completely different, usually related to being away from the kids most of the time.
Translate to modern day, that is men not really wanting to have kids (sometimes just going along with the wife's biological clock), and pretty much "feeling nothing" when the kids are born. There's a million documented examples of that.
However, once kids leave the "little puppy" phase and grow beyond the basic needs care that mothers provide, it's when the fathers start to really relate to them.
If your older kid is maybe 5-6 you're about to start that new phase. That's what happened to me, and I find (maybe not so extreme) examples of that on almost every guy I talk to.
Give it a second chance, maybe having kids is just not for you. But don't assume it's already the case, you may miss out whole new world.
I enjoyed much more the first 6 years than the following 6 ones.
Seeing them grow was fun, seeing them turning teenagers is a pain.
The single folk envy the married and the married envy the singles. Life is suffering either way.
I think it's important to share the difficult / hard experiences of having kids as much as the good ones. I've noticed that there is a huge bias towards only sharing the good moments and white-washing all of the bad as something you can "laugh about later." To be frank, not enough people were honest with me about what it would be like having kids before I had them - and I was incredibly upset when I realized that (several years into being a parent).
I now make it a point to be honest with people when they ask "Should we have kids?" and tell them about how hard it can be, etc. Most importantly, I tell people that they shouldn't have kids unless they would still want to do it if their experience doesn't land in the middle of the bell curve. We tend to romanticize the decision, and expect that everything "just gets even better" with kids. There are all sorts of ways your experience can be less than ideal. Unless you're evaluating your decision with those potential outcomes in mind, you're doing yourself, your partner, and even your future children a disservice.
Thank you for posting this. It’s totally understandable and believable that you simultaneously love them and regret some things about it. There’s this insane pressure in our society to never acknowledge the toll that kids have and to never speak out about this. I remember when this article was first posted and how I received it, like I was wrong for not being sure about kids, and that some change would come over me when I had them. Truth is, that doesn’t happen with everyone. Then the world tries to gaslight those people who don’t feel that way into feeling like they’re broken somehow.
I’m sure you love your kids and take great care of them, and it’s not your fault that you feel this way.
It would benefit all of us if this taboo was lifted, so that we could speak truthfully about the impact of kids on families, and maybe then we’d have to provide more support and encouragement to convince people to have them. Not everyone has free daycare from their grandparents or a large social network to babysit or the finances that make having a child less of a burden.
The quip I keep going back to is: "All joy, no fun."
Your experience is the opposite of mine.
I can't wait to play with my 3 year old and 1 year old. I get so mad at work when I have an odd late meeting because it is keeping me from them.
My three year old helps me build furniture (he gets screws started, counts out parts, helps apply glue). I love showing him synths and instruments and seeing his face light up.
My one year old is a cuddle monster who likes listening to jazz with me. She also really enjoys when the cat climbs up on our lap and she gets to pet it.
I don't know your situation, but most miserable parents I know see their kid as something to manage, like some kind of annoying work underling.
I see my kids as little detectives.
My goal isn't to solve their case or even help them approach it in the right way. It's to give them an occasional hint (or step stool), keep them from danger, and help them discover the correct way to behave.
Everyone is different, and even though I don't share your experience, I don't view yours as either good or bad, it just is what it is. My experience is different but I'm not planning on ever telling anyone "Oh don't worry about it just have kids it'll be the best experience of your life" in blind faith.
Having kids becomes a lot easier if you can do the things you enjoy with them. For me that includes all sorts of stuff such as D&D, warhammer, painting miniatures, drawing, magic the gathering, board games, etc. I also include them when I have to fix something around the house or some random electronic device that broke.
If the only thing you can enjoy is adult stuff or working then you might have a rougher time at it if you don't find joy in the pure act of raising a kid. For me the first few months were meh, but once they started to get a personality I found it more entertaining.
Many of those are things I greatly enjoy, as well as many other things from a very diverse range of hobbies. My kids aren’t old enough to join in on those things yet (6 and 4), so I only find time to do those things once every few months, as opposed to once or twice a week pre-kids. It’s improving as they get older though, hence my hopefulness.
I would like to hear in what sense you love your kids, given that "he first six years have so far been very much a drag on my life and productivity, and not much else. They haven’t provided fulfilment, and they haven’t provided satisfaction. (...) Happiness for me typically starts after my kids are in bed or when I can escape them during work hours."
Do you say "I love my kids" because that's what everybody says, or is there any truth in it?
EDIT: Just to be 100% clear: I mean absolutely no judgement. I'm not going to tell you off or try to change your mind. I ask out of pure curiosity.
I go above and beyond to give them a great life - to care about providing them with a rich education, as well as a wide variety of life experiences, to immerse them in quality time with friends and family, to travel with them and spend time amongst various cultures and amongst nature. I’m there for them whenever they need me, and also when they don’t. I take the time to give genuine answers, to feed their curiosity, to make them great people. I give them the tools to explore things on their own and foster their independence. I also encourage risk taking while supporting them when it doesn’t work out.
Critically: I give them my full attention.
I could choose to spend all that mental effort on myself, but I choose to spend it on them. That’s as good a demonstration of love as any, in my book anyway.
Edit: no offence taken! I didn’t interpret it that way at all.
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It’s not forced, and we do show by example. I also disagree that they’re too young to be immersed in a love for education, culture, and people. Oh and music too. We listen to a lot of music (for fun!).
My family and friends are multi-cultural so they’re naturally exposed to several cultures, for example. It’s also important to my wife and I as the world itself is multi-cultural, so having an appreciation that different people live their lives differently is important. We lead by example simply by living in a multi-cultural life and embracing it.
Take that same approach and apply it across the rest of the points I made. Nothing is forced, I promise.
> Do you say "I love my kids" because that's what everybody says, or is there any truth in it?
It is true that some people are not really cut out to be parents. But unfortunately it is difficult to tell whether that will be you or not. I see people looking at comments in threads like this and then chiming in with sentiments along the lines of "see, this is why I never wanted to be a parent." There is no way to know that, and such statements strike me as cope. Becoming a parent changes you, but you won't know how until you do it. There is a lot of biology and psychology in play, for certain.
As I tell my own kids, however, be careful because you only get to become a parent one time. Cannot blame someone for opting out of the risk, even if the counterfactual is that they would have been amazing parents with amazing children and been much happier.
Do not despair, I felt the same. Mine are halfway to 18, still feel the same, unsure if it changes. I love them, just not the experience. I have friends who feel the same, so I/we are not alone.
I tell others not to do it unless they are prepared to suffer. You won't know if its for you until you've already gone through the one way door. I wish others luck. For the unlucky, I wish grit and stoicism.
Would be interesting to see if there is other personality overlap with people that feel this way, which people could use as a pre-test for whether or not they would enjoy the experience of having kids.
I wonder if there would be something identifiable in common if we fMRI'd your brains, as while you are definitely not alone it does seem like a pretty strong exception that makes the rule.
That could be something to put on Tinder profile.
Sure, give me a verified badge on dating marketplace apps (Feeld, Fetlife in my case) based on my fMRI imaging interpretation. Use it as input for the matching algo. Way more useful than simply putting "neurodivergent" in a profile imho. Adjacent to "If your policy doesn't exist in code, it doesn't exist."
I mean, the birth rate is decreasing everywhere for a reason.
The reason isn't because it is more difficult or people enjoy having kids less (like the parent). Its because children used to be a way to provide security for your family and community. More hands to help or sent off to earn money younger for example.
Now with smaller family units and less community interaction they represent a risk to security, mainly financially.
Children still provide security for the family and community, it's just that it's done in a way where the people creating the benefit and the people realizing it are almost entirely different. This is due to the way social security works. Creating a tragedy of the commons where everyone wants more kids but no one wants to be the sucker that has them (from the financial viewpoint, obviously not from others). Obviously this sort of communism where society takes the profits in form of social security but provides almost nil (except some pittances in property taxes for school) for the investment creates a collapsing system.
Having children for yourself provides more security for all the other families but barely anymore for your own. Meanwhile you bear most the costs and everyone else bears very little. So the incentives are totally reversed, and even worse the coupling between investment in children and payoff is cut which means the people in the best position to help their kids be successful are the least incentivized to do so.
“A” reason?
Given the post you’re replying to, it seems you’re implying a specific reason, but what if it’s a different one? How about “I love children but having kids is super expensive”?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_and_fertility
> There is generally an inverse correlation between monetary income and the total fertility rate within and between nations.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/241530/birth-rate-by-fam...
> In 2021, the birth rate in the United States was highest in families that had under 10,000 U.S. dollars in income per year
And a few thousands more links.
> How about “I love children but having kids is super expensive”?
always surprises me when ppl say this when they clearly observe the opposite in action. whats going on here.
Every mouth to feed costs more. Baby formula seems like a racket. Diapers are expensive.
My oldest will need a laptop for school next year. It isn't optional or provided.
Maybe you need a bigger car because car seats take up a lot of room.
What if your kid decides they want to join a sports team? A friend of a friend told me they did the math on a year of competitive swimming. It was $10,000 by the time they were done with equipment and travel.
A trip to the dentist for my family of four is about $1000 for just cleanings. Braces for my oldest were $3000 if I could pay cash or $4000 to finance. You could skip dental care, but some might consider that neglect.
What if the school tells you to get your child tested? That costs about $3000 in my part of the world. Half of the kids on my block are neurodivergent somehow. What do you do?
In a less well off part of the world, most of these "concerns" probably disappear. I think we have pretty high expectations of parents that aren't poor.
Your arguments (explanations?) would seem way more relevant if they didn't go 100% counter to observation.
I don't know why you're trying to explain an outcome that is opposite of the observed outcome.
Are you saying that while more money is correlated with less fertility (the fact), that somehow even more money will reverse the trend and start going the other way?
Based on observed data, one could almost make the case that if only billionaires start stealing from the poor even more, then birth rates should go up.
It wasn't really supposed to be about money vs fertility rates. I was trying to provide some observed examples of why having more money might mean more expensive kids. Or how being poor means the cost and expectations are lower.
I've always believed that it isn't money itself, but access to healthcare and education that lower fertility rates. Money correlates really strongly with access to healthcare and education.
Having good education and healthcare leads to birth control and maybe an abortion if the BC fails.
When a family of three is making $15K a year, do you believe baby four, five and six were planned out in agonizing detail? Or do you think maybe they weren't planned at all?
And I do believe more money going around would help. If the perspective is "I can't afford it", those who are doing OK will not have children if they can help it.
The highest income you have, the more pressured you are to give them an expensive education, activities, etc. Everyone want their kids to do at least as well as themselves.
So it's expensive no matter what income bracket you're in.
Yeah, I don't envy the 30 year olds who can't buy an house because it's become unaffordable, made even harder by many only getting freelance jobs.
Also: having many children used to be an insurance policy, but as countries become more developed it's less necessary.
Kids need to be out of the house and so do you. From the 2 kids I have (currently teen/tween) outdoors - as in unpaved trails, state parks or such if you have them close by - were the best.
They find enough there to keep themselves entertained. It’s amazing how much interest deer poop can generate.
I admire your frank honesty
> Generally, I regret having kids
Please don't ever, ever let them know this, or even allow them to figure it out. Especially before they're at least ~30 and able to begin to understand.
I would never let them think I regret them - that’s such a cruel thing to inflict upon them, and it’s certainly not their fault. I also don’t regret the joy it’s brought my wife.
I regret the loss of my mental energy and personal time, but not them, if that makes sense.
For me it helped to realize that the things I would have done with the extra time and energy would not have been that great. Some occasional dopamine bursts for a very mediocre outcome. Having kids is a better investment, but a less fun one.
> that’s such a cruel thing to inflict upon them
It certainly is. Speaking from personal experience. And he let me know in a very direct and cruel way.
I’m genuinely sorry to hear that.
I make sure my kids know I love them in many, many ways.
It's mysterious to me that you write all this _and_ that you do truly love your kids and are great. If I was in your position I'd at least concede that people do deserve parents that don't regret them. Do their thoughts toward it even matter?
I think people deserve parents that give a damn. And I do give a damn. Several in fact. It just doesn’t make me happy.
I would really like to have kids, but I don’t have my act together. I also feel like my partner is not suitable or capable of properly taking care of our kids. Feels pretty awful and am scared to not have any kids as I grow older. I worked hard to get a good relationship with my partner, and now that we have one I worry kids will only ruin what we have now
I hope you’re in a position where you can have an honest conversation about it with your partner. I’ve come to realise over time that honest and open communication is the most critical thing in any relationship. I really hope it works out for you both!
You'll never feel ready but you will always be ready. One of my biggest regrets is not having kids sooner
your world will change in that hospital room the first day or two together with the new person in your family. it really is seismic.
I never felt that and I attribute whatever happens to most people there as the reason why I never understood parenthood quite the way most people do. It seems as if most parents have some kind of 'drug' that dumps in their veins when they are around their kids. It's interesting to read about because it's like hearing an alien tell me what life is like.
just go for it. there is never a really good time to have a kid.
This is an easy perspective to have if you are of the generation that got into a home purchase before they went out of control. Gen Z is being priced out of creating families.
Hacker news has a bias because most people here are working in software and probably make more than the median household income (solo).
I have a ~6 years old boy and I'm quite neutral about that -- that is, if I somehow go back to a few years ago, I may or may not go forth for a kid -- which was my attitude back then anyway.
There are some upside, but they are...tangible. The downside is concrete and solid. From hindsight, having a kid has nothing to do with my long-term objectives, but since I can’t dial back in time, I'll try to be at least a median good father -- I have gotten the financials covered, and I'm pretty sure in that part I'm better than the median, but for the focus part I'm not sure.
I'm in the thick of it right now as a serial founder with a 5 and a 1 year old. One thing I'm surprised paulg didn't touch on is how much it can evolve your relationship with your partner (for the better!).
Watching my wife have special moments with our kids fills my heart like nothing else.
Seeing her be an amazing mom is like watching your cofounder take on a completely new role outside of their previous experience and crush it. Except it's even better since you're in love with them and have all these biological/chemical signals to help kick that in high gear.
My big learning from having a kid, was that there was more maturing and growing up for me to do (A ton to be honest). Once there was somebody else I had to keep alive and care for and think about I learned to better de-center myself in the universe. I am sure you can get to this perspective many other ways, but having children seems to be the easy mode for getting into the mindset of "it's not about me any more."
Having kids is a 4 billion year old life function (instinct). Simultaneously it is a highly sofisticated behaviour with multiple dimensions (raising).
Genetics play a decisive role in kid's behaviour and powers/weaknesses. Next comes the mother, next the father and later the society.
Let's not forget that parents are "kids" of the society that heavily influence their behaviour that eventually shapes their kids.
My 2c is that it is not 'joy' or 'happiness' that kids bring to parents universally (although they might bring those things for some parents), but 'meaning'. Meaning is harder to define than joy/happiness, perhaps because it is less objective and more subjective.
As a father of 3, nothing is more satisfying than raising kids.
Father of three here as well, amen to that. Soo hard, but oh so amazing.
Kudos to you! I have one and it's been the hardest thing I've ever done and it has broken us entirely. We can never imagine having more than one given the difficulty, and are now finished at one 100%. Very huge admiration for parents of > 1. It's 10x the work and not just 2x the work
As a father of 2, that really depends on a few factors.
I'd wager that you picked a good wife and that your kids are healthy and bright.
Things can go from satisfying to draining real quick.
Father of three here as well: 11/9/6.
I love them and I spend a lot of time with them, but I have no idea what you're talking about.
My 11 year old has Level 2 Autism, ADHD, and crippling anxiety. The pediatric psychologist & psychiatrist team we've assembled between Johns Hopkins & Kennedy-Krieger have finally lowered his suicide risk status from high to low last week.
My 9 year old has such extreme ADHD that you would think he has Akathisia; compulsive running. He's constantly fighting with his younger sister because... why not? Dopamine is dopamine.
The best part is that we have the privilege of doing it all on our lonesome despite having retired parents and no siblings with children of their own. Perhaps babysitting costing us more than the date night itself is the satisfying part.
Oh, no, I've got it! The satisfying part is not having a real vacation in 11 years.
I wonder how satisfying it's going to be when we finally have to face the reality of never being able to have an empty nest.
If you have easy kids everyone wants to help. If you have difficult kids no one else is going to want to help you, especially if they fight because that's liability they don't need (CPS will blame the caregiver if one of the child is beat up by their own sibling). Also if you have difficult kids not only will no one help, they will damn you for having been a terrible parent for circumstances outside your control, crushing your self esteem even though you're trying harder than perhaps most others. This is part of what makes difficult children exponentially harder. Sucks but that's the reality.
I noticed as soon as our child became better tempered things were 100x easier because suddenly people that were previously out of the picture were willing to look after the child. For every 1% better the child behaves life is 10% easier for everyone.
I see a lot of different opinions here, from very positive to very negative.
I think the answer is, it's both.
When I was an employee sometimes I was happy, like when a promotion was lurking, and sometimes I was unhappy and stressed, when getting fired, when facing deadlines, ....
But when I started working for myself the amplitude of emotions became way stronger, every week I would fluctuate between feeling doomed forever or feeling like a genius.
Life with and without kids is the same: The emotional highs of having kids are way higher than anything I experienced without kids, but sometimes the lows are very low.
People can also have very different experiences because kids can be very different.
My kids have been really easy, no big problems, but sometimes I see other parents dealing with really serious issues with their kids.
It starts with babies, some of them sleep easily while other cry all the time, to teenagers who can be nice kids with no problem at school to being called to the director's office all the time and have to seriously worry about their future.
The great thing about kids is that just when you start to miss their toddler temper tantrums, they start having teenage temper tantrums!
While there are always those lows, when the kids are sick, scream, have tantrums, do something stupid, I would not trade a second of that away. A lot of happiness and laughs as well, along the way.
They grow and you're privileged to live with them for a while. Also you'll grow with them.
Having kids was my best decision ever. Thrice.
> Partly, and I won't deny it, this is because of serious chemical changes that happened almost instantly when our first child was born. It was like someone flipped a switch. I suddenly felt protective not just toward our child, but toward all children. As I was driving my wife and new son home from the hospital, I approached a crosswalk full of pedestrians, and I found myself thinking "I have to be really careful of all these people. Every one of them is someone's child!"
One thing Ive observed about Americans is how less of this feeling exists, without having kids etc. Like why the f does he not care for pedestrians before having a kid? Did he believe that adult humans just apparated out of nowhere? I see this a lot in how people drive, too.
I believe it is a result of the hyper-indivialistic and hyper-capitalist society rather than something innate in the people. I do think Americans deserve (and should demand and build) a better system.
My favorite part is how pg says how kids made him less ambitious, but then:
“On the other hand, what kind of wimpy ambition do you have if it won't survive having kids? Do you have so little to spare?”
It’s called having kid while rich so you can hire nannies, tho
100%. I had to drop about half my interests and hobbies after having kids, to remain sane (trying to continue juggling all of them was plainly just going to lead to never doing anything, really), and adjust all the others to fit better with kid-having.
If you can't hire "help", it's like losing 20 waking hours from your week, at least, just for the not-at-all fun or "quality time" parts of having a kid (extra housekeeping [so... very much more], extra shopping, taxiing the kids places, extra household planning, basic hygiene stuff, et c). And on top of that you need to spend "fun" time with them, too, like that part may be more enjoyable but it's non-optional and a lot of stuff an adult might want to do or accomplish doesn't integrate well with it.
Slice ~30-40 hours off the waking hours of both adults in the household, on top of 45-50 hours of work and other stuff necessary for work (commute, et c.) and... yeah this is just bullshit if you can't hire help.
[EDIT] Oh, this reminds me of a certain genre of LinkedIn post that I especially hate: the CEO bragging about how they find time for family despite having five jobs. The real answer to this mystery is that zero of those jobs are actually full-time work, and, the part they never mention, is that they pay others to do tens of hours of work per week that normal people have to do themselves, like lawn care, housekeeping, fixing broken shit in their house, shopping, keeping track of and making appointments and such, et c.
This. Don't forget that HN is extremely biased towards High income/net worth viewpoints. The reality for a lot of parents is much worse than most commenters here
I wish there was a way to make this decision rationally. My wife and I are coming up to the point of no return. We either do it now, or never.
Now let's try to figure this out: Do we have enough money? Yes, probably. We could survive 10 years without making another dime. I don't know what kind of safety net is recommended, but people do it with a lot less. We live in a country with free health care, so illness won't end our lives like it does in the USA.
With that out of the way, let's get to all the other points:
How much do I want children? Personally, I don't get it. If my wife wasn't dead-certain she _must_ have at least one child, I would never, ever consider it. I hate noise and chaos. I even find co-habitation challenging.
I was an only child and I think I'm mildly autistic. To me, 'alone time' and 'quiet time' are sacred and required for my sanity. Well, I know that goes out the window with children. My wife is the opposite: Many siblings, has always been around noise and chaos. Loves giving love. To me, the dog, to anyone. And that is why she seems to have this need. So, the decision is: Do I give up what I want, to make her happy?
Her happiness is about as important to me as my own. So that's a stalemate. She keeps saying how worried she is that it will ruin my life. But I also don't want us to split up over this, knowing that I have 'taken' her fertile years. She won't have a kid except with me. So that's also a stalemate. I have had a pretty terrible childhood. So I know I'm biased. I don't want to let fear dictate my life.
Almost any occasion where I've stepped outside my comfort zone or done things I didn't want to do out of fear turned out to be things I was grateful to have done.
I can also see how raising children could be very rewarding. Even my therapist said it can be very healing to have children. It's an opportunity to do better than my parents. That's valuable, for sure.
And then I think of the state of the world. Awful. I wouldn't want to bring children into this. I'd even probably say to my own mother 'don't bother' if she'd come to consult me about whether to have me first. But then I spoke to my granddad, who was a teenager during the 2nd world war. He is also probably mildly autistic. He said it was the best thing he ever did. Had multiple kids.
If I look at my wife's family, they are all happy, successful, harmonious people (now). I look at my wife's parents and think "what a blessing". The richness of life they get to experience is just magical. If I could somehow guarantee that it'd go that way for me as well, then I'd have kids already.
But there are no guarantees, just uncertainty. Uncertainty of the "life changes forever, irrevocably" kind. That is brutal and scary.
The last time I made a similar decision was when starting a business. I knew I went down a road that would require stability and dedication. I'm a volatile person who quickly gets bored of things and wants to move on to other things.
Thanks to my wife I've done a bunch of things I never thought I'd do, because they require dedication and consistency. Something I don't really have. Renovating houses, starting businesses. I surprised myself with what I was capable of. All thanks to my wife.
I also think it's basically a crime to not let her raise a human being. I am certain anyone raised by her would be a net positive to society.
But then there's me and my issues. I don't know how I'll deal with it. I don't know what will happen. There's a chance I can't do it. And what then? Divorce? Repeat the cycle of putting children into the world and abandoning them, like my parents did, because they also couldn't handle it?
They were very young and had no money or support. Their relationship was also broken. My wife and I are 'old' and we have money and we have been an unbeatable team for well over a decade. We also have support. Grand-parents are basically next door and dying to help with raising a kid. So we are in a privileged position.
But my fear of taking this step is not going away. And I won't know what it'll be like. Parents look so tired. Many of my friends are parents. They all seem to offer the same advice "it's hell on earth, I hate every moment of it, it's the best thing I've ever done".
Awesome. What am I supposed to do with that? It's useless advice. It seems nobody can really tell you whether to do it or not.
Any people here who were equally fearful and then did it, NOT regretting it? And I mean truly. I don't want to hear the "I love my kids"-mantra. It's an automated thing everyone has to say. I mean truly.
Having kids is like eating a mango.
You can talk to the foremost mango growers on cultivating mango trees and learn everything there is to know about making mangoes. You can consult with the best chefs about how to make the best mango dishes and desserts and learn the absolute best way to prepare and eat mangoes. You can learn from the masters of how to paint a mango so lifelike that you'd think the painting was real. Etc. You can learn and truly master everything surrounding the act of eating a mango.
But until you sink your teeth into a mango and actually eat it, you've no idea what you're talking about.
So, until you actually have the kid, all this worrying is for naught.
You will be just fine, the kid will be just fine (they have their own agency too, you know), the world will keep turning and you have the agency to put a person in it and teach them what they need to know.
The real question is if you want to eat a mango or not.
Thank you for the perspective. This is a good way of framing the dilemma.
the easiest way to bypass all that existential anxiety is to have it happen on accident :)
Haha, agreed. Like I alluded to in my post, many of the best things in my life have come from just being thrown into the deep end. If standing at the edge of a pool and ruminating over whether to jump or not, one may never do it. If the choice is made for you, well, then there's no ruminating. But we're too old for accidents now, this is going to happen with intention, or not at all. Which is also fine, but I am interested in hearing other people's experiences.
Dude, don't do it to yourself. Deep inside you know that you don't want it. That won't ever change, oh that inner voice will be even louder when you're exhausted.
There is a politically correct thing to say about having kids. It is wonderful, I love them, it made me want to be a better person. That's all true.
I'm not going to be politically correct. I'm going to be honest. For some of us, it is a hard reality check.
As children, many of us had various kinds of hard experiences. You can get a rough idea of how hard your background likely was by tallying up the different kinds of Adverse Childhood Experiences that you had. The result is your ACE score, and it is a standard risk assessment tool. You can find the list near the end of https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/24875-adverse....
My ACE score is 9/10. Most of you won't have had that level of challenge, but a lot of you had problems. I've done a lot to deal with my background, work on my mental health, and so on. I swore to break the cycle, to give my children a better start than I had.
I mostly succeeded. Only mostly. The impact of my failures became obvious when COVID turned many homes into hothouses for mental illness. My kids were not unique in their struggles. But within their peer group, it was my kids that were hit first and hardest. And then I did not cope well with the result. As a result I, also, have been having mental health problems.
For people like me, I recommend a long and hard think before having children. If you do have children, you will naturally try to do your best. I certainly did. You are extremely unlikely to succeed as well as you'd like. I certainly didn't. And so you should also prepare to give yourself grace for the ways in which you might fail. If I had done better on that, then I would have been better able to carry on and try to pick up the pieces when the shit hit the fan.
To everyone who is beginning on this journey, I wish you luck. Cherish what you have. Do your best.
And if your best did not turn out to be as good as you wanted, you have my sympathy.
You know what I hate? Those reels on social media telling parents how to raise kids, while using perfectly timed video clips of kids behaving themselves, sitting nicely on a highchair, picking freshly chopped fruits, etc.. good for them. In real life, I have to repeat myself 1000 times everyday they have to sit at the table and eat!
But at the end of the day, there’s nothing better than having kids.
Parents were uncool, but surely Paul Graham has always been uncool too?
Taking drugs is great too. But I know not everyone will do it. You won't get to experience everything so just be glad about the things you do get to.
I'm so glad I've avoided kids.
he is coping so hard
How come this article by PG is trending today?
there was a twitter exchange (I don't have a link) where someone said the YC mindset is to not have kids and PG replied with this essay
I once had neighbors above me whose kids yelled all the time. all the time. and sometimes they were sick of the yelling and they put their girls outside of the apartment door. and she was just punching hard the door over and over and yelling “MAMAAAA!”.
Sure I feel sorry for the kids being distressed for one reason or another. but these guys did literally nothing.
There just has to exist someone on the planet for which the title “shit parents” does objectively apply no matter how you look at it.
As a female founder I want children, but I know that I'll be seen as less ambitious if I have them. I will be seen as less, and will be more overlooked for opportunities than I already am now. I will have them one day, but they'll be in secret. People won't know until the business reaches a certain revenue and level of success. It is like this for women and anyone who tells you otherwise is a liar.
I'm 36, and unlikely to ever have kids. I'm both very grateful for the freedom that's afforded me in life, and occasionally feel grief for parts of the human experience I'll never feel.
I have a kid and it's the greatest joy ever but I am very lucky. It's totally okay to grieve that, but I often tell other childfree folks: there are many things you can do to feel a similar kind of joy. Mentoring, volunteering, caring for friends etc. Having the joy of working for others and emotionally investing doesn't have to be exclusive.
It's a well written post, but this:
> The fact is, most of the freedom I had before kids, I never used.
That just seems like close to the definition of freedom. I have the freedom to go outside right now and eat dirt. I've never used it.
If you didn't do something then I guess you didn't want to, more than the things you did choose to do instead.
The only way you'd have enough life to do "most" of the things you'd be free to do, is if you're not free to do but a tiny thing.
> See what I did there?
Yup. Made no sense at all, is what. A UAE passport makes you free to visit 181 countries either visa free or visa-on-arrival. It's still freedom even if you don't take the time to visit all 181 countries.
It's not even an interesting paradox. It's just an obvious part of freedom.
Most people don't visit more than 35 countries. An Afghanistan passport gives you access to 35 countries.
“most of the freedom I had before kids, I never used. I paid for it in loneliness, but I never used it.”
I will add to this that the first five years are tough, but it is great after that
I am am so scared of losing my job in tech due to ai and not being able to support my family.
Take a deep breath and just learn whatever you need to learn. AI or otherwise.
You'll be fine. Being responsible for someone else gives you quite a bit of boost.
lets be real we are gonna lose our jobs to these kids
One of the most challenging aspects of being a parent (at least for me) is dealing with the kids not interested in cooperating or listening/learning. Their mother and I spent a great deal on music lessons and it was a challenge to get them to practice, and I was unable to coerce them to practice so they could reap the rewards of being able to create music themselves.
And just in general, giving guidance and seeing that look on their faces that means they're just waiting for you to stop talking so they can go on with their lives.
> One of the most challenging aspects of being a parent (at least for me) is dealing with the kids not interested in cooperating or listening/learning.
> And just in general, giving guidance and seeing that look on their faces that means they're just waiting for you to stop talking so they can go on with their lives.
Instead of seeing this as a challenge perhaps reflect on it and take it as an opportunity to learn more about your kids. Not everybody is the same, and not everyone will have the same aspirations.
I know of many who got the full ride in terms of music lessons but do not have any intrinsic passion for it. Overall it was a total waste of time in terms of their life satisfaction and fulfillment. Me on the other hand, I was very into music but didn't have the option of getting any lessons.
FWIW I was one of those kids who was very compliant and cooperative but in retrospect I can see that it harmed my development / self-concept. It's only now as an adult that I'm able to grapple with this.
I do try to keep abreast of where they're at. It's pretty much a one-way street. C'est la vie.
As a 52 year old I specifically avoided having kids.
For decades I have been convinced that we are speed-running into a global environmental crisis that we will continue to ignore until it is far too late and this will result in associated resources wars and I never wanted to doom other people into having to live through that.
I sincerely hope for the sake of those of you who made a different choice that I turn out to have been overly doomerist, but watching the Trump 2.0 years play out I now think that I wasn't doomerist enough.
people managed to reproduce when genghis khan was in charge but somehow donald trump is too much
> And while having kids may be warping my present judgement, it hasn't overwritten my memory. I remember perfectly well what life was like before.
It's funny that he actually believes this.
There is nothing more narcissistic and selfish than having kids. There is nothing noble about fulfilling your biological imperative to leave a descendant. Quite the opposite, really, it's a rather primitive egoistical desire to somehow continue oneself after death.
haha okay you definitely couldn't hack it
Probably good you are taking yourself out of the gene pool
If idiocracy is good then yes.
Talking to a psychotherapist or reading fiction might help you feel more at ease. It's a crazy, contradictory world. I wish you well.