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Very common to have an "in the trenches" mentality and to even miss it - the shared stress and common purpose drives people close together, but mostly for the wrong reasons.

I still am actively in contact with the people from "that job" and never made as strong of a bond with others, but I still wouldn't go back.

I agree and it's similar for me. The closest work friends I have are from this company and formed during this period. 5+ years later and we still have regular gatherings. Of course the topic of conversation inevitably drift back to when we worked together and specifically during this period.

A bit of silver lining in all this I guess, the friendships that have formed.

This is also the reason why sororities, military,.. do hazing. Because the hardship makes forming a bond easier. Its something that evolves naturally. Most people dont know why it works it just happens

You are so right about the "in the trenches" mentality. I really crave for it sometimes.

Make that 6 months into two years and the sleep time to an average of 5 - 5.5 hours a night and you have parenthood of a crybaby.

You have to add in a boss who spends 2/3rd of the time you're home screaming at you to the mix.

Except that having a child is an optional activity that you choose to do, whereas going to work is (usually) required. Ideally that work doesn't include periods of extreme overwork, and lucky people are sometimes able to walk away from jobs that do, but many people just have to do it in order to put food on the table.

> Except that having a child is an optional activity that you choose to do

I get what you are saying, but this is not a universal truth. Life gets complicated.

For the vast majority, life doesn't get that complicated. I think even 5% of the population being forced into parenthood is too much of an exaggeration.

The last time I was reading on this topic, around 10% of kids are actually unwanted -- that is, one or both parents did not want to ever have kids, or did not want to have more kids. Most kids are planned to some degree. For the remainder that aren't, the couple does want to have kids at some point, but they didn't plan to have kids at that particular time.

Regardless, children are optional, full stop. There are certainly reasons why people who don't plan to have kids end up having them anyway, but that doesn't change the fact that it's an optional activity.

Work is optional. There are plenty of people who get by without it. Doesn't mean they're doing well or healthy. And for society to continue to function having children is actually not optional.

> Work is optional. There are plenty of people who get by without it. Doesn't mean they're doing well or healthy.

Except if you don't have a kid, you have better chances of staying well and healthy. That's the whole point. That's what is meant with parenthood being optional and work not.

> And for society to continue to function having children is actually not optional.

With the rate at which world population is increasing[1], I think the opposite is true. It wasn't that long ago that we reached a world population of 7 billion. Now, we're apparently more than halfway to 8 billion. How in the world can the earth support so many of us?

Yesterday, there was a post here that talked about the absolutely brutal conditions that we're raising livestock in[2]. We wouldn't need to be so god damn efficient in working livestock if we didn't have so many mouths to feed.

[1] http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19743006

Well, if everyone stopped having kids effective immediately, we could have the population issue solved very quickly. Along with all our other problems, too, after a few decades of suffering.

7 billion, not trillion

:P Thanks.

Fun Fact I learned from that link: Supposedly, we'll be reaching our first trillion sometime between 2050 and 2060. That's actually pretty close.

If the world population is 7 billion now and will be 1,000 billion around 2055, then by my math (142.9^(1/36)) that's a growth rate of 14.8% a year. Since the current growth rate is (based on the first few hits on Google) a little over 1%, I wonder why someone would expect it to go up that drastically. Especially with global warming and everything.

You're right[1]. I should've checked a better source.

> Especially with global warming and everything.

Yes, you're also right about that. I just didn't want to throw global warming into the mix.

[1] https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/

That is neither fun nor a fact. Current UN projections put us on track for 9 billion in 2050, and we’ll top out at 11 or 12 billion in the early 22nd century: https://www.un.org/development/desa/publications/world-popul...

The fun was sarcasm, but you're right. I should have checked better sources.

Pro tip: Fun facts are never fun, and pro tips are for ametuers.

To start, we are at 7.53 /billion/, not trillion.

Second, ever single time someone has said that overpopulation was going to be the end of us, they've been wrong. To quote Wikipedia, which go so far back as Ancient Carthage and Greece:

Concern about overpopulation is an ancient topic. Tertullian was a resident of the city of Carthage in the second century CE, when the population of the world was about 190 million (only 3–4% of what it is today). He notably said: "What most frequently meets our view (and occasions complaint) is our teeming population. Our numbers are burdensome to the world, which can hardly support us.... In very deed, pestilence, and famine, and wars, and earthquakes have to be regarded as a remedy for nations, as the means of pruning the luxuriance of the human race." Before that, Plato, Aristotle and others broached the topic as well. [1]

Finally, to answer your question of "How can the world support so many of us?", I would like to point at that with every new person born, that is a new person thinking of scientific advancements that can be made, producing stuff for others, for their kids, etc.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_overpopulation#History_o...

> that with every new person born, that is a new person thinking of scientific advancements that can be made

Smarts for scienfic advancement is not evenly spread across global populations.

It's possible to have population growth while the high IQ fraction shrinks. All evidence says this is the current state of the earth.

What evidence? Afaik average IQ is constantly rising: https://ourworldindata.org/intelligence#iq-gains-over-time-a...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson%27s_paradox

Each group is improving but mix of groups is changing.

High IQ populations have low fertility vs low IQ groups having high. South Korea with IQ 106 has TRF of 1.17. Nigeria IQ 84 has TRF of 5.53.

A gain of IQs within groups will be dwarfed by the change between groups.

If you think IQ tests are bogus we can use other metrics, eg Europe had 2x the population of Sub Saharan Africa in 1950, now Africa is bigger but has produced no hard science Nobel prizes and no new technology (like South Korea's smartphones)

Your argument is about the reproduction rate, not whether it's optional.

We don’t need to be brutal to livestock now.

That's only if our current economic model stays the same. At the moment most developed countries rely on immigration to create growth by adding more consumers.

However, it is changing, as the world develops, fewer people are born and within a century our population growth will flatten and our global population will even decline to the 2000's level.

Children should not be made just to keep society going. That's quite a selfish reason to have a child, to be honest.

That’s the opposite of selfish.

Do you care to elaborate?

Doing something that’s essential to society but which requires enormous amount of individual sacrifice and cost. Voluntarily.

And That's where we disagree.

Having kids is not essential to society. Actually, society would be better off if we just maintained our current population level and learned to live with the resources at hand instead or ever expanding and depleting the ocean, the underground and the forests until there is nothing left.

If you consider having kids as an individual sacrifice, then maybe you are having kids for the wrong reasons.

People should not be forced to have kids to perpetuate society or because its good for the economy or because the government( of any country) says we should.

You realize that in order to maintain our current population level, people still have to have kids, right?

Why is maintaining our current population level something we should shoot for? Arguably the world is already overpopulated, if you consider resource usage per person.

Having kids is not essential to society.

Could you please explain what happens in, say, 80 years (or so) if we collectively stopped having kids? The answer is this: human beings cease to exist. Now, that may be something you view as a goal to achieve, and in the absolutely trivial (and meaningless) sense that everything (including our existence as a species) is optional you'd have a point. Beyond that trivial and meaningless sense, however, you're simply arguing about how many children we should have.

Let's not forget the most devastating aspect of overpopulation, more and more people around to spout the same unproven theories over the last 50 years about "forest" and "underground" depletion.

If the majority of people's stated reason for having children was to ensure the survival of the human race, maybe that argument would hold water.

But most people's desire to have children center around selfish things, like continuing their family line, or because their parents want grandkids, or because "that's just what you do to get to the next life stage", or because their religion pushes them to, or "John and Jane have such a beautiful child and I want one too", or because they want a small version of themselves that will love them, or truly foolish things like believing a child will save a bad marriage.

And I'm not even saying selfish acts are bad! People do selfish things all the time, and as long as those things don't harm anyone else, so what? But I wish people would give more thought to the social, financial, physical, emotional, and mental implications of having a child before doing so, rather than just taking it as a given that it's what they're supposed to do.

At least there are some people who have kids because they genuinely want to nurture, educate, and mentor a new human, but I'd be hard pressed to find someone who'd say "to ensure the future of humanity" is one of their top reasons for having children.

With 7.7 billion people and a world the brink of collapse having kids is not helping anyone.

Children are literally the entities that make our shared future viable. If we don't reproduce at a sufficient rate we literally, as a species, will not be able to sustain our own existence. And considering how much more personally expensive (both in yes of resources and one's self) we have made raising children over the years it's the absolute opposite of selfish to have them.

How many people have you met that tell you that they're having children because they want to ensure the future of humanity? I'd bet not many, if any at all.

What you describe might be considered selfless, most parents have kids for fairly selfish reasons. There's (usually) nothing wrong with that, of course, but let's not try to paint a rosy picture that doesn't exist.

> Work is optional. There are plenty of people who get by without it.

You must live in a very different world than most people do if that's the norm among your peer group.

> And for society to continue to function having children is actually not optional.

At a macro level, sure (though a slow, steady reduction in population over the next few generations might do the planet some good), but on the individual level, it's absolutely optional.

Having a child is optional for individuals, but not for society, and so it's really only "pseudo-optional" for individuals: there is some distributed portion of requirement on everyone.

I wish there was more discussion about how society should recognize and handle this. Much of modern society is orthogonal to parenting and raising children, I would love to see it addressed more in the public discourse -- maybe even "disrupted" by tech so we can be thrice better parents, citizens, and workers.

I mean, I see government having a role here. Both in developing pro child development resources and policies. Europe is way ahead of the US for example. Some US states are way better than others as well.

Nobody should be forced to work 75 hrs to put food on the table, it's dehumanizing and we, as a society, have enough wealth to make sure everyone can live a minimally enjoyable life.

Not sure where you're reading that in what I said.

having a child is ...optional

A high percentage of children are not planned. They are a natural consequence of sex, which Mother Nature sneakily designed to be desirable in its own right, whether people wanted babies or not.

Most of human sexual morality seems to be rooted in this inconvenient, annoying fact of life.

Accidents happen, sure. Education, availability, and consistent use of contraception is nowhere near where it should be (and even where it is, it's not foolproof). And when contraception fails, access to abortion can be difficult depending on local regulation, and many people have an aversion to that option for various reasons. But none of that changes the fact that having a child is indeed optional.

As a parent who added a second child when my first was 2 and a half, I think you're doing it wrong.

A year later, both children are still extremely demanding. It's all about setting limits and knowing when to bend them, like last night when my daughter finally figured out how to wake herself up in the middle of the night to go poop. That's one of the rare sleepless nights that's worth it.

Otherwise, knowing how you sleep is also important. I fumble around in the dark, use extremely dim lights, and have no problem letting my kids sleep with me for an hour or two. A full night's sleep is vital. I'm really good at falling asleep after giving a bottle because I make them before going to bed, turn on no lights, and keep my eyes closed once I'm in the rocking chair.

> You have to add in a boss who spends 2/3rd of the time you're home screaming at you to the mix.

You really need to learn modern discipline techniques. We use 1-2-3 magic. When our toddler screams at us, it's usually an immediate "ONE!" If it's really bad, there's a time out with no counting. It really works.

I even help my wife learn by shouting "ONE!" "TWO!" ... when I'm out of the room and hear my toddler get tough. The 1-2-3 magic technique requires a lot of disciple to not get sucked into a toddler argument.

See https://www.amazon.com/1-2-3-Magic-Effective-Discipline-Chil...

The advice is interesting, but I don’t think warrant telling someone “they’re doing it wrong”.

Your extrapolating from your experience with 2 children. Children are difficult and often respond differently to the same techniques. However if you wanted to show that a particular technique is superior in the majority of cases, some data would be useful.

In general, the workload of parenting is underestimated. This is somewhat problematic in the tech industry (male dominated) when the majority of childcare is still performed by women [1]. It leads to a lack of understanding and devalues childcare work.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jul/05/childca...

I think the real problem is that almost all parents have no experience in early childhood development. They sort of learn as they go and infer the good things that happened to them. Parents are by no means early childhood development experts. Just like you go to a medical doctor you can find professionals who can help.

Ha! Never had that book when mine were small, but I used to count to 3. Never ever figured out what would have happened -- we never got past 2!

Lucky you. I have toddler twins, and one has learned to ignore all commands. what’s tricky was at some point he thought his name meant ‘other’ while he thought his name was his brother’s, or at least that his brother’s name meant ‘me’. Worse, it’s easy to accidently say the wrong name. Together you get all kinds of goofy conditioning.

As a parent of multiple children (3+), your comment really rubs me the wrong way.

It comes off as judgemental ("you're doing it wrong", "you really need to learn to"), and you're generalizing your own children's behavior as if it applied to every child.

Every child is different, their sleep cycles, reactivity, personalities, etc.

I'm not even going to comment on the 1-2-3-timeout technique apart from saying I think it's disrespectful towards children; it is basically conditioning them to fear certain words you say and to force them to do something. Isolating them when they "misbehave".

You're free to raise your children how you want, but perhaps be mindful of how you.. "give advice"

Moreover, not all parents/families are the same. Some are heavy sleepers, some are light sleepers. Some get to sleep easily, some have difficulty getting to sleep. Some families have everyone on the same schedule, other families have everyone on shifted schedules. Some have generous parental leave or a non-working parent and can devote significant direct time/attention to kids, others are working full time with little parental leave and not much support. Some are extremely relaxed and are unfazed by noise or mess, while others are anxious and have trouble controlling physiological responses to stress. And so on.

The frequency of advice-giving usually is inversely proportional to the range of skill available. It's also inversely proportional to the degree to which skill is differentiable.

It's why parenting advice is so common. No one can evaluate parenting skills and exceptional parenting and good parenting don't have that much of a difference between them.

Though I guess poor parenting can be pretty bad with abuse and whatnot, so let's say we exclude the malicious things.

Look at this guy. He saw some limited effect size with a sample size of two and decided he's a guru.

As a parent of two kids, the older of whom is still a pain in the ass and woke us up 6 times last night and the younger of whom slept through from the start, every child is different and any blanket statements about children based on your own parenting experience (other than "they're all different") are wrong for most other parents.

None of those techniques work consistently. We plied out first kid with all the tricks and nothing worked. Second kid we just relaxed and accepted reality and he slept way better.

> You have to add in a boss who spends 2/3rd of the time you're home screaming at you to the mix.

And crapping their pants while staring at you to show you who's really the boss.

Small bits of crunch time can be fun. You really get to stay in the zone and it's really liberating. I enjoy an occasional crunch (it's very rare in my job) but after the crunch I'm done and productivity falls to near zero.

I often catch a cold the day after a crunch period

>Adrenaline?

Likely cortisol as well. Cortisol is the bane of modern society. We evolved to benefit from short intense bursts of cortisol and adrenaline, but our health suffers tremendously from extended elevated levels. And practically everything in the way we have structured society maximizes cortisol levels, especially in the workplace. It's particularly destructive to cognitive abilities, which is why I hope that maybe it might eventually get some attention and be consciously avoided. It would benefit productivity as well as benefit the health and happiness of nearly everyone.

Stress just kills focus and creativity. Then, when you can't focus or imagine, you have to somehow find a way out.

I found regular hiking made the biggest difference to me personally. Wish my list of remedies was longer than that but... Yeah. Mountains

I just had this week last week. 12 hours of work straight through two weekends and a few drinks every night. It's like one super long day where you're locked in. Then I slept 12 hours and spent 5 full days home with kids.

There are indications that missing 15 minutes of sleep can throw you off.

https://www.dailystar.co.uk/real-life/774372/sleep-insomnia-...

well add in the 4 hour a day commute and that's actually 70 hours lol.