75% of the time we spend with our kids in our lifetime will be spent by age 12 | Hacker News Reader

75% of the time we spend with our kids in our lifetime will be spent by age 12

1000hoursoutside.com

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One of the things I have a hard time conveying to non-parents is that the most time-intensive parts of parenting don't last forever.

I've talked to a lot of young people who say they don't want kids because they think their personal lives will permanently halt the moment they have kids. I spend a lot of time trying to explain that:

1) I still spend a lot of time with friends and can do most of my personal hobbies/activities on weekends. My wife and I are good at sharing the load. You don't need 2 parents watching kids 100% of the time.

2) The sleepless nights and diaper changes are a mere blip on the scale of a lifetime with kids. You deal with it, then the kids grow up quicker than you think. Don't let the idea of the first few months/years define your entire decision for how you want to structure your family for the rest of your life.

3) You actually like hanging out with your own kids. I talk to a lot of people who are anchored to some negative experience they had 10 years ago babysitting for someone else's kids, as if that was representative of parenting life. It's not at all. At the end of the day, I actually rush to finish up my work so I can have more kid time. It's fun.

When I imagine taking kids to the park, or camping or reading to them, or playing with them it just seems like a chore. Is that something that magically becomes different if it's _your_ kid?

With my niece and nephew I enjoyed playing with them for an hour or so, then I wanted to be left alone. I get the feeling parenting is a bad idea in general for people who love being alone for extended periods of time.

When I imagine taking kids to the park, or camping or reading to them, or playing with them it just seems like a chore. Is that something that magically becomes different if it's _your_ kid?

Yes, of course. It’s not likely magic, more millions of years of evolutionary biology.

But boy it feels like magic.

(FWIW, I’m also someone who enjoys long stretches of alone time. Still get to do it, if somewhat less frequently. Still enjoy it.)

It definitely does but not completely. You are probably going to be totally smitten with your kid and spending time with them, even if its something "boring" is going to be really enjoyable. Unfortunately, your kid can sometimes be a brat (or at least mine is sometimes, but I'd guess a lot are!) and then these activities that are good for them can feel like a chore.

I definitely like having my own space and at least with one kid, I'm still getting plenty of it. But the time I spend with her is incredibly rewarding (most of the time ;)

It becomes different -- but not better or worse.

The truth is that taking kids to the park can feel like even MORE of a chore when it's your own kids, because you've had to do it every week, it has no novelty, and you would love just a few hours to yourself instead because you're a parent and you don't get much of that.

The reason it's still better when it's your kids, though, is that it's an investment. Kids are a lifelong relationship. They outlive you. All that time you spend with them starts paying interest and dividends, the same as it does when you spend time with other people you love and spend time with.

My oldest is 12 now and she's funny, insightful, and one of my favorite people to be with. The years I invested in reading and parks with her in the early years are being paid back with hours spent talking about our favorite books and going outdoors together. It's worth it.

One thing that might be hard to appreciate is how much, at least for me, having kids changed my personality. I’ve become a much more patient person. Spending extended periods of time with my kids almost has a meditative quality in which I’m living in the moment and absorbing my surroundings in a deliberate way. My son’s presence in his environment provides a fresh perspective that I can tune into and ride along with.

That's interesting. Kids made me much less patient, and also far more selfish. I have much less free time so I get absolutely frustrated if the remainder is wasted. I have far less money so I am loathe to give it to anyone in need or do much but hoard money at all costs lest the child need more $100 bills for the roaring cash fire they are. I have no time for friends so I have little incentive to be kind or cordial to others for the purpose of developing a relationship. My emotional capacity to care for others is drained by the child, so I have no empathy left over for others.

Pre-kid me was far more patient, far more kind, far more generous, far more empathetic, and all around a much more pleasant and well rounded person.

Isn't that just that your patience / giving capacity is just being exhausted by your kid at the mo' ? No-one has unlimited capacity in that area. Maybe when the kid gets bigger, more independent, less demanding, you'll go back to how you were before? You might just have to apologise to some friends for having been cranky for a while? ;) Also don't underestimate how much capacity is drained by juggling work and kids. I think a lot of people who say kids are hard, really, their problem is work drains them too much. So, finding a more laid-back job, WFH etc, helps. I'm for sure much more laid back in the morning with the kids than I would be if I still had to rush out to the office. And reasonably laid-back about being interrupted from work to see the latest picture they've drawn or whatever, cos my work is not as stressful as some previous jobs

You get to choose what you do with your kids, to some degree. My cousin and his wife love sports, their kids are all in sports and they go to all the games -- they'd be doing that even without kids. I like walking and sneaking into construction sites, my kid likes walking and sneaking into construction sites because that's what we do.

FWIW I have two children, aged 3 and 6 months, and I would say it is about accurate (for me) that the first hour is enjoyable and then the next 10 are less so. It's a chore that you are doing every single day.

However, the older they get the less boring they are and I assume at some point I will get more out of the relationship.

But I had the children so I gotta deal with what that entails and I'm comfortable with that. I went into this very willingly.

But I absolutely have no judgement against people who don't want to have children... It might not be for you, I don't have any magical emotion that makes it less work, and there are many, many things I'd rather be doing.

As they get older you can increasingly share your hobbies with them rather than be a pure source of child-like entertainment.

I have a 7 year old and two 4 year olds, and we: play video games, watch movies, go for hikes, climb trees, go swimming, play various sports, play dnd, play board games, and paint warhammer miniatures together.

Yes I do anticipate that happening, but it's no guarantee.

And even still doing 3-5 years of very hard parenting work to get to that is a lot... And I didn't even carry the children which is another year of very hard work!

I'm not saying that I'm not happy with my decision to have children, but if I didn't really want to have them this would be rough.

I imagine it varies, but from most people I know, it's the very definition of "labor of love". It's certainly a big time and effort commitment and sometimes you'd rather not, but there's basically nothing in life I care about more than my kids. And they can, in a moment, give me more joy or fulfillment than I'd find in a week in my pre-kids life.

I'm someone who needs alone time, and it's really hard for me at times, but their wellbeing impacts my wellbeing more than my wellbeing does, they sorta naturally became my #1 priority in life, so anything but taking care of them to the best of my ability simply doesn't make sense to me.

Playing with my nieces and nephews I found that it’s not hanging out that is a chore, but that they won’t always accept my years of experience as correct when I attempt to introduce them to the toys, games or shows that I grew up with.

I like the garden metaphor for kids, works in a lot of situations. Like here, if somebody asked me to water/weed their tomato plants for a weekend I would not terribly enjoy it and if “having a tomato garden” was just that times 50 then forget it. But if you plant the garden and experience the joy of caring for the plants and the (literal) fruit of your labor it’s a different story.

I'm an introvert who enjoys alone time, and a parent of two. I agree with you on all your points, you're entirely correct. No, that stuff doesn't become magically enjoyable.

I have a 3 year old, 17 month old, and a 3 week old. My oldest and middle child go bike riding with me and my bike trailer. They also go kayaking with my wife and I. It can be a chore at times but over all it’s not and very enjoyable. They have a shorter limit than us for doing things.

It’s not a chore it’s a necessity. They are such a joy sometimes it’s unbelievable so you just grind it out. The lack of sleep is my least favorite part with the babies but it’s not so bad.

I'll go ahead and say that you aren't wrong.

I have four kids under eight years old. I often feel like I'm just trying to kill the hours until they nap or go to bed, when I can finally have some quiet time alone. I feel very guilty about this whenever I'm reminded that this should be the best chapter of life with my kids, and it'll fly by, and I'll miss it when it's gone. I'm not saying that I don't have moments when I gaze at my kids in awe and feel full of love (which does seem to be different when they're _your_ kids)... I'm just usually exhausted and need more alone time, as an introvert, to recharge.

The article is right that "When kids are outside for lengthy periods of time they become engaged, contemplative, calm and happy. In other words, they don't drive you bonkers!" If we're inside our house, they fight and scream and cry and make a mess and break things and never leave me alone. If I take them outside, they can spread out and explore and the house stays intact (so I don't have to clean / fix it later). Sometimes at the park I can even read something or listen to a podcast / audiobook while they play.

I rarely take mine to the park for the reason you mentioned.... It's boring. I just tell my kids to go play outside. They're 7 and 8 and are each other's best friend. Just find something you and your kids enjoy and do that

I love being alone for extended periods of time. I once went to a week long conference and at the end of the week I realized that I had not spoken to a single person the entire week, after telling the people at the conference check in desk my name. But, I love spending time with my kids. It doesn’t feel like a chore at all.

I don’t know if it’s true for everyone, but it was for me.

It’s night and day difference between looking after someone else’s kid and my own.

I guess it’s the sense of responsibility that you are the main caregiver and how your kid turns out is pretty much up to you and your partner.

Same for me, I never liked being around or babysitting young kids that much. But it is totally different with my own kids. And I have noticed that I don't avoid other people's young children quite as much now either because I have learned to appreciate their energy, happiness, and humor (both intentional and unintentional humor).

It’s the same with exercise. People say it’s a great lifelong persist but I tried it for an hour and it’s just awful.

Before becoming a parent I generally avoided kids. I had some vague plan about starting a family, but that was it.

It wasn't enjoyable from the get go. But with time we started forming a bond and having our own little habits.

Bottom line is initially you don't know this person so it's hard to expect from you to automatically have a great time. But as a child develops they become more interesting overall.

I enjoy being a parent but my advice to people who ask if they should have kids is that you really have to want to have kids because all the benefits are intangible and all the drawbacks are tangible.

People who say they don't want kids, usually mean it - whether they've identified their real reason or not.

People say they want or don't want a lot of things, but it turns out they're often really bad at predicting net utilitarian impacts. A lot of people who say stuff like "I don't want to have kids because I'm happier buying funko pops and video games" are probably just wrong about their counterfactual happiness level.

> all the benefits are intangible and all the drawbacks are tangible.

That's quite well-said. I've heard it expressed many different ways but this one I think I'll appropriate :)

I'm not sure why there is a stigma to deciding to not have kids.

It's not as if your decision is going to have much impact on anybody except yourself or the potential grandparents who may feel that they are missing out, but that is very much their problem.

All this talk of "perpetuating the species" is so much crap... The species will get along quite well without everybody contributing their genetic material.

At least those who decide not to have kids are making a thoughtful decision, many unfortunately can't or dont.

There are tangible problems with a low birth rate though, which western economies are experiencing now.

That's just a transitionary problem. Even just 50 years ago there were half of us as now. 99% of humanity's history has had less than 1 billion people. 8 billion people is way more than needed and it's showing it's ill impacts on the enviroment as well.

There are also tangible benefits. Economic models needing to adjust to non-perpetual growth is not an impossible nor existential crisis.

The main problem isn't growth or the lack of it - it's generally decreased welfare of older people because there's no family member or caregiver to periodically check up on them and recognize early signs of deteriorating health - especially mental health.

Again, this is a very fixable problem, and society will be the better for it by learning to adapt better rather than just throwing more kids at the problem. Kids do not owe their parents anything, including geriatric care.

If it's fixable, then the fix was not implemented in societies which are aging the most.

People don't owe their parents anything, but they naturally do at least give a shit about them - provided they had a good relationship.

Less kids, less adults who would volunteer to do it.

Hasn’t it? There is considerably more infrastructure for the elderly today than a couple of generations ago. Communities where folks can maintain a bit of independence with caregivers and peers in the neighborhood seems like a nearly ideal way to age to me.

But of course not everyone lives like this and many have a horrible quality of life at the end so there is room to improve. One improvement is cultural I think: we shouldn’t be hanging on to every last strand of life possible, and should make it easy for those with little prognosis for quality of life to die gracefully in a way of their choosing.

In any case certainly more adaptation is needed, but I see signs of the development.

Adjusting economic models? We’re significantly below replacement level. That means population collapse and, eventually, actual extinction. We’re not headed toward a future where we just stop growing. We’re headed for a future where populations shrink by more than 50%. It takes decades to create this problem, and even more decades to fix it.

People aren’t paying attention because from a raw numbers perspective our population is growing. But it’s also aging, and eventually people will die and we won’t have created enough kids to reverse the shrinking.

I’m not even getting into the economic catastrophe of a shrinking population caring for an aging society. The US may be alright due to immigration but you can’t say the same of Korea, Japan, Italy, or most of Europe.

This is a crisis and we need to be taking action right now. By the time the populations start shrinking it will be too late. We can eventually reverse the trend but it will take an entire century, or more. We’re quite literally running out of time to avoid disaster.

I dont agree population decline is a problem. Nevertheless, if it were, at any time of our choosing, we can open the gates and access a practically endless supply of people wanting to move and work in the countries with population decline.

Do you have some models you're looking at that cause you to believe with such certainty that this is what the future holds? I have not seen, nor can I even really fathom, a scenario in which declining birth rates leads in of itself to extinction (unless the birth rates drop to basically zero for some reason), but certainly this could be due to a failure of imagination. A declining population would certainly look different, but I don't see it causing the end of civilization, much less the species.

I understand what you mean and I myself know that I want a kid, just not now. But I would never become a parent just because of an economies well-being or low birth rates. If I become a parent it's because I and my partner want to, that's it.

That's a problem for the western economic systems to solve, not the humans stuck climbing its pyramid.

> I'm not sure why there is a stigma to deciding to not have kids.

> It's not as if your decision is going to have much impact on anybody except yourself

That's pretty much every stigma, though, so it also makes sense why this one exists, too.

> People who say they don't want kids, usually mean it

Quite true, I'm almost 40 and still have a bunch of things that interest me way more than changing diapers and worrying myself to death.

"forever" is very relative. If you have one kid, and a partner to raise them, then what you describe is very accurate. But if you have two kids spread out over a few years, then you can pretty much assume 15+ years of your life are going to be very kid focused.

This is not a BAD thing! But go in with open eyes!

And, most importantly, results will vary significantly. All kids are different. And factors like if you live close to family, are comfortable financially, etc will have a huge impact.

Agreed. I always say getting married means the previous phase of your life is now over. Thats not a statement on better or worse, its just that you've now transitioned to another phase. Its the same with kids. Pre-kid life is now over. This is a new, different phase.

Interestingly enough, this advice is bordering outdated. In the US, recent estimates put children being born to unwed parents at around 40%.

This varies by race and income- for example, since 1990 the rates for white parents doubled from 15 to 28%, whereas on the other end of the spectrum the rate went from 63 to 69% for children of black parents. Breaking down by economic, education and other levels follow more or less similar trends- big jumps at the low end of the range, small jumps on the upper end.

Edit- another interesting tidbit, divorce rates are highest among those over 55; presumably, parents whose children are now adults are moving on, whereas younger parents simply aren't getting married in the first place.

It makes sense parents that don’t share the load equally drift apart. I see so many families where one parent gets all the hobbies and trips while the other gets to stay home or work on kids and Housework 24/7

So much this! Add in health issues to your list of "reasons why things can be different".

It's ignorant to think that your experience with kids is how it is for everyone. Kids can be hard - very hard.

Yes, I think many people’s concern is volatility. Health issues are primary, and can affect your ability to work, and your ability to work affects your ability to provide for the kid(s). So if you do not have able and willing family or friends around to assist, then it can seem to be a risky venture.

We had 7 kids spread out over 15+ years (the oldest is 25 and the youngest is 9 - so about 16 years). Our oldest didn’t learn to sleep through the night until she was 7! At one time it seemed like I would never get a full nights sleep again, but it has been so many years now since I was last woken up by a kid at night (the last time was our 17 year old waking us up after he got home from work at 2am to tell us the basement was flooding) that I hardly recall those sleepless nights. It is nice that all the kids are now old enough to bathe themselves, do their own laundry, can feed and clothe themselves, etc. Plus, I now have a homemade boardgaming group.

I’ve always wondered how people with many kids can be emotionally available for all of them. How do you do it?

Part of it is that you are not their only support network; many siblings offers many outlets and sources for help / support / etc.

Running a family that large is also certainly more time consuming in some aspects- grocery shopping is a significantly different experience when you go through multiple gallons of milk and dozens of eggs every few days, as an example.

You rely on older children to help, and the whole family unit functions as a team.

A good friend has 8 siblings. My parents both had 6. I only have the one, who is several years older than me. The family dynamic between a small and large family is simply fundamentally different. That doesn't mean less emotionally attachable or available, but almost certainly less one-on-one time.

Hmm that’s interesting. I wonder if the two systems produce equal outcomes into adulthood.

I’m not certain about adulthood (I doubt they are equal - there are probably positives and negatives both ways), but one of my kids has a friend who is an only child. She spends most of her time by herself and her home is very quiet. When she first came to our house, which is constantly in commotion (in a good way), she was sort of shell shocked. She has gotten used to it over time.

> equal outcomes

How do you compare the outcome for a kid who never exists? People are an end in themselves before considering any outcomes.

If people are an end to themselves, everyone would have as many kids as possible. Clearly some people believe people to be an end to themselves, but I doubt that opinion is held by the majority. My question about outcomes was specifically about those that exist.

I think what they mean is, every person is different and it is impossible to say how any individual would be if they had been raised in a large family instead of a small one, or vice versa.

I don't think so. "an end" means a goal. "People are an end", to me, means that the creation of people is the goal. This is a common belief in religions like Catholicism that are against contraception.

> "People are an end", to me, means that the creation of people is the goal. This is a common belief in religions like Catholicism that are against contraception.

Catholics believe that the primary end of sex and marriage is procreation, albeit not ruling out secondary ends. That’s beside the point. People being an end in themselves means that before considering any outcomes of their lives their existence is good. E.g. if I have a kid who has Downs Syndrome their life is a fundamental good even though their outcome will probably be considerably worse than a healthy child. Many non-Catholics share this view. That does have implications for family size as it moves one’s attitude towards responsible generosity to having children rather than primarily considering the child a threat to or means to some other end.

I know that I come from a family of five and was starved for attention. My husband comes from a family of 2 and felt he always got attention when he wanted it.

Like some of my strongest memories are of leaving notes for my Mom about how I felt neglected and was in <x> room waiting for her just to BE there with me. She'd last about ten minutes before she'd begin multi-tasking. Not because she was a bad mom but because she just had so. much. to do with five kids and a full-time job.

If you're going to have a large family older kids have to take on some of the emotional labor or the younger kids are totally shafted.

It's interesting how opinions on this change depending on how it's phrased.

Sometimes I see it phrased as older kids taking on some of the labor in what is perceived as maturity building activity that may serve them in adulthood.

Others use a completely different phrase, calling it "parentification" and then call it child abuse or worse, believing it's better for the kids to all fight for the resource of the parent rather than share the burden with older children.

I withhold a conclusion of what the results are. But it's funny to me to see how the opinions can be gamed based on how you frame it.

A proffessional athlete was asked, in the context of a knockout tournament where different conpetitors had different waiting period between matches: "is it better to have more time and rest between the fights, or to have less time but more momentum?" She replied: "Whichever happens to you, you turn into a positive frame."

Or the 21st century version: Whichever happens to you, you turn it into a reason why you didn't succeed and you're not to blame.

I don’t do it. At least not all of it. There is also their mom and their siblings. They have tons of people available for them. Often they are more interested in finding alone time since they are constantly surrounded by people who are emotionally available for them.

My parents both grew up in large families (10 kids and 8 kids) and most of their peers grew up in large families (5-12 children) and what I hear from my parents, aunts and uncles, and their friends is, unequivocally, you don't. There's simply not enough parental resources to go around when you have that many children to provide emotional availability to everyone, even if one parent is a full time caregiver. You end up feeling much more like a number, "child #7", than an actual person, and it's extremely difficult to develop a sense of self. The research backs this up, the larger the family the worse outcomes are in almost every measurable category - academic achievement, criminal convictions, salary, teenage pregnancy, etc.

Siblings often become extremely resentful of each other in these arrangements because they are usually forced to either parent their siblings or be parented by their siblings, they compete for parental attention and get bitter because they can't get it, and they can't find private alone time. This sort of resentfulness shows up in weird non-overt ways that's hard to describe but easy for parents to miss. The siblings still end up spending time with each other in adulthood anyways, probably some sort of Stockholm Syndrome. That doesn't mean they like each other.

Maybe there exist some person on Earth who is capable of caring for so many kids. But I haven't personally seen it.

I never wanted kids and I ended up being a stay-at-home parent... messed up my life pretty good...

Hey just wanted to say that I really appreciate this comment and it's an opinion I haven't seen shared before even though in hindsight it's obvious.

I personally have chosen not to have kids - one reason is doomer level but the other is time and independence. I have a dog that is a relatively (to kids) minor responsibility but in my day to day life feels like the biggest responsibility, I compare that to having a kid which I would say is a lot more and I wouldn't want to take on as I've already experienced a dog and that is as far as I'd go. But while you haven't changed my mind, you have negated a lot of my feelings towards a previously thought "lifelong responsibility"

Well another thought is that the only way to revert this so-called doomerist path is to choose to have and raise kids with empathy for others and with care towards the natural world they've inherited.

Because the people who don't give a shit ain't going to stop having them.

Raising them with good values doesn't mean that they will keep those throughout their life, unfortunately. Quite risky to bet on that.

I have no data to support this but I'm willing to bet that the likelihood they do keep those values is significantly greater than the likelihood that they don't.

So, a very low risk bet.

I've heard having a dog is like having a kid that never grows up.

In some ways they're always more independent of a child. In some ways they never will be.

Having a dog is legitimately more than a kid 90% of the time if it's an indoor dog you treat like a kid. It's different, but constant and the dog never becomes self sufficient. It's also more challenging to travel with them.

With 4 kids and a dog, I tell people this, but no one believes me. Dogs can absolutely be harder than kids a lot of the time.

Forgive me- four kids, but how many boys?

My dogs can't even comprehend how to be as difficult as my boys.

One boy. But I’ve never had to spend 20 minutes chasing him to get him back in the house in the morning so he isn’t stuck outside in the cold all day.

I'm sorry I have had both kids and dogs. Dogs are WAY easier and less expensive than kids. On the positive side, kids are 1000% worth it and are with you for your lifetime. There is very little comparison between the two Why are kids compared with pets? . Would anybody compare a spouse with a dog ? Such comparisons are demeaning to both sides of the equation.

Not quite the same as comparing a spouse to a pet. Both children and pets are 100% dependent on you so there are similarities.

I have found dogs are more of a pain in the ass than kids. Having a dog is like having a kid that is stuck in the early toddler years in terms of effort IMO. Also far less rewarding, as a dog won’t really change much over time once it gets to adulthood fairly quickly.

If you could have a dog for some significant length of time, a kid will be no problem by comparison.

But not in terms of $$$

Dogs really need a job. They were domesticated to work along side us. Any owner should invest in training them.

Ironically, it is kind of the same with kids, kids really need a job and cultures that put the kids to work doing chores and things at an early age seem to raise better adjusted kids.

A big whitepill and motivation to have kids is to recognize that the Turkheimer laws are correct. If on net you like your own traits, whatever they are, and you want more of those traits to be present in the world, good news - having biological children is an almost surefire way to do so, even if you don't put a ton of effort into it.

I have a dog. I totally thought having a kid would be like having a dog. In the sense that I do a bunch of shit with my dog that I don't necessarily want to do and she is often a burden to things I want to do (mainly travel) but, in aggregate, is worth it. And if having a kid was that negative shit multiplied by some large x with similar or even higher positives, it would be a huge no go. Happily I got the dog a month before I got pregnant.

And it is not the same at all. So many things I do for my dog I do out of obligation. I do not often want to walk her. Once I'm walking her or going to the dog park or whatever, I have a nice time but I don't naturally WANT to do it.

In contrast, I want, like actively WANT, to do all sorts of absurdly unpleasant things for my eight month old. And society is set up to bring kids to all sorts of activities my dog can't go to --- despite my pup being sig more pleasant to have out and about than my baby.

I will say I think a sig portion is hormonal. I would say having a kid was a genuine metamorphosis for me. In contrast, I think my husband had more of a dog-like sense of obligation and is only recently enjoying the kid.

As sexist as it may sound, I'd suggest most women who are financially stable with good partners to have at least one kid because I am shocked, utterly shocked, by the fundamental shift in self I've experienced and, frankly, it's cool. Life is short. It's a cool, unique experience worth having.

But men? Unless they actively want kids, I'd suggest staying away from it --- the sacrifice to their relationships, lives, etc. seems sig harder to bear since they don't seem to have quite the same hit to their hormones. As my husband says, I take care of baby and he takes care of me. Who takes care of him? I try but baby comes first. That's a hard hit for a man not excited for kids (thankfully my husband is and remains so).

As the traditional formula goes, you take care of the household. Food, cleanup, chores, shopping, calling the repair guy, etc. Especially as you start getting more free time and school starts acting as a baby sitter.

I think the main thing that informs me personally is that I didn't enjoy spending time with my parents when I was a kid. I imagine those who want kids must have had a more positive kind of childhood experience and relationship with their parents.

In my experience this isn't true at all. Having kids really is a blank slate and it's up to you to decide how you want to raise yours. I do a lot of things different than my parents did to me, including being more thoughtful about being a good friend, not just their parents.

I didn't have the best experience with my parents either. Not that I hated them but they never felt like friends to me. My kids will decide how they feel about me when they get older but I'll do everything in my power to let them know that I'm genuinely interested in being friends with them.

I'm sorry you didn't have good memories with your parents but I came here to say that this should not be an excuse to not having kids if that's something that you're considering.

Even if you want to be a different parent than your parents, it can be difficult to change the course when you don't have that experience to draw off of. You're both genetically and culturally the product of your parents, and naturally any perceived negativity about your parents has an influence that commonly pushes you towards that direction. It's not unusual to read stories of people who had abusive parents, that then went on to abuse their child, even though they never wanted to be that way. While we can make conscious choices, it's doubtful you have complete free will to separate from genetic and culture tendencies.

I don't think it's an excuse to not having kids, but I do think generally I have yet to find an excuse to have kids. So far it doesn't interest me. But still, I do wonder whether there's a good reason for that.

I relate to your current state of mind. I wasn't sure either before I had my first child. I didn't particularly like kids, but wondered what would it be like.

Then I had my first child by accident at 33 and it was by far the best thing that ever happened to me. I'm glad I didn't wait longer to decide rationally to have kids.

I can confirm a lot of the comments in here are true, for good or bad. But most definitely an overall good experience with love and fun trumping some minor annoyances.

(Writing this at 3am while my 3yrs old struggles to sleep in between me and wife)

I have more of a 'when in rome' approach to kids. It's what humans tend to do, so I'll give it a go. Not everyone who goes on holiday to Rome has to do the tourist stuff though! But I'm not creative enough to work out what else to do...

Love this comment wanted to also share my biggest regret in life is waiting to have kids. I became a dad at 38. All the nights out with friends, happy hours, sleeping late, etc. mean very little now but I’d trade the world to be able to spend more time on earth with my kid.

Hopefully we maximize what we do have but, whatever it ends up being, it could have been more.

Became a dad at a similar age and have the same regrets. Then again I met the right woman very late as well. There are some benefits though. Finances are well established and early retirement is within reach, so I have the freedom to quit any job that doesn’t respect my time. My kids will get a lot more time with their dad than many other kids will.

The thing we need to do is to stay healthy and try to be energetic.

Thank you. :-)

I don't really like kids. I didn't really like kids when I was a kid. And that largely gets worse the older they get, up until they start pushing 30 or so.

Obviously this doesn’t hold true for everyone, but your attachment to your kid has nothing to do with how you feel about kids in general.

You start by saying you're not generalizing to literally everyone, but then you follow up by generalizing to literally everyone.

You can state that "my attachment to my kid has nothing to do with how I feel about kids in general" but the way you've phrased it makes it generalized and you apply it to the generic you. Talking about "your attachment to your kid" reads very much like lecturing me about how you're telling me I'll feel.

I start by saying “Obviously this doesn’t hold true for everyone” which means I’m about to make a generalization, and generalizations, by the diverse nature of people, are unlikely to apply to every single person even if they hold true in a majority of cases.

I don't think I'm necessarily having the same experience as you.... my advice to people who aren't sure if they want kids, is DON'T. It's bloody hard, you sacrifice A LOT. Don't have kids unless you're very sure it's what you want.

I have 2 kids under 6 and I feel like I just don't have any time for any of my hobbies any more. I leave for work first thing, come home in the afternoon, and haven't had any time for myself until the kids are down at 7.30, and I'm utterly wasted. Weekends are just chaos, yeah we can divide and conquer but that only goes so far.

As for enjoying hanging around with kids.... I don't know what age that starts, but I'm 5 years and counting.

Honestly I'm exhausted, and I'm not gonna lie, I have some regret about having kids when I see the child free people around me, and how they're spending their 30s.

I feel it. Whether the statistics are true or not, the idea of being 75% done with the time by 12 sounds extremely liberating. I put in the time and effort for the sake of the children, but the truth is I want them independent as soon as possible. The older they get and the less they need (and the less time I have to spend with them), the more joy I get out of life. The first year was a black hole of lots of work which obviously the child has no capacity to really express gratefulness for (not that it is owed).

There's nothing that can really prepare you to know what parenthood will be like with you're particular children, and by the time you know what it's like to regret it it's too late -- at the very least you're in it for child support. I recommend anyone who enjoys their life as it as and don't see it as a "must have" to fulfill their sense of purpose to strongly STRONGLY consider before they have kids.

Yes, spending time with little kids can be really boring, be present when it counts though. This period of life doesn't last forever so take care of your health and maintain your important relationships with whatever energy you can muster.

Every time I look at pictures of my kids when they were younger I feel a tinge of regret for not being more in the moment.

I feel the same as WheatMillington most of the time, but also feel the same as you when I look at pictures of my kids from the past few years. It's so conflicting.

"The days are long, but the years are short"

100% this. Be in the moment. Enjoy. Play.

You can rest later. (When the kids are bigger and can do chores themselves. ;-))

> I feel a tinge of regret for not being more in the moment.

That’s not really something you control. In that moment you probably just wanted to escape for 5 minutes of blessed peace.

The weird part is the lag. You want to escape for 5 minutes. But you only want that now because you couldn't escape for years before. If you stopped to think about it, maybe you don't really want those five minutes. If only you stop and really think.

That requires stopping to think for five minutes, which you didn't have in the moment.

I feel the same, but also got lucky that my oldest son and I both like climbing. So even if he, as a typical teenager, wants to spend time with friends or simply wants to be left alone in his room we spend 2-3 evenings per week together at the climbing gym.

I gave up all my hobbies. 1-8 was brutal with 2 of em. A few years later I’m picking them back up again.

Hang in there another couple of years. Now my youngest is 7 I find life a lot more liberating then when they were under 6. And its fun doing "older" activities with the kids. But yeah it's hard for more than "the first few months/years"!

> when I see the child free people around me, and how they're spending their 30s

On the flip side, I wonder if you might enjoy your 70's and 80's a lot more with kids (and possibly grandkids).

With the way things are going, they might be living with me in a basement and sharing my old age security for sustenance.

Then you won’t need to worry about 75% of your time with them being before they are 12 ;)

On the other hand, I wasn't sure if I wanted kids, and the borderline decision to go ahead was the best decision of my life. YMMV.

> until the kids are down at 7.30

Yours sleep at 7:30?! How do you not consider that to be literally oceans of free time?

That said, yeah, you give up the whole evenings spent trying to solve some problem, but honestly, I don’t think that, on my deathbed, I’ll ever regret that I didn’t get to solve problem x 30 years ago.

What I’m almost positive I’ll look back on very fondly though is every evening spent going in the bath with my kid, then taking him to bed, watching some youtube and reading books.

My biggest regret is that (barring a miracle) I won’t have any more than one (for his sake as much as mine).

Having 3 kids, I put them to sleep by 9.30. There's a loop that they can't fall asleep when they're tired and they're tired because they don't get enough sleep, so we even make sure they have excess sleep if possible. Otherwise they get cranky and it's a bad day/week/month for everyone.

I realise I could just wake up earlier to do stuff, and if I wake up early, I'm also less likely to waste it on pointless things.

Ditto, mine are not all down until 9.30, or worse. Then I am too knackered and shell-shocked to actually get anything done, yet wont actually do the sensible thing and go to bed early as too guilty with the chores still to do...

The kids being down at 730/19:30 doesn’t mean everything is done:

Laundry, cleaning after dinner, tidying up, ordering groceries/making shopping lists, actually doing groceries, fixing something in/at house/car/garden, taking out trash(diapers), paper/plastic, researching which child seat to buy when they get bigger, parent/teacher sessions. This when you are lucky. Maybe even preparation for work or study is needed still. Etcetera.

Just to point out that free time and therefore a moment for yourself doesn’t automatically start the moment kids are at bed.

It’s not that I disagree, but all those things need doing just as much if your kids are in bed at 9:30 at the earliest.

Have you tried outsourcing all the chores? Get a nanny, a gardener, a personal assistant, hire handymen, don’t cook at home.

Sorry for being analytical about it, I am personally interested in having kids—and so far it seems to me that you’re overburdening yourself with too much stuff that you don’t have to do at all.

I can outsource and I do, I also readily buy any tool or appliance that saves me time. But not everyone is as well of that they can afford to do that.

Also, I have found that there is significant benefit in doing chores yourself. At least it gives me a sense of accomplishment and a chance to do something with my hands instead of thinking a lot and then wiggle some fingers to type or draw PowerPoint.

My wife is a morning person. I am not. She does all the morning stuff, and gets the kiddo to school before I even wake up. I put our kid to bed, do the dishes, and game/hobby stuff until midnight to 2am. My wife enjoys her quiet mornings before I wake up and the kiddo is in school, I enjoy my quiet evenings when everyone is in bed.

I can’t imagine how couples that are both morning or night people can function. It must be so different.

I feel like it's a trade-off between having a little extra time in the evening or a little more sleep in the morning.

Mine go to sleep about 7:30pm, but are generally awake at 5:30 to 6:00am, so you yourself need to go to sleep not long after, or you will have a sleep deficit.

So, it's not a huge amount of time, especially once you do all the jobs than need to be done once they are asleep.

My partner and I have 5 kids under 7yrs old -- four of whom are adopted and two of whom are struggling with severe developmental delays (and likely autism, still waiting on formal diagnosis).

When kids get older, they get a lot more "fun" and a lot less immediate work. I can take my eldest two out pretty much anywhere without a ton of effort, they are fun to hang out with, they can be trusted to be kind and respectful in adult spaces, and they'll invite me into kids spaces, etc.

But also, anything can happen. Anything can happen. Your kids could be born with lifelong conditions or issues. They could be healthy at young ages, but develop special conditions as they hit early childhood or late adolescence. They could struggle with lifestyle issues (violence, drugs, alcohol, crime, etc). You may just end up not liking them very much (you may end up wishing they were more like you, when they aren't), they may have hobbies that differ from you, they may choose careers you'd prefer not, they may choose religious views you disagree with, they may end up being LGBTQIA+ even if you aren't, and so on. We have one child who is at high risk of never developing cognitively enough to safely live on their own as an adult -- anything can happen.

Having a child is a literal forever commitment -- even more so than any marriage is -- to love and care for a person that might not even exist yet, no matter who they end up being. Be absolutely ready to make a literal lifetime commitment to love and care for this child as a fellow human, before deciding to have one.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with opting out of all of that, and spending your 20's, 30's or lifetime doing something else -- having a child is a huge responsibility, and not something anyone should ever get pressured into, or jump into capriciously.

I've heard stories of how difficult the process of adopting kids can be. So, kudos to you, that sounds like a lot to manage.

Regarding opting out, I get it, but I don't agree personally. Not having kids, can enable some pretty great lifestyles. But I do feel like you don't get a chance to understand what being a parent is all about. No amount of being a great aunt / uncle / whatever, gives you that feeling of needing to nurture or protect your child.

It forces you to change, maintain a good relationship w/ your partner, be a good role model, etc.

If I was do it again, I'd try to do it earlier.

It absolutely does not force you to change at all, nor does it force you to maintain a good relationship with your partner. Divorce rates are high, there are lots of bad parents. Having kids may have pushed you to be better, and that's great, but there are a lot of people out there for whom it makes no positive difference at all.

I don't disagree with you. Divorce rates are high, and for many it doesn't make a positive difference. I imagine most folks on HN are pretty conscious about striving to be better, so for this small subset I think my opinion is reasonable. And I know plenty of people who if they had kids (but abstain) would absolutely rock at it, and it *could* be a positive forcing function, such that they get to experience different aspects to life.

People who are having kids because they "want to be better" can go ahead and just be better by helping take care of the kids already here who need it.

In my experience, people who are having kids because they want to be better have something broken in their lives that they ought to to work on fixing before having kids, and the consequences if they don’t can be…quite bad.

Get a therapist for therapy, not a child.

Life is a series of choices, and it's impossible to explore every path you could take.

> But I do feel like you don't get a chance to understand what being a parent is all about.

That's 100% accurate.

There's a pretty much infinite number of possible life experiences I'm not going to get to experience personally and will not have the time/money/ability to fit into my lifespan. The wishlist of things I'd love to do or experience someday continually grows longer - no matter how much I try to fit more of them into my life.

Taking on what amounts to a lifetime commitment and a massive investment of time and money for an experience that I have zero interest in and think I would actively dislike, seems like a terrible use of my finite resources.

> It forces you to change, maintain a good relationship w/ your partner, be a good role model, etc.

Perhaps it inspired you to do that. But the divorce rate and number of parents out there are terrible role models, suggest that it's not exactly the case for everyone.

I'll also suggest that people who don't have much interest in becoming parents are probably a whole lot more likely to wind up on the negative side of those possibilities should they wind up having children anyway.

> Taking on what amounts to a lifetime commitment and a massive investment of time and money for an experience that I have zero interest in and think I would actively dislike, seems like a terrible use of my finite resources.

If you consider maximizing your experience the best use of your resources, I suppose not.

This is a naive way to think about it. In the grand scheme of things, as TFA hints at, kids don't take up a significant portion of your life. If you're goal is to focus on striking off entries on a wishlist, there are many, many things that can be sacrificed to make room that don't involve children.

It's not as bad as you make it seem.

Lastly, I don't really care about experiences the way I did when I was younger. Going on a trip to an exotic locale doesn't really excite me as much as, say, taking a good picture of a friend or family member and sharing it. Or hearing a good story or joke.

Kids expand to fill the space in your life you make for them. I have more fun with my kids than possibly anyone else. I want to share experiences with them, not for myself.

Have you ever been excited when telling a friend about a cool spot they've never been to, and subsequently taking them there? Kids are like a revolving door of those opportunities. They start from scratch.

I would have been a shit parent to a human child. I would still be a shit parent to a human child. I don’t want one, if I accidentally had one they would eventually not want me too. I’ve been a half decent parent to my youngest sibling, because what you say about life forcing you to change has some truth.

I’ve experienced what you described with my pup, but that’s because she is exactly the bond and the responsibility that fits my life. It revolves around her, every day, all the time. No amount of parenting a human would ever change that.

> It forces you to change, maintain a good relationship w/ your partner, be a good role model, etc.

No, it doesn’t actually, as any kind of even approximately universal effect, force any of that, and even a casual look around at society would demonstrate that pretty clearly. It may or may not have motivated that in you – but plenty of people who would describe themselves as having those traits in their own relationships / parenting objectively don’t, so self-assessment is pretty clearly not a reliable gauge here. I would agree that there are people whose combination of innate personality, life experiences, etc., will lead them to actually be nudged in those directions by having children, but there are plenty who won’t be. And there are plenty of people who will be nudged in much more negative directions by the experience.

As a parent myself, it amazes me how many people who are parents are drawn into a bizarre evangelization of parenting as some kind of universally ideal vocation, with stories about the effect it will have that are trivially refutable by looking outside of one’s own internal narrative of their own experience with their own kids at the rest of the world around them.

I always say I only found unconditional love once I became a parent. (From me toward my child)

As you say, the commitment is forever, whether we are present or not. For the movie Interstellar, one of the themes Nolan developed was that at some point we become our children’s memories. It probably happens around the 12 year old mark.

For all parents out there, be present, however you can.

This is not always so.

For me, unconditional love was a youthful thing.

My parents are much less admirable now, as I have grown older.

My reasons are legion.

I don't wish them harm, but they are nothing like me.

From the comment you replied to:

>(From me toward my child)

> Be absolutely ready to make a literal lifetime commitment to love and care for this child as a fellow human, before deciding to have one.

Unfortunately, if you decide after all of this reflection that you don't want to have kids there is no need to worry, at least, about perpetuating the human race... because for every couple who conscientiously decides not to have kids, there are a half dozen more who don't give any thought to any of this whatsoever and proceed to have (often multiple) kids anyway.

"there are a half dozen more who don't give any thought to any of this whatsoever and proceed to have (often multiple) kids anyway."

You might have to update this [1]. People do care. People have an iphone now. People can read. The "tons of kids poppin" arguments don't hold. We will see a global wide population decrease soon.

https://econofact.org/the-mystery-of-the-declining-u-s-birth...

spend a couple months in and out of your local NICU, as I have, seeing firsthand the depressingly common spectacle of premature neonates being left alone for days, sometimes over a week, by parents (or parent) who can't make the time to visit their own clinging-to-life offspring.

Because their lives are already overburdoned by the several other - somehow always toddler-age - children in tow with them. Lives frequently complicated by various degrees of substance abuse, leading to the NICU births. You would not be as comfortable googling some factoid response here.

Whatever the macro trend may be in terms of total birthrate, its the constitution of those births, in terms of quality of life, my post was referring to.

Pretty heavy selection bias in that sample. All the people who chose not to have kids obviously are not going to be in the NICU. Among the people who do choose to have kids, those with good prenatal care and healthy habits are going to be very underrepresented in the NICU, particularly if you're in a community where you see a lot of substance abuse. So what's left is what you've observed.

This seems awfully America-centric. I understand what you're saying but in my experience it is a local phenomena, not global. Most parents (or at least a parent) spend a lot of time with their kids at the start of their life.

i'm too young to be having kids rn anyway but i thought about it a little and this is one of the big things that makes me hesitate. i don't think i could handle raising a kid who ended up special needs and required lifelong care. seems like having a kid who ended up an alcoholic/junkie/mentally retarded/deeply at odds with my values would really remove most of the positives, so it would be a serious gamble.

of course, i also have it easier since men can just remarry at 50 and still have kids. i have time. but it really makes me wonder if i ever want children. my parents think it's a great thing and i shouldn't be quite so worried but they have quite the case of survivorship bias, all their kids turned out well and so it is easy from their perspective on the other side.

the annoying part is all the girls i meet either know they want kids or know they don't. nobody my age should be quite that certain yet in either direction. makes dating a bitch beyond casual relationships ngl.

Even I am young and lean childfree. My reasoning is that non-existence is better than existence. More and more I see the world, more and more I agree with Buddhism's first noble truth that there is suffering in life. There are some moments of joy, but is all of it worth it afterall? It's just a tough question. I don't want to bring any more suffering to this world. There is already so much suffering and I can't do anything about it. So many innocents throughout history have suffered so much. Millions of innocents died in holocaust or nuclear bombs or famines in the last 100 years ago alone. Recently teenagers are getting killed mercilessly in Iran. Life can be so unfair sometimes that it feels like a bad gamble to produce more of it. A child can give great joy to their parents for sure, but they can also cause great suffering. Like there is hardly anything more hurtful in life than the bereavement of your own child. People forget that something that can give you great joy can also give you great pain. And for me, it's not just about me and the happiness I derive from parenting my kid, but also the child who will one day grow into an adult and have to deal with this cruel world and the sheer pain of conscious existence itself. For these reasons I am leaning childfree for now.

The answer to all this is to stop considering it so abstractly and talk to some parents who have been in these situations and actually look at the incident rates. Anything could happen but not all outcomes are as likely. There’s loads of mundane activities we do that have serious life changing events that could happen. A kid is a commitment but also one that is profoundly human that people have been doing successfully for millennia.

> But also, anything can happen. Anything can happen. Your kids could be born with lifelong conditions or issues. They could be healthy at young ages, but develop special conditions as they hit early childhood or late adolescence. They could struggle with lifestyle issues (violence, drugs, alcohol, crime, etc).

I could never understand how people are so easy to punish someone with life. Especially someone who they'll love unconditionally. I didn't like my life from the start despite it being fairly decent in objective terms.

Much respect to you for adopting 4 kids, especially those with additional needs! :) To this "We have one child who is at high risk of never developing cognitively enough to safely live on their own as an adult.", I'd argue, society in general needs to look after people like this much better. Everyone, particularly the rich, should be paying their fare share of taxes to cover decent quality care for those unable to look after themselves due to disability. That includes respecting the people who work in that field properly as doing a vital job, and paying them well enough. When parents feel that this lifetime responsibility falls on them alone, I feel that something is severely broken. What about people with learning disability who do not have family to look out for them? They need a system to look after them. I think some of the comments on this discussion reflect that there's a lack of general support for families, especially in the USA with its insufficient social programmes.

This is short sided the first five years are tough the next are great and the following are even better

I don’t know that the GP comment disagrees - I think you’re just actually still in the hardest phase. imho it gets much better and more interesting soon! And then they’re teens you can have amazing conversations with them. And while we aren’t there yet, I gather from everyone that being a grandparent is bliss. Sending you positive vibes!

I have four kids. YMMV, but I've found with mine that six years old seems to be the magic threshold. Developmentally, it seems like at that age a switch suddenly turns on and they start really showing distinct interests, talking fluently, thinking more abstractly, making solid friendships with a few peers, and wanting a bit more independence. I find the 6yo age to be a blast.

I'd echo this. My youngest is 5, and though we went through the terrible 2s through the f**ing 4s, it seems we've turned a corner at age 5. There's this sweet little kid who can start to control his emotions and frequently makes us laugh. In place of fits and tantrums we had for basically the past three years, we have someone who can take a breather and accept "no" for an answer.

The best part is all of the hugs, the I-love-you-Daddy-s, the endless curiosity (tonight's: "if you use Apple Pay, are they taking [cash] dollars out of your phone?") and a newfound recognition that other people with their own dignity and needs exist.

It is still a lot of work, but I love spending time with my kids and seeing them learn and grow into civilized people.

Read “Setting Limits” by Robert Mackenzie if you still have problems with “no” and tantrums. I’ve read 10 parenting books and this is hands-down the best.

I agree, although I'm not a parent, I babysat my niece a lot throughout. She's turning 6 in a few weeks and it's pretty great how much more "interactive" she can be now.

When they're much younger you constantly have to fret over them, but now she's learning to write, asks fun questions and overall the "spark" of being her own person is really visible.

While I used to enjoy babysitting earlier too, back then I still used to be glad to be done so I could rest and catch up on some hobbies while nowadays I usually feel pretty guilty having to leave.

On the other hand the experience from my niece and now my nephew does make me wonder if I really want kids at all given the effort it takes to raise them to the point where they start to learn to be independent. I was exhausted dealing with them for just a few days in a row, I can't imagine how I'd handle it for several years.

This is a pretty consistent finding in early childhood development —- typically around 5-6 years old they go from just absorbing everything to being more like a person as we think of it. There is another shift often around 8-10 where they become more fully integrated.

Then that integrated little soul gets thrown into major hormonal shifts…

I felt exactly the same way. Very, very hard until the kids are in school full time. But still hard until they are teenagers.

I'm finding the teenage years to be much more pleasant. Getting some payback for all the time invested. I know it's still a long way away for you.

If it makes you feel any better I delayed having kids and spent my 30s dating and hanging out and going to bars -- and it was terrible. I was never more depressed. I got tired of dating. I got tired of bars. I was lonely. My life had no meaning or direction. I had a nice career and could go anywhere and do anything I wanted, but it turns out none of that made me even a little bit happy.

I remember one summer making plans to go camping with three different groups of friends three weekends in a row and realizing at the end of it that all three weekends were exactly the same. Nothing new happens. You're not missing anything if you just stay home.

Happiness is extremely overrated. I had a lot of laughs in my 30s, but my life was a disaster. Now I'm tired and busy and I don't go out and do "fun" stuff very often, but I'm much more satisfied. My biggest regret is that I waited so long to start my life. Brunch isn't life.

This feels a lot like a more extreme version of what I'm doing now (especially the camping thing), and I'm a lot younger..

Thanks for the perspective.

Just don’t take it as a rule though - I had a kid late also and I don’t regret the camping, brunches, career and travel at all. Some are memories I’ll keep forever and all those experiences make me feel like I’ve had a fullish life already, which can make it easier to deal with the no-life of having kids :)

For sure. Maybe these anecdotes are useful; maybe not. I don't know. Everybody has to figure it out on their own, in the end.

There’s 1000 places in this conversation to say this, but I thought here would work. I too had a kid late and do not regret the camping, but wanted to say the no-life is time limited^, or can be if you are lucky.

My kid is now 9, and while a fancy brunch is beyond him, he can do a sit down sushi dinner. We've done a couple of international trips with him, and we've settled into a friend group with similar interests so we are constantly doing camping, backcountry backpacking, and in the winter skiing - all with him and his friends. It is pretty good, and certainly not a no-life.

---

^ And we knew what we wanted, so even though many of the early trips where miserable, the kid can say he’s been backpacking and xc-skiing every year of his life.

Camping is also a great activity with kids, for what it’s worth. Backpacking 20 miles into the wilderness is not going to be an option at least until they are older, but car camping can still be pretty fun even when they are itty bitty especially if there is some fun and accessible terrain to explore—water to throw rocks into, mossy rocks and tree trunks to check out and stumble over, etc.

Kids make camping even MORE fun.

This is exactly my experience, probably from age 28 until I met my wife at ~34. My friends and I would go to all these bars, clubs, rock climbing trips. While I loved my friends and generally enjoyed doing those things, I felt this long-term malaise of meaningless. The loss of freedom getting married and then greater loss when having kids was unexpected and a jarring change. But it has made me such a better person. And even though it sucks going through the same chores every day or when my 4 and 6 year olds are in maximum procrastination mode. I wouldn't trade my worst day with them for my best day of freedom when I was younger. I've never been more happy.

Thank you and also the parent for the perspective. That's also what I experience. Not sure kids will fix that, but it always feels better knowing you're not alone.

You've just described my life. Thanks for the perspective, That empty feeling was very confusing for me. I've something to look forward too!

In my opinion plenty of people just use kids as a scapegoat for meaning of life.

My question would be why you value your kids time more than bouldern?

Because you made them? Because they consume so much time with them?

Or because you are just better in being a parent and biological getting satisfaction out of it?

Unfortunately for me I'm not sure if I would end like you or the other poster who regrets it sometimes.

Also I'm not sure if I want to force another/new human through my experiences like going to school etc.

In dune the king new/realized that he can't do what is necessary but has to prepare his son to do so.

I have the opposite though: perhaps I need to not to have kids to stop the cycle of creating meaning through procreation.

Yes I overthink stuff and one way or the other I still think becoming a parent would be a life changing experience but besides all of the normal thoughts climate change comes on top of it.

If you can edit this. Edit out the “you” to “people”. It doesn’t look like an attack then. I see your comment is greying out so it’s getting downvotes.

Having diff perspectives is cool so it would be unfortunate for yours to get flagged because it seems too aggressive.

I think your concern (will I be one who is fulfilled, or one who regrets?) is reasonable, but in fact for many people the answer is “yes”. You’ll often feel fulfilled. Occasionally you’ll regret.

Also, “escape goat”, while an amazing phrase, should be “scapegoat”.

Escape goat is such a better term haha. I wish it was a legit synonym

> Or because you are just better in being a parent and biological getting satisfaction out of it?

It is totally this. We are biological creatures and we cannot escape that.

Love, sex, friendships, relationships, parenting, happiness, and so forth are all aspects of our biology. We are not automatons living a purely rational life. Satisfaction in life depends on those biological mechanisms and shouldn't be seen through a purely rational lens.

Kids aren't a scapegoat for a meaningful life. They do absolutely make life meaningful. Much in the same way eating a delicious meal brings pleasure. We depend on our biological wiring to feel such things.

Thank you for this poignant reminder.

Yes but is it fair to the new human?

Oversimplified: would you be okay to create a new human if you know they have only 100 days to life? 5 years? 20? Suffering in school, sleep problems etc etc?

Just because it's evolutionary pre programmed?

Not everyone who struggles in life would rather not live. I think it's quite arrogant to contemplate whether living is worth it for another human being.

When I'm the maker of another human it's definitely worth considering before if it will be worth to do so

Even so, that person will not be you. Even if they will go through exactly the same things you've been through they may not have the same experience. You cannot know if it was worth it for them.

I think it's fine if people don't have kids, I just find the reasoning "what if they suffer, etc" a cop-out. You cannot know that beforehand and even if they suffer, they may still find meaning in life.

Last several replies you gave are such high quality. I hate it when people overintellectualize such obvious things like having a kid. I would have flipped out at the other poster, but you stuck in there and gave some really good points. Awesome.

Having kids is everything but obvious.

Don't dismiss critical thinking with an attack on you just because it feels obvious to you.

Regret emotions etc. are only possible when you are alive.

Missery etc also can only be felt when you are alive.

You clearly don't take any responsibility at all otherwise I'm lost on how easy you just dismiss concerns.

So is joy, happiness and pleasure. I feel sorry for you if your life is only filled with regret and misery. For most people there are ways out of misery but it all starts with the realization that it's not a necessity. When you're depressed it's difficult to imagine ever being able to feel anything else again but knowing that it is possible can put you on the right track.

Maybe your need to pass judgement on my character based on two posts should tell you something about yourself. It really takes an inflated ego to, as a non-parent, talk about responsibility with a parent. Paraphrasing: "Responsibility as a parent is heavy as a mountain, deciding not to have children is light as a feather".

I find it arrogant to force a human being to life, especially at this time. I question everyday the fact that somebody else decided for me that life is somewhat worth living.

Well, if you believe that life is worth being experienced as it's pretty unique as far as experiences goes, it's normal to expect to be okay with giving that to your child isn't it? I think most people think of life as a net positive.

There's a song where I'm from with a funny line about that - Life is short, but it's long in small stretches.

When I was a teenager I thought kids were a pyramid scheme. If your life isn't worthwhile, then what point is there in creating another life whose worth will be equally questionable? This sounds like your "scapegoat for meaning of life" idea.

What I eventually gradually realized was that the kid might just be another person, but you're not just creating a person, you're also creating a relationship with that person. And it's a unique kind of relationship, in some ways more intimate than any relationship you can have with anyone else including your romantic partner. (Which adult runs with beaming face to hug you whenever they see you come home from work and you know it's all totally genuine?) I'm not an expert on what has objective meaning in life, but I'm pretty sure that deep relationships like this are one of the stronger candidates.

>I have the opposite though: perhaps I need to not to have kids to stop the cycle of creating meaning through procreation.

You won't stop the cycle though, others who do actually have kids will simply continue it, and the single biggest way in which you could have had and influence on the future of the world and the human race will have been eliminated.

And that's before you get into any religious implications of having and raising children.

Being wealthy or powerful probably has more influence on the world and humans than having kids.

Nonsense, on a long enough timescale your descendents will intermarry with other people, and the wealthy and powerful of future generations will be your descendents. Dave Thomas may have had a major influence on the US with his restaurants and charitable foundations, but if he had never been born in the first place he wouldn't have been able to accomplish any of that. I chose Thomas as an example because he's a literal orphan and his adoptive family wasn't particularly wealthy either as far as I can tell.

I agree maybe that’ll happen. Maybe it won’t. OTOH, as society is now, being rich and/or powerful can definitely influence things and almost all influences of society happen by the rich and powerful.

In my pov, saying having kids is the most important way to influence the world unfortunately provides an excuse to prop up the status quo of incredibly imbalanced power and wealth structures.

It also seems a bit mean to posit having children is the way to most influence society. Not every one can responsibly and properly raise children. Or have the financial foundation

At least I would stop it for my gen pool.

I'm not responsible for potential suffering of others.

Well, I was into that rock climbing, and, alpinism, ski touring, diving, paragliding, various expeditions and god knows what else.

It can fill up your life, and if you have good close friends it may be enough to feel long term OK and have amazing moments, which I kinda was. In fact, I've spent all my 30s like that, and backpacking around the world. I needed that, I felt I needed that back then, and when looking in retrospect it was right emotion, it made me a more complete human being (and later better parent too). Some can get there without, I couldn't, didn't have the right environment for it when growing up. This worked very well even when married, my wife complements me well in this (we met on a climbing session so that part was covered).

And then kids came, one just before covid and one during. I clinged to that climbing (with buddy) a bit, that was my escape for few hours a week into easy good times that were. Then I had this year injury of wrist, and then broken foot (all in civil setting, ie falling down the stairs in kindergarten) and I lost it all, and I blamed kids internally. I was depressed a bit. My sleep for past year was never, ever uninterrupted, good 8 hours (those damned teeth, how could evolution fucked up so badly? any animal with this trait would simply die out over few generations). That normal sleep is just gone, and I am mentally at maybe 70% at better days, more irritable, less patient.

But the thing is, kids bring up the hardest moments just as much as the best moments of your life. And we humans generally are OK with suffering quite a bit for those few nice moments. Kids bring tons of those. Even when walking relative valley of the shadow now with small kids (diapers, various naps during day that block anything bigger, teeth and lack of sleep), without cheaping out and outsourcing many troubles to nanny (or grandparents), they are amazing to watch, to experience. They love you back, unconditionally (for now), and it just feels natural to continue what all generations since ever did. It had been a rough year, few folks died in close family, and when my grandpa died 2 days ago, hugging my kids made it much much much more bearable.

I am pretty darn sure that skipping kids would be by far the biggest regret of my life later, met quite a few older folks like that. No need to always do the mistake to realize others were right again. But - if one has some serious mental issue which make them unable to be a stable partner and caretaker, then it should definitely be avoided. Too many sad stories out there already.

"Brunch is not life." This phrase is going to stick with me.

I don't know what it's supposed to mean, though. I like brunches. My son likes them as well.

I mean: any part of life is not life. Kids are not life.

Or am I missing something?

I take brunch and life to be stand-ins for two notions. Brunch as the ability and desire to wish for a lazy day spent as one wishes, desultory consumption of something nice and/or new while in control of our time. Life is the sum-total of all meaning we accrue along the way, including our experiences from events we are thrust into.

It's lightness and weight, as in Kundera's 'Unbearable Lightness of Being'.

Lightness is nice, it's comfortable, but vertigo inducing. So we also long for weight sometimes.

> realizing at the end of it that all three weekends were exactly the same. Nothing new happens. You're not missing anything if you just stay home.

To be honest, I felt exactly like that when kids were small, especially when being at home with them. Every day same as one before, with only minor variation. Going for vacations meant doing exactly same things as at home, except in harder setup. Nothing ever ever happens either. And plus, you are isolated from other adults, falling into depression and loosing ability to socialize.

Genuinely, I am glad I have kids. But I am so glad that period ended.

IMO that adult isolation is a bit of a choice. What I've seen happen is other parents socialize with other parents with kids of a similar age. Two moms who both have babies visit each other and hang out, etc.

> What I've seen happen is other parents socialize with other parents with kids of a similar age. Two moms who both have babies visit each other and hang out, etc.

That does not make isolation choice. That makes some people finding friends despite suddenly seriously limited pool of options. You are starting from zero, not knowing anyone and loosing both actual existing friends and actual related hobbies. The only thing you have in common with most of those people is the similar age kid.

You need to be seriously extroverted to be able to create friendship out of nothing after you have seen each other twice on playground while also supervising the toddler. People here complain about loneliness while having incredibly easy situation compared to that, seriously.

My parents tried that and were fairly lonely during the early childhood years. They hated trading inane poop stories with other parents and longed to return to real adult conversations. If they wanted to discuss the specifics of child-rearing, they’d talk to each other or ask their own parents for advice.

You don't just have to talk about the kids, you can talk about other things? One thing I've noticed from the other side is my friends that got kids, it's hard to just visit, hang out and have some lunch even, even if we get it delivered.

If you try to build your life around brunch (or bars or camping trips) then it's not a surprise getting some structure and something to care about makes you happier. Many people find happiness having kids but there is no denying other life pursuits will suffer.

There is less time and less energy no matter how you cut it. The priorities will change as well as they should - why have kids if they are not very important part of your life.

Someone with less time, less energy and different things to prioritize will never get as far in creative pursuits, business, sports, scientific research. It's fine but it's a trade-off. Don't pretend the child free option is just a bar night or brunch with friends. If it is, you really haven't even started figuring it out.

I turned 30 last month, and I gotta say I can totally see how easy it is to fall into the state you mentioned.

I can already see through getting wasted on weekends with friends, hikes, trips, etc that seem to "normalize" as I age.

Though, I don't see kids as the only "fix"; far from it. Perhaps it's just that we get saturated from experiences, and how much new things we can experience is limited by where we live, expendable income, physical fitness, etc. So it's natural to not have the same level of novelty in experiences.

In the same vein, my uneducated and inexperienced guess is that raising the third or fourth kid wouldn't feel as much as mentally rewarding as the first kid or two.

37, almost 38 and no kids, doing what you are describing right now all over the world, and it is absolutely amazing. I think your depression and feeling of everything being overrated is a you thing, and not everyone feels that way. This has been the best decade of my life and I have been poor the whole time, just hustling and making things work how i can with jobs and money and exploring the world and the people

Been there, done that (and tons of adrenaline/extreme sports on top of that), it feels amazing when you discover it and few more years, but novelty wears off a bit eventually. Had kids, and those years brought some nice memories and personal growth, but otherwise they were shallow.

There is no more depth in life than raising kids properly, the good and bad combined. If you are up to it.

I'd agree with you. As a sidenote, I held an American professional Superbike racing license through most of my 20s and did a whole bunch of crazy stuff I won't mention here on top of it. Watched several people die and get maimed in one of the many races I competed in. Before that I spent some time in the Marines, including time in a warzone. I have a few regrets from a couple bad decisions I made, but I enjoyed every moment of that absolutely crazy life and never felt more alive looking back at it. It seems like an old dream I had at this point - In my 30s I slowed down, got married and had children. It's much different than my previous life, but it's been a wonderful and powerful experience as well. I feel like I've had my cake and ate it too, and you bet ya I feel blessed every single day to be here taking my share of fresh air.

It would be interesting to see my thoughts if I had never had kids, but I feel as though it would be positive either way because I choose it to be.

That being said, I do feel personally like there is more to life than living for yourself. Whether that transfers to having kids or volunteering somewhere to help others, etc., I'll leave that decision to the reader.

> If it makes you feel any better I delayed having kids and spent my 30s dating and hanging out and going to bars – and it was terrible.

I didn’t have kids until my 40s – didn’t delay, it just worked out that way – after getting married in my late 20s, spending…very little time dating or hanging out in bars, and it was wonderful. So was having kids. And once I had them, I certainly wouldn’t have minded having more of the energy of youth with them, but I also don’t mind the life experience that I had first.

> I had a nice career and could go anywhere and do anything I wanted, but it turns out none of that made me even a little bit happy. […] Happiness is extremely overrated.

Happiness isn’t overrated; as you yourself explicitly note, you didn’t find it and were miserable because of that.

> Now I’m tired and busy and I don’t go out and do “fun” stuff very often, but I’m much more satisfied. My biggest regret is that I waited so long to start my life. Brunch isn’t life.

Brunch (both literally and, as I understand the use, metaphorically) very much is life (not all of life, but, in its slice, as much “life” as anything else), for many people.

So can kids be, for many people.

So is anything you have a passion for, whether its the activity, or the companions, or the mission motivating the activity. (Bonus if it is a combination of all of those.)

Doing things merely because you’ve got the idea that it is socially expected that they will provide happiness, though, usually isn’t going to be it.

> Happiness is extremely overrated

This seems like a strange conclusion to draw, it doesn’t sound like you were happy

Somewhat disputing definitions - he’s talking about the low stakes idle hedonistic “happiness” from commonly thought of as pleasurable things (brunch, camping, food/drinks with friends, etc.) vs. the type of more difficult stuff that while maybe less pleasant in the day to day moment is often more fulfilling over longer time horizons. Not worth arguing about the word meaning rather than just taking the underlying argument for what it is (imo).

One take away I had from Tim Kreider’s “I Wrote This Book Because I Love You” was that everyone he met who was older and unmarried had a certain aloofness about them or continued search for meaning. This largely wasn’t present in those that had families. We have a strongly selected source of fulfillment baked in as part of the human experience, it may not be for everyone but it’s probably not something that should be dismissed lightly.

Looking at old people and what they regret (and what they value) at the end of their life can be a way to help make fulfilling life decisions, or at least try to steer things in that direction.

> he’s talking about the low stakes idle hedonistic “happiness” from commonly thought of as pleasurable things (brunch, camping, food/drinks with friends, etc.)

But it doesn't sound like they were happy even by this definition..

This is a mistake in my original comment above. My first use of "happy" should have been replaced with "satisfied" or "fulfilled." My sloppiness confused the message a bit.

I don't really believe happiness exists without kids. Happiness can exist when you are a kid and it can exist when you have kids. It cannot exist otherwise. You can be satisfied at any point of your life, with or without kids, but you can never be happy.

I remember being happy --- I was a kid. I remember when it stopped --- gradually when I became a teenager and completely when I became an adult. I had a career, I had money, more than I could spend. I had a loving wife, better wife than I ever expected to have. I lived in a free country. I was passionately interested in a myriad of subjects: Films, books, sports, programming, science, I had a lot of hobbies, never stopped being busy. All those hobbies I had since I was a kid. But I realized that I don't see them the same way I saw them when I was a kid.

Sports, I hated long-distance running as a kid, found it tedious and grueling. As an adult, I would run and run and run, run through pain, through exhaustion, became sick with over-training, developed anemia, had multiple injuries, had pain almost every day, ran through injuries because I didn't want to lose fitness, reached almost 20 BMI, was frail and weak. What for? Nobody cared, not even me. It was just an obsession, looking for something that wasn't there.

Science, it was no longer the wonderful curiosity-satisfying endeavor that it was when I was a kid. It had become stressful research, anxiety to learn as much as possible, guilt and feeling of worthlessness when I couldn't really understand something after studying it for a period of time.

Films, I would watch 100-150 per year. Had a film-club subscription and watched pretty much everything they put on. Went to film festivals and watched 30+ films in a week. Watched something at home regularly. When you watch so many films they become tedious and you hate 90% of what you watch but I had to keep doing it because, what else would I do with all the free time I had?

I realized that there's nothing wrong with all those activities, what's wrong is what I expected from them. I wanted too much from them. I wanted them to give meaning to my life which was at a point when no meaning could be extracted by such activities.

And then I had kids. It was stressful, yes, it was tiring, yes, but oh boy --- no doubt about it, I was happy. I wanted to run out on the streets screaming from my happiness. I could not get angry any more. Everything that happened to me I just smiled and went on. And 6 years later I miss every time I awoke at night, every time I held them screaming. I am absolutely and positively sure that there can be no greater happiness in this world than the one I felt back then. I realize that I can have another kid now but it won't be the same.

And it all feels like it was one second ago. It all passed me by in an instant. Now my kids are old enough to do almost everything by themselves. Soon they will know how to read. I now do all the activities I mentioned above. But no obsession. I run enough to stay fit. I started weight-training which made me feel and look better than ever. I study science with a smile and with an understanding that I will never understand everything.

Everything has meaning now.

I think you are trying to fit the narrative to your own bias and experience. Tolstoy thought the opposite, to offer a countervailing outlook. > I cannot now help seeing day and night going round and bringing me to death. That is all I see, for that alone is true. All else is false. The two drops of honey which diverted my eyes from the cruel truth longer than the rest: my love of family, and of writing -- art as I called it -- were no longer sweet to me. Tolstoy

Now, as to how he dealt with this angst, that's a story for another time

> Weekends are just chaos...

It is normal that kids take up all your time, but "just chaos" doesn't sound right.

Without knowing your situation, maybe this helps: As you probably know first there was authoritarian parenting (rule the kids), then permissive parenting (let them do whatever they want), both of which create problems for the children.

The parenting-style agreed upon today by psychologists is "authoritative parenting", which basically means telling the kids what you want them to do, but giving them a lenient timeframe and freedom to chose how and when they do it. It raises their self-esteem and encourages them to work together with you.

https://www.healthline.com/health/parenting/types-of-parenti...

> As for enjoying hanging around with kids.... I don't know what age that starts, but I'm 5 years and counting.

My kids are 6 and 8 and I have enjoyed spending time with them since they were little. I do get tired and want to be alone after a while tho.

I think we should just accept the fact that some people enjoy children and some don't.

It makes sense, some people like ballet some outdoor activities some videogames, there's no reason to expect kids would be different.

> I just don't have any time for any of my hobbies any more

Exactly this. I have 2 under six, and outside the odd night were my wife bathes both kids, from 6am to 9pm I’m either working or hanging out with my kids. Maybe 2-3 times a month I’ll get 4 hours to myself to go watch a baseball/hockey game.

At the end of the day though, I look back and I’m grateful. I tell myself “where did my hobbies go” but deep down I know I probably would have spent that time watching a 3 hour super smash brothers documentary or re-reading LOTR or something stupid like that.

Kids have made me more focused. Their unconditional needs force me to weed out the time wasting, unimportant things in my life. I honestly sometimes wonder how it ever felt like I was busy before.

When we had kids I realized that I had to get new hobbies because I wouldn't be able to keep doing the old ones. I pretty much decided that cooking and looking after house plants were going to be be my new hobbies since I knew that I would actually have time for it because of necessity (well maybe not the plants). It worked out OK, I still enjoy cooking a lot.

Parent wrote "The sleepless nights and diaper changes are a mere blip on the scale of a lifetime with kids." You still pretty much in the middle of that blip. It is exhausting. When your kids are getting closer to 10, you will have a very different perspective. And you will have as much time as you want to enjoy hobbies, going out, etc.

Source: I have a 12yo at home.

> haven't had any time for myself until the kids are down at 7.30

I have three kids (3, 6, 9) and we don't get to sit down without kids until around 22:00 on average. Sometimes it's quiet at 20:00 (the youngest two asleep), sometimes at 00:30.

We have no life outside of work and kids. It should eventually get better though, as soon as the youngest two start being able to sleep themselves.

I’m kind of in the same boat as you, but I don’t think it’ll last forever. We’ll get some personal time back, but in the meantime hang in there.

Sounds like you are the breadwinner, have you thought about the financial feasibility of taking an afternoon off, at least until the kids are at school and a lot more independent?

One hobby I picked up when my kid was about three was crochet (men can do it just fine), so we spent afternoons at the playground, she playing with other children while I did crochet e.g. a hobby horse.

Have you had your blood checked in the last year? You could very well have a vitamin D deficiency which will explain the exhaustion.

It's hard to have empathy, because my weeks are 70-80 hours every week and I honestly still feel like I have plenty of down time.

In terms of time you have the time based on your profile. Plenty of time spent on HN. You're also gaining the equivalent of work+commute every Saturday & Sunday.

>> 3) You actually like hanging out with your own kids.

> I don't know what age that starts, but I'm 5 years and counting.

I hope it kicks in soon. I love spending time with my kids. They are 8 & 11 now. Sure they can be annoying and as they get older more viscous arguing...

But still I look forward to go for walks with them or have a little minecraft session together, or just some simple lego. Or just fixing/building things together around the house, inside or out. Sometimes not or just for short periods. But I look forward to the next time.

I have taken a lot of time off on purpose to spend as much time with them as possible whilst they are young. And working from home before we all had to.

Still they get super excited to spend time with me on anything. But my oldest is now 11 and I can feel she soon will prefer hanging out with her friends and not her embarrassing dad.

But I agree, weekdays when I am working full time it is still knackering. I dream of them all being in bed at 7.30. And spending time with and looking after my kids means I have no time for friends or most of my hobbies at weekends.

Though as the older one may soon want to spend less time with her dad that also means she require less of my supervision as she goes to clubs and sports after school, and organises her time herself more independently.

So I may soon have time for hobbies again. Mid-life crisis here I come.

Are you exhausted from the kids, or because your job exhausts you too much to have energy left for them? In which case change jobs? Sure kids are tiring, temperamental, they go completely hyper, argue incessantly about stuff, don't get ready to go out when asked, don't go to sleep then are tired and fractious next day, change their mind about what they want to do when you made a big effort for them, fight with each other (as well as being very nice and caring to each other next minute) etc etc. But they're delightful, and funny, and super companions at the same time. As for hobbies, as others have said, finding hobbies you can do with your kids is good. The great outdoors and music making can be shared at a young age, if they're into that. I found even reading them stories, as they get older the books get more interesting, many kids books are actually fascinating for adults.

Kind of makes me anxious about having kids but I have also heard, on the other end, senior people expressing how gloomy it feels to not have kids. And unlike the tiredness of having kids, that anxiety only grows forever till the day you die and all you leave behind is a nice car.

My algorithmic approach has always been:

1. You’re 100% sure you don’t want kids? Then don’t.

2. In all other cases, have a child. Even when in doubt.

Years will pass and doubt may perish, but with it also the ability to have children.

This seems like the most inhumane way to make the decision discussed, even if you're not necessarily wrong for taking this approach. I can't imagine what it'd be like being a small child in a household where your parents "had doubt" and turns out they didn't really want you after all. You can't fake it well enough for 18 years where they wouldn't notice. Just sad imho

I have two kids under two. It's tough, but i dont personally know any parents that don't have a ton of fun with their kids. I love spending time with my 2 year-old. We have tons of fun together (like many 2 year olds, outside activities are a must). I'd rather be with him than any of my friends or other family and wouldn't trade it for the world.

The best phase is about to begin, and the worst of child raising is behind you. It will never be easy, but IMHO older kids are a lot more fun, clever and interactive.

My experience of having kids is very similar to yours. But I will say that I'm starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. My kids are now 8 and 4, no more diapers or waking up at night. My wife and I are getting better at managing parenting responsibilities and lifts. My life is getting more balanced again. And I'm feeling a shift closer to what the comment above yours describes, although I'm not entirely there yet. To be fair though we have 4 grandparents to help plus a nannie so not representative of most people.

The big change for me was year 6.. so hang in there friend.

When they are 6 they become much more self contained, they don't need constant entertaining. They will leave you alone, without being asked, for hours at a time to do what they want to.

You have 2 so you will have a bit of a longer spell, but after 6 you enter into the high summer of their childhood. They are small enough not to have any real problems (apart from, god forbid, medical ones) but they are big enough to give you time and space to breath.

I hear your pain. But it will be worth it, and it will improve.

Dont have kids if you're poor.

It is exhausting. My kids are 9 and 11. It’s different, but still all consuming.

Still, I think it is very hard for anyone to predict what some one else’s experience will be having kids. It depends on the kids temperament, yours, your spouses, how your relationship works, What the expectations are in your community, and so much more.

The older I get, especially now that I see my parents really aging, the more I see life is just complicated. Kids or not, you have to find happiness where you can, and accept that sometimes things are imperfect.

> I don't think I'm necessarily having the same experience as you.... my advice to people who aren't sure if they want kids, is DON'T. It's bloody hard, you sacrifice A LOT. Don't have kids unless you're very sure it's what you want.

That's one perspective. I wasn't ready for kids but had one anyway. It's worked out fairly well. My kid rocks and we have a lot of fun.

> have 2 kids under 6 and I feel like I just don't have any time for any of my hobbies any more. I leave for work first thing, come home in the afternoon, and haven't had any time for myself until the kids are down at 7.30, and I'm utterly wasted.

I have one and I started to get back into hobbies around their age 7. So I would imagine having two slows that process down a bit. I'm pretty sure you'll get some time back, but you might need to stick it out a couple more years. If you can, tweak your hobbies to include them a bit (obviously it depends on the hobby) - mine really liked synths for a couple of years: that was great fun :-D.

Something that hit me hard recently was that when I do my hobbies & socialising, I do them away from my family. This now looks like a mistake. I think I should have worked harder to have kid-compatible friends and hobbies over the last couple of years. I'm aiming to do more more activity stuff (camping, surfing etc) with mine over the next couple of years. Deeper into their teens, they wont want to hang out with me much so I need to get it done now.

> As for enjoying hanging around with kids

It's really hard. You've got to get into undirected play yourself. I didn't do this enough.

I didn't genuinely enjoy parenting until my kids were all above 6, and it was gradual. My kids are 16 and 14 now, and at the start of their summer break I left a job I really liked to spend as much time as I could with them. Their problems were more thought provoking and time intensive, navigating tough tradeoffs. I love helping them through these moments, teaching critical thinking, and we still have fun doing things.

When they were younger, I tried to find some longer focal point and figure out what my role and goals were as a parent. I found that, and it helped relieve some of the repetitive stress of parenting young kids.

I don't know the source for the "75% of the time we spent with our kids happens before age 12" but I hope it isn't true. Kids are inexperienced people, and experience cultivates interesting people. I also believe an hour spent with a glassy eyed baby barely counts compared to a thoughtful, focused 15 minute discussion with a teenager.

I hope you find your groove. It took me a while.

To cap it all you'll feel guilty for feeling this way in later years when they're gone.

Do you think your own parents felt this way?

My kids are older now (10 and 13) and I really enjoy these years than when they were younger whereas my wife really enjoyed them more in the earlier years.

That period of enjoyment really varies between individuals, and I think in the aggregate men tend to enjoy hanging out with older kids compared to women. There was also a moment when I shifted my own personal attitude towards spending time with them that made it more enjoyable. Instead of seeing time with them as a time-suck where I could be doing something else, I saw it as fleeting moments that I could never get back when they're older. I became more grateful for the time I had with them.

I would agree mostly, but this comment a little on the extreme side IMO. You sound miserable.

I can relate as this is exactly how I felt the first 6 months of the first child we had - they are between 4 and 7 now. I was and still am a pretty selfish person with lots of hobbies, but most of them had to go to the backburner for the time being. Once I was able to get over myself things started going a lot smoother.

Of course there are times I wish I could be mountain biking, fishing, etc., instead of one of the many tasks that involve children, but I find myself looking forward to spending time with them these days. They are getting to the age where I'm starting to take them with me to enjoy the things I love as well. I imagine this will get higher in frequency as they get older.

From one selfish person to another, hang in there.

Life was pretty vapid in a deeper sense until I had children so I have to disagree with you. It is a challenge but is the only challenge that I have experienced in my life that truly feels worthwhile.

> I have 2 kids under 6 and I feel like I just don't have any time for any of my hobbies any more

I remember feeling like this when I had 2 kids under 6. Now they are both slightly past 6 and I feel everything the parent comment said about how brief that time was - they are in school most of the day, when they are home they spend at least some time playing Legos, watching shows, playing Minecraft, reading books. I have more time for hobbies than I've had in years. They are even starting to be old enough to accompany me on some of my hobbies. The reversal is so stark it's hard for me to comprehend how long it felt at the time and how short it looks now.

My kids are 5 and 2. I spend increasing amount of time with the 5 year old. Doing different projects, reading, math, teaching him how to read watch, talking about how stuff works. I don't know if it's less, it's just different.

Completely agree with this comment. Having two kids is the best thing that's happened to me in life. Sure it's hard, especially early on. But to see them grow and make the right decisions is a better feeling than any work project or hobby can provide.

Glad it worked out for you but I have to disagree 100% -- we have 2 kids (2 and 5) and it feels like they're only getting more time intensive as they age.

Your anecdote about work made me laugh - my wife and I (both fully remote, WFH) have been dreaming of finding in-office jobs just to have more time away from the kids. I now relish my time at work, the only reprieve I'm able to get!

Not my experience at all.

The problems get more complicated, but further and further apart. The need for minute by minute management evaporates.

> 2) The sleepless nights and diaper changes are a mere blip on the scale of a lifetime with kids. You deal with it, then the kids grow up quicker than you think.

The days are long, but the years are short.

As a parent of an 15 and an 18 year old I have to agree - it’s also my go to phrase when I meet a parent of a younger kid. It’s hard but enjoy those years.

Yeah but now I have to consider suicidal teenagers and climate change. I'll be lucky to live to 70, my (potential) kids, maybe 60, if the environment doesn't completely collapse.

Climate change won’t affect you unless you are poor. If you are poor then being poor is a much more immediate problem.

The wildfire smoke every year impacts millions of people in the west.

Just this summer I was watching the Mosquito fire updates daily to see if we were going to have to evacuate. Fortunately it rained and prevented that.

There were days where we had to huddle in one room with multiple air filters going to keep the air breathable. Couldn't really go outside at all. The AQI outside was well over 500 for days at a time.

Not poor, and I'd say we were pretty impacted by it.

Climate change, even in the best case scenarios, is affecting everybody, not just the poor, just like economic growth affects everybody. I don't even want to think about the worst case scenarios.

At least your kids won't be eaten by lions (probably).

> time-intensive parts of parenting don't last forever.

Time is not just measured in times of hours, days, and years, but also in emotion and $$$.

The only time I regret having kids is when I see them suffer (even for small things like being down with flu). Much easier to suffer ourselves than see our own kids suffer. Really brings out the vulnerability in people.

You're not wrong, but your life never goes back to its pre-kid state.

My kids are all adults. I still think about them every day, advise them, help them, worry about them. When my wife was pregnant with our first, an older co-worker said "your life will never be the same" and she was right.

> The sleepless nights and diaper changes are a mere blip on the scale of a lifetime with kids.

You're looking at what, 2-5 years of that? Per kid? Plus the huge time commitments for all of the other burdensome stuff that having kids entails, like school and transport and non-school education? 2-5 years out of a lifetime isn't much, but 2-5 years out of your 30s or early 40s is a gigantic percentage of your remaining not-old life. Unless you're a major biological outlier, you're not traveling on sporting vacations or backpacking trips or hallucinogen-fueled music festivals when you're 55. You don't get a lot of useful years remaining as a not-old person by the time you're old enough to responsibly have kids. It's a gigantic tradeoff and to minimize it like this is woefully shortsighted.

It's fine if you like kids and didn't have actual plans to have fun in your 30s or 40s, but people with exciting lives will lose a lot if they suddenly have to dedicate almost all of their free time for 5 years to their offspring.

This is also assuming that you have more than enough money to spend on kids and all of the other things you like to do in life. Even if kids took 0 time (which as we know they do not), this is not true for most people.

> You actually like hanging out with your own kids.

Some people do. Sometimes children grow up to be terrible, for reasons outside of direct parental control. Not every potential bad final outcome can be avoided with good parenting. Not everyone who thinks kids might be a good idea is capable of being a good parent.

I personally find the idea of having huge, tremendously expensive, hugely time-consuming, unavoidable responsibilities like this in the middle of the prime of my life to be a living nightmare, for well-considered reasons which you seem to simply handwave away as trivial. Having kids and raising them well must necessarily become one of your primary goals in life, displacing others as there are only 24 hours in each day.

We don't have a lot of time left.

I have 4 kids whom I love dearly, and I don't _regret_ having them. But often I wish I could be in a sci-fi movie where I get to live two lives simultaneously; one with, one without.

It's not as much the excitement of my alternate life, or the reservation of more resources for myself (money, time, etc.) though that, selfishly, sounds nice. It's mostly the stress and ever-present burden of being a parent. I could do without it sometimes.

I know exactly what the next dozen years of my life would look like if I have children.

I don't know what the next dozen years of my life will look like if I don't. It may be cooler, it may be worse. We're going to find out, though. Ever into the unknown...

> You're looking at what, 2-5 years of that?

5 years of diaper changes? Or sleepless nights?

Diaper changes can end by mid-year 2. Sleepless nights can be mostly eased well within a year.

Of course, there's always random suck. I had a crisis that I was receiving texts up till 3AM... and then my 8 year old showed up with a stomachache at 3:30AM.

Not all kids are the same. There will be exceptions and you don’t get to choose. Our Pete child wakes up screaming in the night and is so distraught she can’t stop for hours. Many things like therapy and psych stuff have been attempted to no avail.

Murphy’s law is indeed a thing as well. All three kids waking up sequentially because of some trouble or ache. It does happen but is very rare.

Huh. I guess I see the sacrifice as making my old-person life not shit not because I have kids. So I'm investing prime years so the potentially long amount of time I'm all aged has more meaning/purpose/love in them. I'll say my aunt didn't have kids. And while we were little I guess she told my Mom she had no regrets. But at some point in our 20s, she backed off that a bit as she (finally) saw the benefit of kid.

I assumed I'd hate having kids until they were like 11/12 but to have the adults would make it worthwhile --- even just the chance of a close relationship with them as adults. But I'm actually shocked to find I even enjoy the baby/potato stage.

This assumes that your old person life will be shit without kids, an assumption I do not think holds true.

I don't think it will be pure shit, no, but at the point I can't physically do fun things anymore (whenever you think that will be) there really isn't much let to DO which means your relationships are going to be clutch. And the longer the relationship the more meaningful (generally), so having kids seems like a strong enhancement.

I don't think it's binary "sucks/not sucks", but I do think, for me, it'd clearly be sig LESS fun to be old without kids based on what I've seen of the older people in my life with different family situations. Seems shitty to me.

I'm sure there are people who have the opposite experience, but I was trying to explain why the "sacrifice" of prime years can be seen as an investment rather than a straight loss.

> It's fine if you like kids and didn't have actual plans to have fun in your 30s or 40s, but people with exciting lives will lose a lot if they suddenly have to dedicate almost all of their free time for 5 years to their offspring.

The audacity, unbelievable. So I guess I'll stop having fun now go back to my boring life?

1) You may be good at this or have some situation in terms of support structures or lifestyle where this is particularly easy, but this is not at all what many parents I know/encounter express to me (as a person who's openly childfree). The combination of more than one kid and 2 parents working FT out of the home, seems to equal an absolutely exhausting long-term grind for many unless they've got a lot of family nearby who are both willing and able to share that load.

2) To be replaced by endless after school activities/sports, events, and other child-related things. Fine if you like them, but if not you're not seriously getting your free time back until maybe the teenage years. A decade+ in the prime of your life is not a "mere blip" to many.

3) You do (which is great - clearly you're the sort of person who should have kids). There are a lot of people who have children and....don't suddenly find an appreciation for children. The vast number of children in the world with a willfully absent, abusive, or simply disinterested and not loving parent stand as a clear counter-argument, and the statistics on child abuse/neglect are pretty awful.

On the anecdotal side - It's pretty heartbreaking how many of those I grew up with (who had outwardly normal, upper middle class families) turned out to have those sorts of terrible parents and traumatic childhoods...and those are just the ones I know about. I'm thankful I didn't have that childhood, but a shocking number of children do.

I think it's misleading to promote this ideal like it's just going to happen for everyone who has kids and leads to people who shouldn't have children having them and resenting them or worse.

I think you’re painting a pretty simplistic and distorted caricature of reality.

I don't think I am, at least speaking to the US, but if you've got a particular argument I'm open to hearing it.

-----------

Just as some related examples to illustrate that there's a whole lot of children not growing up in some idealized life though:

~23% of children in the US live with one parent and no other adults in the household.

~40% of children born to married parents in the US will see those parents divorce before they turn 18.

~40% of children are born to unmarried parents. I don't know where to find what the rate for those parents splitting up is, but I'll assume it's probably not better than the married ones.

1/7 children experienced abuse or neglect in the past year, 1/4 will at some point in their childhood.

I think the statistics look different if you look at it in terms of percent of parents instead of percent of children. There's a certain segment that has lots of kids, either out of wedlock or in circumstance especially vulnerable to divorce and vulnerable to conditions which create unintended neglect due to scarcity of resources. Fewer number of kids is also associated with circumstances associated with more privileged background, which skews the statistics to look very different in % parents vs % children.

Also bear in mind some states consider neglect something like "allowed 8 year old to play at park by himself 2 blocks from the house and within line of sight from a trusted neighbor's house" or "left child in locked climate controlled running car while walking inside to pay gasoline because card reader was broken and didn't want to expose child to crackheads/drunks lingering next to the register (if you use inner-city gas stations you know what I mean)."

Also did those splits happen because of the children , or because of the parent's issues with each other or the world? It's often the later.

> but this is not at all what many parents I know/encounter express to me (as a person who's openly childfree).

My experience as a parent and talking to other parents in my social circle couldn't be more different.

It's possible that your "openly childfree" status is biasing your conversations with others toward viewpoints that support your childfree identity. Personally, I learned long ago to avoid discussing anything about parenting with people who make childfree part of their outward identity, because it seems they only want to argue that my experience as a parent is somehow wrong or invalid.

> Personally, I learned long ago to avoid discussing anything about parenting with people who make childfree part of their outward identity, because it seems they only want to argue that my experience as a parent is somehow wrong or invalid.

Aren't you doing that exact thing when saying this:

> It's possible that your "openly childfree" status is biasing your conversations with others toward viewpoints that support your childfree identity.

GP never argued that you're wrong or your perspective is invalid, just that there's a spectrum of experiences, and that you shouldn't expect everyone to have the same experiences you do, and that you shouldn't blindly encourage others based on your own experience. It's one thing if you know the person well and can point at specific things about them you think suggest they would enjoy parenthood, but it's not something that be laid down as a blanket statement.

Why would I tell a childfree friend about the joys of parenthood? Who would do that?

To somebody who's just Wrong on the Internet, though, I would happily say that it's not the most important thing. It's the only thing.

Good luck!

People have made having kids into a Mission Impossible: as if the only way to raise them is to give them the most perfect time, education, fun, etc. There is a difference between understanding it is a bit of a commitment, that there are better and worse ways to do things, as is true for any worthwhile endeavor, and setting yourself up for failure by imagining you can do no less than fully plan out and control a perfect upbringing.

Have a little faith in yourself, humans have done this for a while, without both knowledge we have now (which will help you) and unhealthy perfectionist culture (which can only stand in your way). I'm the last person to convince anyone to get kids, but, as in other parts of life, I object to the perfectionist path. If that's what's stopping someone: relax! It's a big deal, but not the mountain you imagine it to be.

Also, you probably have no idea of the rewards. I didn't expect kids to be fun from basically day 1. To see them experiencing and learning from the very first days on is such a treat! Also, biology has prepared you with instincts that you don't know exist until you need them.

You know what’s kind of weird?

…When people say they can’t do any of their own hobbies because they have kids.

I get it if you’re into kinky or extremely dangerous hobbies BUT…

- I’ve always shared my hobbies with my kids. When I was really into making music, I gave my toddler at first Toca Music and then eventually their own iPad with GarageBand and we would just make songs together.

- When I wrote apps, I taught them Scratch. I’d work on myself and they’d do their own kiddie stuff next to me.

- Same with working out, I grab the weights while my kids do calisthenics and then we go jogging together.

- We read books together. Sometimes the same ones or different ones.

- We go out to eat and try different cultural foods. You name the cuisine my kids have eaten and probably love it from Armenian to Senegalese.

Make your kids a part of your hobbies (don’t force it on them) and your lives will be more richer for it.

Trust me ;)

This is good advice but you have to change your expectations. You’re not going to get the same kind of run with a 5 yr old as alone, for example.

This advice is great on paper, but hard to impossible to practise. I see some of my older friends can do it with their kids who are 8-12 years old, but there seems to be a very short period of time between being able to actually do something with them until they have their own interests and hobbies.

Put the 5 year old on your shoulders and make it twice the workout :p

My daughter used to climb on my back when I did push ups for some additional resistance. She used to give me a light slap if I was taking too long between reps.

Good times.

Funny, my son does that to me now! But he's 43 pounds. I can't really do more than a few with him on my back

I agree but sadly my 3 year old isn't able to rock climb, and he's a danger to himself in a room with free weights (much less actual plates), so I think I may just have to pick up additional hobbies.

Maybe he’s too young now but many kids like climbing in general so soon you might be able to go climbing together :)

Exactly, and the only way to one day be actually have teenage kid(s) to share the joy of climbing with, is to have earlier looked after young kids that weren't ready yet to go climbing. ;) OK, some people may say when they're teenagers they'll just want to "hang out at the mall" but I suspect some things, like e:g rock climbing, or making music, are potentially still very cool to teenagers even when being done with parents. (Disclaimer, ours are still young, so yet to see if they'll want to do that later, but their level of interest in the outdoors and music is highly promising so far...)

Maybe all you need is one more year. I'm bouldering with my 4yo weekly :)

This is the mode I am in with my kid. Got him started on making and coding at a very early age and he took to it. He's 12 now and doing some significant things with Python, 3D printing and Arduino; the latter two were new to me so I picked up a couple of cool hobbies. He's an avid reader so I keep filled a pipeline of good books for him, and I read them first which means I'm filling in gaps in my own education of books I should have read in high school. We went to home schooling when Covid hit and that has worked out very well.

But... I am older and I retired early (tech was very good to me) so I have full time to spend with him. That doesn't work for people early in their careers.

Anecdotally I see this with my friends who’ve had kids. A bunch of them all had kids roughly the same time (all within a year) and it’s fascinating how differently they all react. On the extreme ends you have one that nobody sees anymore because he has a child. On the other hand you have the guy that does everything he used to because, when possible he brings the baby, and when not his wife will take care of it (and he’ll do the same for her). What I’ve found most interesting is that the things he brings the baby to do (e.g. camping, or a music festival, the pub) are things the other guy would think are impossible. So I think a lot of it comes down to mindset and compromise (e.g. go to the music festival but stay in the family campsite and understand that you might not be able to get wasted but you’ll still have a great time listening to music and being with friends).

I took up tennis because of my kids. I rollerskate because (I fucking love it, inexplicably) it's the only "sport" my niece enjoys and none of the other adults will do it (helps that I fucking love it).

There was an interesting quote by Frank Zappa, along the lines of: treat your kids like adults, not property.

Here we are:

“The first thing you have to do if you want to raise nice kids, is you have to talk to them like they are people instead of talking to them like they’re property.”

Explain your reasons to them, even when you think the concepts are above them, and they will understand the effort, attention, and the body language if not the exact meaning of the words.

If they can understand the world you live in, the more likely they are to be compatible with it as they grow up.

It's not about the amount of time kids takes up in your life. It is about how kids changes your life forever. Your priority in life changes, then your life changes. I guess when kids leave us, we need relearn the life.

Diaper change and sleepless night with a new born are probably among the easiest things in parenting.

I don't know how you manage to have hobbies or activities on weekends, unless your can engage them in your hobbies. Mine are too young for that.

> young people who say they don't want kids because they think their personal lives will permanently halt the moment they have kids

They say that because they know they can't trust their kids with abusive child care system or the abusive schooling system which creates people who perpetuate the abuse to give power to corrupt government and corrupt corporations.

You can have as many kids you want and still have all the time if you don't intend to be responsible for them.

lol maybe you're seeing it with rose colored glasses... as someone seeing my friends all go thru this right now, for the majority it sure looks like their life is way more stressful and not in a good way. this trickles down into everything...work, marriage, etc. justifying it by saying it's not gonna last forever seems more like a copout, no offense. i maintain that you shouldn't have kids unless you really, really want them. your life goals will take a backseat and your marriage better be on solid ground.

I'd be curious if this holds up just viewing my friends kids. It seems from the outside, some enjoy their kids, some don't. Some have kids who are generally pleasant to be around, some don't.

I've always wanted kids but I of course imagine having the pleasant to be around kind. Not that I wouldn't do my best to see they come out that way but I'm sure most of the parents with unpleasant kids thought they were doing the right thing at the time.

They don't last forever... But they are still there. They still take time and energy, probably at a point in life where you can do absolutely everything but have to choose. It also has an impact on your health, because you can't live 3-4 years with short nights and not have an effect on you. It still costs money. It still takes up some of your nights to do something else.

As a non-parent, and someone who doesn't want to be, you sound like someone saying "it's not so bad". Which it probably is, but I'm still not convinced the good outweighs the bad, and I probably never will

> good outweighs the bad

It's not that sort of rational choice. Choice can be an enemy of joy.

For most of human history you just woke up one day and found you were a parent (no immaculate miracles necessary). Birth control and career centred lifestyles have changed that. And that's mostly good, at least for child welfare.

But what if life were more arbitrary? I remember that strange study on happiness that followed the fortunes of one group of people who won a lottery, and another who had life-changing serious injuries. Fortune or misfortune could not account for their long-term happiness, because people are complex and adaptable.

I think it's similar with parenting. Having children is both the worst and the best thing that can happen to you. Some days you wake up and think "You ruined my life. WTF am I doing?". Other days are filled with sublime ecstasy, feeling literally blessed with something you know is missing from other people's lives, and feeling eternally grateful. And those two feelings are not incompatible.

> It's not that sort of rational choice.

It has to be. It's all nice and rosy to feel blessed by sharing your life with another human being, but it is a lifelong commitment, with a good chunk of time and money dedicated to it. If I look at the first link investigating income (https://www.investopedia.com/median-income-by-state-5070640), I see that between 9% and 19% people are below or at the poverty rate in the US. Is it rational to have a child in this situation ?

Children take focus and abnegation for education. Do you have the mental space for them ? Will you keep your cool at all time and never let anger get the better of you ? Do you have the support structure for helping you, the parent, when things go wrong ?

Only people with comfortable lives, who can afford kindergarten, nannies or people-to-whom-you-drop-them-off, all the specific furniture, can say the choice is not that rational. But that's definitely not where most people are.

I can relate to number 3 so much. Especially as kids get 4 years old and older it becomes a lot of fun to spend time with them. And it’s not even playing with them that I enjoy much, though building Lego or a puzzle is fun, but working with them on homework or music assignments or karate is so satisfying as you see them grow and you do see that your presence actually makes a big difference in their motivation when they approach some task.

> The sleepless nights and diaper changes are a mere blip on the scale of a lifetime with kids. You deal with it, then the kids grow up quicker than you think. Don't let the idea of the first few months/years define your entire decision for how you want to structure your family for the rest of your life.

This is just a common feature of our perception of time not constrained to child rearing. Past years seem to have gone by quickly while the present moment seems to have an eternity in front it. It's also a common feature of our perception to rationalize past decisions as foundation of the current moment ("wouldn't trade it for the world") without really understanding the counterfactuals (are you sure you wouldn't?).

Anyway I agree one should generally not let the experience of a few years of hardship detract from a life direction they may find fulfilling, but one should also not take the present for granted or be readily willing to subscribe to a miserable present in hopes that it blossoms into a worthwhile future. We're too bad at predicting the future to make those trades reliably well (though the aforementioned bias will (mis)lead us into thinking we're quite good at it).

> You actually like hanging out with your own kids. I talk to a lot of people who are anchored to some negative experience they had 10 years ago babysitting for someone else's kids, as if that was representative of parenting life. It's not at all. At the end of the day, I actually rush to finish up my work so I can have more kid time. It's fun.

You shouldn't be so ready to extrapolate your experience to the hypothetical future experience of others who are already skeptical. Your 10 year ago babysitting example sounds like a strawman anecdote. I know plenty of people who simply don't enjoy the company of children, their own included. There is of course a biological propensity to have an outsized affection and enjoyment of one's own children, but that is not universally applied to everyone, and not everyone finds endless joy in experiencing the world through the eyes of a child or playing the role of caregiver. Some certainly do and that's great, but it's not a universal truth.

I am in early 30s and have 2 kids. Didn't particularly want kids before but also not resistant of having. Absolutely the best decision in my life. The difficult part is that experience is hard to be shared. One can only tell other their own experience but other won't share the same experience. It is like seeing the color red, we sort of know what red feels like, but only sort of. Your red is never my red, and we will never know the difference.

Every weekend is exhausting, yes. After work means another shift of work/chore, yes. They drip food all over the floor, the quibble with each other endlessly, they break everything in your house. Yes, yes, and yes. But it is joyful, it is satisfying, it is fulfilling, it is irrational. And I only get so much time together with them. Assuming 8 hours a day before turning 12 yo and maybe 12 hours a week from 12-18yo, that's about 4.5yr worth of time. 4.5 yr is really a tiny blip in our life. Treasure it while we can

I have two kids, one is independent second one is almost three but still needs my semi-supervision. Most of my time I spend working or pursuing hobbies. But outdoor time is still limited but I guess that too won’t be a challenge soon.

I have seen a few folks who are without kids in their late 30s and 40s. While they are financially successful they seem sort of lost, without any purpose. For me, having kids gives me that anchoring purpose. It’s two new humans going through their own life journey and it gives me immense satisfaction that I am playing a small part of that and that I will live on in their memories, hopefully good memories :-)

<<1) I still spend a lot of time with friends and can do most of my personal hobbies/activities on weekends. My wife and I are good at sharing the load. You don't need 2 parents watching kids 100% of the time.

I think this is one of the biggest factors in terms of successful child rearing. I am relatively lucky in that aspect that we seem to make it work ( 9/10 -- we just had a longer conversation about it; clearly due to miscommunication some expectations were not conveyed openly enough ), but everyone's situation may be a little different and accommodation may be needed to find appropriate balance.

<< 3) You actually like hanging out with your own kids. I talk to a lot of people who are anchored to some negative experience they had 10 years ago babysitting for someone else's kids, as if that was representative of parenting life. It's not at all. At the end of the day, I actually rush to finish up my work so I can have more kid time. It's fun.

Full agreement here. That was the second time I was reminded what vicarious really means.

> I still spend a lot of time with friends and can do most of my personal hobbies/activities on weekends. My wife and I are good at sharing the load. You don't need 2 parents watching kids 100% of the time.

I'm not sure there's actually anything to discuss here, but you present anecdata and I'm happy it works out for you. I guess you've talked to several people who just seem to have a completely different experience. I'd say 3-4 out of 5 couples will typically wall off completely once they have kids and you can go from seeing them every week to... maybe 2-3 times a year. Mind you, I am not complaining - I am merely trying to observe and document. If you don't need both parents watching the kid(s)? Cool. Most couples I know won't split up for the evening so one of them can go out regularly to meet friends, they will both stay at home. This sometimes gets better when the kids are old enough so they can bring them, but I've seen that take 6-8 years.

> Don't let the idea of the first few months/years define your entire decision for how you want to structure your family for the rest of your life

Coming back t your point one - 10 years can be a long time, especially if it's about losing contact to friends. When they're gone your life may have actually changed, because now you need new friends, if you value that part.

Again, please don't take this as any kind of blame - but it's not really hard to convey, and I've certainly simplified a lot of thing. You don't just stop talking to your friends because you now have kids, there are other reason - but my experience (and probably that of the people you want to convey things to) is that if your friends get kids, there's a good chance you'll lose access to them, and ultimately, lose them as friends - unless you live close and get kids at the same time.

I like to think of it as starting a new Minecraft survival world. Time-intensive at the start, but that's you setting things up to gradually needing less and less attention.

>You actually like hanging out with your own kids

My parents never liked being around me and made sure I knew it.

It all goes by in the blink of an eye. I've had my ~1,000 weekends with my oldest, and now she's at school and living on campus.

My youngest is in high school and spends so much time in activities that I only get to see her for a few hours each day and a lot of that time is while she is doing homework.

I'm now at a point in my life where I'm 100% debt free and I'm seriously considering cutting back and finding a low stress job which still offers decent benefits so that I can spend more time with her and give myself more time to spend on hobbies and with my wife.

We had kids in our early and mid 20s, so I'll have an empty nest before I'm 50 and I don't regret it one bit.

The Making Sense podcast episode with Russ Roberts[1] touched on these points with a reference to Charles Darwin who at some point made a pros/cons list of getting married. All the pros were rather boring practical things. Roberts argue that it was missing all the positive things that you don't see as a bystander (emotion based). The same goes for having children - you cant see the warm feeling inside that most parents still have for their kids despite all the hard work that is very visibile to others

[1] https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-episodes/299...

“In study after study you see that either children have no effect or they have a small negative effect. I do not know of a single study showing that people with children are happier than people without them.”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=2EiV4-ClcIs&t=36m20s

It doesn’t end there, he‘s a parent himself and attempts to not only present but interpret and justify the data.

I love my kids and agree with some things you said, but I should point out that time feels way faster since I had kids. Our "just a blip" is _months_, which is a lot of time for a human being.

And my "hobbies" were all shared with my wife, so I can still practice them, but they are all affected.

Having two close by does help: they play a lot together.

Hanging with your kids is beautiful, but at times I would like to use all my brainpower, rather than 10% of it. I can't do that meaningfully if I play with them.

Either way, I don't regret having them, they are amazing. I love how they climb on you all the time. I love how they are attached to my wife. Trying to figure out how to maintain a good relationship in teenager years, I'm afraid it's really hard.

A huge asterisk here is that this varies greatly by culture. For better or worse* certain cultures value strong family bonds and time spent with the parents, as well as bilateral support well into adulthood. Many cultures also encourage multigenerational living within a single household (or in extremely close proximity like my parents did).

For example, my parents were happy to have me live at home as long as I wanted, and in fact encouraged me to stay so I could save up. Ideally in their eyes I wouldn't even move out until I was married. In my parent's culture, I'm not seen as a loser or a burden because I'm living with them as an adult, only if I wasn't contributing to the family's prosperity. Of course I wanted to live my own life sooner than that, but that doesn't mean I left as soon as I was 18.

Because of these strong family ties I live within minutes of my parents, and still make sure to visit often, even if it's just for dinner.

*Where this can breakdown is if one does not fit neatly within the boundaries and expectations set by cultural norms.

Yes! American, Anglo-Saxon culture while widespread is not the norm.

There is such thing as Inter-generational living.

You often see advice on the internet: Why are you 20 and still living with your parents, you're a loser.

You're 30 still living with your parents, you won't amount to anything.

Yeah right!!!

Meanwhile they leave alone with a dog,

- need a ton of additional psychotherapy to stay sane.

- Need to setup appointments to see their own parents

No thanks.

> Meanwhile they leave alone with a dog, > - need a ton of additional psychotherapy to stay sane. > - Need to setup appointments to see their own parents

OTOH it's very far from being common.

> There is such thing as Inter-generational living

I'm neither American nor Anglo-Saxon, but yes, there is such thing as living hell.

Your mileage may vary. It's not inter-generational but I (31 years) live in a house with my brother (26 years) and sister (25 years) live in a house we own together all with our own respective partners, etc. It's not for everyone but I promise you this. We ain't lonely. lol.

To be fair, that is hardly inter generational.

For sure, I just mean, nuclear families aren't the only option that is enjoyable to live with.

My mom lived with us until she found a husband. It has some negatives, but I think it's handedly beaten by the positives if you enjoy your family's company.

How soundproof are your walls?

And how many names are on the deed of this house? Assuming 6 names, what happens if a divorce were to occur?

> Meanwhile they leave alone with a dog

“But I contradict myself”

It honestly makes me so sad to see how people judge each other for living with their parents. I often read/contribute to r/PersonalFinance on Reddit the most common attitude there seems to be that people living with their pares stealing free rent.

Why is it so hard for people to believe that someone might just love their family and wish to spend a significant portion of their adult life enjoying and nurturing those relationships?

Agreed it's no one's place to judge someone without knowing anything about their situation.

In saying that, where I come from in Australia it's extremely normal to spend early 20s in the family home, and I was usually the one encouraging my friends to get out. Not that there was something wrong with their families, but at least in this culture, I could see my friends living in unhappy bubbles, surrounded by the same family/friends they'd been around since they were kids, feeling trapped.

In those cases, getting out (different city, different country, at least different house) can be the best thing for people's personal development and even mental healths.

My point is just that it can go both ways depending on the specific situation.

>You're 30 still living with your parents, you won't amount to anything.

More like, fail to achieve cultural expectations, "you won't amount to anything."

The average guy living at home at 30 in USA is probably not as geared towards success as the average person living at home at 30 in a country where something else is the measure of success. There are exceptions but people who meet their own countries standards tends to correlate with overall life success.

Clearly you can buck the cultural expectations and succeed, so it's not a hard and fast rule. Of course, some cultural expectations are more difficult to overcome than others: if you piss publicly next to the highway it could earn you a felony charge and torpedo your career, even though there's no practical reason why pissing by the side of the road should make you a lifelong failure.

OTOH some people need the psychologist because they are living with their parents.

OTOH some people need the psychologist because they aren't living with their parents.

Saying "an edge case exists" sounds really helpful to push your viewpoint but if you can just put "not" in the sentence and it's still just as true... what've we gained in the conversation by saying it?

How much did you hang out with them once you were home though? With a < 12 year old, you spend a few hours in the morning + from like 5:30 pm until bedtime on weekdays, and then the entire weekend, with your kid. I lived at home for some time. I spent an hour maximum per day with my dad, including on weekends.

I lived with my ex-partner and her parents for a while, and the family would spend most of their time at home together. Easily 6+ hours per day during the week, and most of the weekend time.

Is this "spending time" or physically in the same building?

I was home "with my family" for 6+ hours but we were definitely not interacting with each other outside of meals. I was on my computer, siblings on tv, others doing random stuff. Nothing unreasonable at all.

The article is trying to point out about quality time not just physically in the presence of each other.

Like actually spending quality time together. Cooking together, eating together, talking, sometimes playing games or watching TV or a movie. After dinner we’d typically just sit around drinking tea together.

Impressive! Not many families are built as such.

I used to spend hours a day playing Call of Duty with my dad over college breaks. Good times.

Whoa. My siblings and I were in and out of my family house throughout our 20s. Hell, during COVID a bunch of us moved back in in our 30s, kids in tow.

And we spend HOURS per day with our parents when living at home, even when teens. Evenings were hanging out as a family usually, whether that meant reading in the same room, watching movies, playing board games, whatever. All during the evening when they got home from work.

Heck, family dinner alone is an hour a day.

Yes I am living with my parents continuosly for the past 24 years. Does that mean they have consumed 100% of their time living with me? I hope not

While it may be a true statistic, it seems to dramatically miss the boat. Time spent with a newborn, with an infant, with a four year old, with a ten year old, with a sixteen year old, with a twenty year old are not the same. You can have more interaction, more contentment, more sense of continuity, and more sense of family, in a Thanksgiving weekend spent with your adult child and their family than the entirety of your kid's first year.

What percent of statistics are made up again? 75% maybe?

75% are made up, 62% are made up on the spot.

As far as I can tell, this is an unsourced statistic, and something that wouldn't be that easy to measure or even define. What counts as time spent together?

Ironically, an entirely made up statistic.

My son had a springsuit at 1. We would just sit in the sand at Manresa. It was some of the most peaceful, most content, most important time in my life. I don't really remember any discussions from a holiday dinner. But I remember sitting on that beach, and the very important rocks that we examined so seriously. The texture of them. The smell of the salt air. Exploring the bucket with sandcrabs I had gathered.

Maybe you are referring to something specific about you as a person and what you value and not a general rule.

Man this reminds me of American Beauty. Good memories.

Definitely not a rule. Im pretty sure my mom doesn’t even like who I’ve become as an adult and she definitely loved me a lot as a kid. Now that I have a kid of my own, and I understand the all encompassing love you feel for a child, I find how my mom feels quite sad

What is a spring suit?

I think it is a lighter form of wetsuit intended for spring when the weather is getting warmer.

A spring suit is a wetsuit that's normally worn in cool water--e.g. in the spring or fall. Spring suits normally have short arms and short legs.

I envisioned a lycra bodysuit with springs taped all over it, so the kid would bounce up in the event of falling over.

I agree, quality is more important than quantity.

There's a common sentiment on social media that you must cherish every single moment possible with your child or you'll regret it later. While well-meaning, this can lead to parents being guilted into having no boundaries.

Setting aside time for yourself is just as important. It makes you less stressed, helps kids develop independence, and models healthy boundary-setting. For example, spending 5-10 minutes fully engaged playing with your child is much more valuable than spending an hour halfheartedly playing with them while your mind is wandering elsewhere.

Don't let numbers like "only 12 summers" create a ticking doom clock over your head, or constantly second-guess yourself, "did I spend enough time with my kids today?" Parents have enough stress as it is.

I'm not saying you should ignore your kids on the weekdays and only spend time with them on the weekends, just that you should not feel guilty about setting boundaries and taking time for yourself sometimes.

(Also: I do agree that spending time outdoors is very healthy and important, but I consider that to be a separate issue.)

And during that time that they're 12 or younger:

- Read to your young children regularly. Ideally, every day. This is something my father did with me when I was very young and I can't express how wonderful it was.

- Remember that you're setting the example for them -- make it a good example. 2 specific examples that I always observed: never use profanity (even saying 'crap' was very infrequent), and never let your kids see you drunk (tipsy maybe, but not drunk). Let them see that people can go through a normal life without resorting to excessive use of alcohol (and no drugs!).

- Always have them as your top priority. Your kids take priority over your other interests and also your job. Family is forever. Your job is your job until the next one.

- Be involved in their school. Show up to every single parent-teacher conference and every single school event. This shows the school and your child that you're serious about their education and their well-being. Do everything possible to equip them for success in education.

- Teach them the morals, ethics, and faith that you have. Never assume that someone else will (or even should). Let them see that you live by them.

- Be fair and respectful to everyone (give them the benefit of the doubt). If your child grows up seeing you being this way, they're more likely to do the same.

- Have a lot of laughs. Laughter is a great thing. Whether it's watching an old, silly TV show, reading a silly book, or just being silly yourself -- make your children laugh.

> never use profanity (even saying 'crap' was very infrequent)

Why does this matter?

Our society tends to reward people that curse infrequently?

It's more about having self respect. Why use the same language as drunken sailors and criminals?

> Why use the same language as drunken sailors and criminals?

Aside from hate speech, I honestly don't care what kind of language my kid uses. But I'd be pretty disappointed if they reduced groups of people into negative stereotypes like this.

Indeed. Some sailors are amongst the greatest people I've met. And their language was salty.

Language is communication. Context is important. You don't bust into a church or interview swearing loudly. You don't try to communicate every thought with a curse word.

But fuck it, they are handy sometimes.

If this is ironic this is a pretty funny joke, and if this isn't ironic this is even funnier.

I’ve met enough rich people to know that certainly is not true.

No it doesn't. It rewards people with the social skills to know when it's acceptable to use certain words that aren't acceptable in other contexts. But that's just a part of 'society rewards people with high levels of social skills'. If your experience has been that successful people (i.e., 'people who were rewarded by society') don't swear, then your experience has been very different from mine.

I’d say the frequent use of foul language is highly correlated with other modes of anti-social behavior.

At the end of the day rude people are inconsiderate people, if you’re not thinking about how your behavior effects others…

Do you want your child growing up to be foul-mouthed?

Who cares? As long as someone can shut it off when needed (e.g. at work) this is something that does not matter at all.

Maybe his point isn't that cursing is bad, but that you should set an example for proper manners. Like, the language they should use when talking with schoolteachers, at work, etc.

That's my household: they'll hear plenty of salt when we play Jay-Z or Run The Jewels around the house, and it's no big deal if they cuss while telling us about their day, but we'd never tell them to "Pick up the fucking dishes."

One of the jobs of parenting is teaching social norms. Children don’t instinctively know them.

Just my own observation, but all the kids I remember that cursed a lot weren't very good at English. Not sure if it is correlation or causation, but who needs to find the right word to express yourself, when "fuck" or "shit" almost certainly fit the bill?

Maybe people who curse poetically are even better at English than non-cursers, but that probably comes with age and isn't relevant to advice about children.

My anecdata is similar, but rather: the little kids I know who curse a lot and openly, have terrible manners overall. Talking nasty to grownups (and other kids), etc.

From my experience they learn from the older kids as soon as they start school. At least in my culture. My daughter came home saying "shit what the fuck" (in English, despite English not being the native tongue of the locality) one day. And now she will curse like a pirate when she hurts herself. But she already knows they are words that people attach special meaning to: she avoids them when "not needed", for example. Except when she wants a reaction, which she never gets from me at least.

We don't use many such strong words ourselves, but like with many things she learned on her own in the cultural melting pot that is public school.

> - Read to your young children regularly. Ideally, every day. This is something my father did with me when I was very young and I can't express how wonderful it was.

...as long as it's a good book.

My mom thinks I love books because she did this with us. I haven't told her that whenever she did this I was just ignoring it and off in my own imagination, or watching other kids playing in the distance when we were outside - if anything she turned me off of reading for years because she chose books I found boring, and I didn't know anything else existed. It was much later I found sci-fi and came to it on my own.

All things you can do for the rest of your and their lives. My daughter just passed her PhD General Exam today! We still read to each other :)

Beautiful

Interesting list but I'd considering being less prescriptive in the future. Hard for me to really buy in when the opinions shared are so explicitly hardline: "ideally, every day"; "never" (3x!); "always", "every single" (both 2x) "everything possible."

Part of the problem with today's parenting and why it's so demanding are these completely unreasonable expectations we are setting.

What did you expect instead? 3 nines %? 80% of the time?

A lot of the parenting blogs advise you to leave some room for being less than perfect and have a plan for how to deal with it (watching how you deal with it is often an important lesson to the kid, too).

Being able to say "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have taken away your favorite toy for a week, I was angry and made a mistake" is an important grace to give yourself.

> Remember that you're setting the example for them

I just started hitting the gym (very frequently and very painfully) when I realized that my teen/pre-teen kids did not see me just as "Daddy sits in front of his computer all day because he's smart and his job is important" but also "Daddy sits in front of his computer because he's unhealthy and not in shape."

This is very true. I was not able to put the year, but now I have a feeling the year is, yes, indeed, 12.

I have a 13-year-old daughter, and I have felt the massive distance since she turned 13. I have been working remotely (pretty much) since the early 2000s, so I'm usually at home. So, I have spent a lot of time together with my daughter. I have gone through the usual tea parties, kitty picnics/parties, park-walks, pretend ghost/monster hunts, dances, singing/karaoke, etc. Well, I became pretty knowledgeable about K-pops, BTS, and Katty Perries, and I have even listened to Justin Bieber in the car. She also used to accompany me on several business visits to experience the "offices."

Now at 13+, she is more of "leave me alone" and "stick it on a sticky," except for the occasional burst about random pop-culture discussions. I've played Roblox, listened to a few new-age musics, and learned new jargon to keep up. She can go detailed and explain a few key topics, and then I have to spend time reading up to be able to communicate later on.

Otherwise, the talks and the discussions have become rather clinical, grown-up conversation-y. Yes, I miss when I had to wake up on quite a few mornings to prepare for the toys that have walked across the room, holiday gifts pulled in by the gang of stuffed animals.

Anyway, I have a 5-year-old now, and I'm repeating the activities.

This is also a reminder of the opposite. For those of us on here, we have less than 25% of our time with our parents left.

I lost my father earlier this year. I count myself lucky that I felt very satisfied and complete in our relationship.

Fuck. I gotta go see my parents.

i likely have < 5% left. I moved internationally and have parents in their 70s i will likely see them less than 200 days in total.

My wife and I are looking to do the same in the next couple years. How has your experience been?

We’re worried they’ll get sick and we won’t be able to help. We’ve tried getting them to come with us but so far no luck.

Long, but at the end he does the stats about approximate time left with his parents:

https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html

Reading this article a couple years back got me to really question why I was planning to move far away from my parents and spend so little time with them. Changed some life plans based on that.

I wish I’d done that. Moved away, far away. Now they are long gone.

Yep. I was raised moving a lot and assumed I'd do the same as an adult. But then I thought of how rarely my parents saw their parents. And how much I love my parents and siblings. I ended up marrying a man who also traveled a lot as a child; both of us are happy to prioritize being near family.

I listened to a Hidden Brain podcast recently which told me to try and think of the amount of time we have left with any experience like meeting our parents, visiting X place etc. and it's supposed to make you appreciate the situation more and not to sweat the small stuff.

What you've wrote about time with our parents is sad but in a beautiful way.

You will some day have a meeting or likely a phone call that is that last 0.001% - because it is the last meeting or phone call. Sometimes you know it to be the last but usually you don't. But for sure you'll remember it. So make every interaction matter!

You very rarely know it is the last time you’ll do anything.

I've got two teenage boys and an 8 y/o daughter and this headline alone hit hard. The boys increasingly have their own lives and a growing amount of independence (which is good and we allow/encourage) but these days, scrolling through old iPhone photos when they're wearing Curious George tee shirts and whatnot can get you emotional fast in a way that didn't happen before. They increasingly don't need us nor want us around every last second, and I get it, but it can be a bitter pill to swallow. We're extra appreciative of every last second with our daughter now, and we tell our friends with little kids the same cliched advice to soak in every possible moment while they're young. It really is a special time both for you and them and it's when you'll spend the most time with each other.

Is there a way to share housing with them? In some cultures it's normal for second generation to live with first generation even after marriage (although nowadays they tend to separate but live close by). I wonder if NA culture would gradually allow that. I have a two year old and thinking about purchasing a nearby condo and give it (at least the part already repaid) as gift to him when he starts looking for jobs.

They will still be living their own lives most of the time, even more so during that time than they were teenagers.

Yeah I agree. Maybe more intersections when grandchildren are born. I read some stories that grandchildren having great relationships with grandparents.

This reminds me of that song I really hate, Cat's in the Cradle.

I've long since retired, my son's moved away

I called him up just the other day

I said, I'd like to see you if you don't mind

He said, I'd love to, dad, if I can find the time

You see, my new job's a hassle, and the kids have the flu

But it's sure nice talking to you, dad

It's been sure nice talking to you

And as I hung up the phone, it occurred to me

He'd grown up just like me

My boy was just like me

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon

Little boy blue and the man in the moon

"When you coming home, son?" "I don't know when"

But we'll get together then, dad

We're gonna have a good time then

Search out Cat's in the Kettle it may help the ear worm.

This is a verb between my grown son and I.

"You're cat's cradling me, aren't you!"

You can f right off with this post! Dude, really? Like you couldn't do the whole spoiler make the text black unless I highlight it thing? This friggin guy making all us old dads cry. But seriously, hits right in the feels.

I appreciate your comment.

We sang this in 6th grade, and even then I understood the devastating lyrics (I didn't see my dad much, b/c he had to work long hours and weekends+nights as a young resident->doctor). I knew even then that this song would be my truth.

Over three decades later, I love my dad but I only see him a few times a year for a few days each, and we don't talk much on the phone much.

"But we'll get together then, son."

All my friends have guided their parenting based on this song. It has had a tremendous effect on me.

While I'm not yet retired, my sons have moved away. I'm not really the sentimental type, and I enjoy having days mostly to myself again, but they are always on my mind to one degree or another.

^ This 1000%.

And they know that if they need anything, you're there for them. Always.

A few months before my dad died, he asked me to listen to that song. I knew the song, I hated it, and chose not to listen to it.

I understood his point, but didn't listen to that, either. I sure miss him now.

My father died unexpectedly and suddenly. He was not sick. At the beginning of his last Summer, I asked if I could move in with him for the Summer. “Why?” he asked. “So we can spend time together”, I said. For a complicated reason, he said no, although I know he wanted to say yes. He died at the beginning of Autumn that year, as I said, without any warning and very quickly. No time for goodbyes.

Is this the norm in NA? I live close to some elder people but their grandchildren did visit them from time to time. I guess keeping an amiable relationship when he is young is the key here? I have a two year old and have been gradually increasing time spent with him.

You can stay in the village or move to the big city in the other country and make the big money that ends up supporting them. That pattern persists a lot the world over.

Feels odd writing this, but for me, being able to defy this was a positive consequence of the pandemic.

I lived alone after I finished college and started working. 3.5 years later this whole pandemic things starts. I ended up moving back home for 2 years because my job went full remote. My siblings and brother-in-law (sister's husband) joined as well.

It was surreal living together again as adults.

Who got the top bunk?

I love visiting my family but after a couple weeks, I feel like a kid again and start acting like one. Asking for dinner, sneaking out to smoke, staying up late watching cable TV. Any extended amount of time feels unhealthy.

But now that they're about to start getting actually old, I want to visit constantly because nothing is forever.

Isn’t it crazy how much context changes behavior? I’ve found the same. Hard not to be my high school self when back with those friends.

> Who got the top bunk?

If I'm being honest, my parents had an enormous house, so we all got our own rooms and there was still an office space available. They sold it after we all moved out again.

We all made a tremendous effort to stay adults regarding keeping the place in order and cooking. We'd cycle dinner prep through all of us based on work schedules. It was interesting, and since all of our collective friends took lockdown extra seriously, there really was no one to go see.

My parents are in their early 50s, so they're definitely not young anymore, but they're still some time away from something I'd consider "actually old", but my definition may be a bit skewed because 3 of 4 of my grandparents are still with us and 2 of them have a clean bill of outside of being in their late 70s.

Uh older dad checking in ... if your parents are in their early 50s and have several children with actual work schedules ... they are not old. Heh.

It’s amazing how many people did this during the pandemic (me included).

I had a fantastic home life growing up so it was a no-brainer. Very much a "how am I supposed to have my rebellious teenage phase if you keep supporting me" kind of experience.

My heart goes out to the people who had to do it out of necessity rather than choice.

On a somewhat similar topic, I was thinking about infidelity the other day. I'm not inclined to cheat (who has the time?) but even if I were, and even if I cared nothing for my wife's feelings... cheating is just a bad mistake from the standpoint of time with kids. If I got caught, we'd probably get divorced and get 50/50 custody. I'd have thrown away HALF of my remaining time with my children. There's no pussy in the world that's worth that tradeoff.

I have that 50/50 custody. And it sucks.

on the flip side, a lot of kids experiences before 12 will be forgotten, some will be super memorable for their entire lives, but a lot of their memories of you as a "parent" and who you are as a person will be after the age of 12.

That was a bittersweet realization for me. Thinking back to my own childhood memories and what age they correlate with. I have a couple school-specific memories from 4-8 or so. Then they kick in more fully from 8-13ish. Then it becomes more "normal". My oldest is 8, so he probably will only now begin to remember our life together.

It's even more scary when you realize that many of your memories from that far ago are "enhanced" by photos, etc (the brain isn't great at distinguishing) - so take pictures/video of the things you'd like to remember, it lasts longer.

> on the flip side, a lot of kids experiences before 12 will be forgotten,

A lot of children's life experiences before 12 will shape them and their worldview for the rest of their lives, whether they actively remember it or not.

I was a stay at home parent from 0-9yo for 4 kids and now my wife is trying to kick me out of their life and get child support... fun times.

I've reached my 40s, but I have lots of memories of things I did with my parents and others from I was 4 and up. Not super special stuff either, but also "daily" interactions.

Now, I don't feel like I have a particularly great memory, I just imagined everyone could recall many different things from their childhood.

However I've noticed in the last few years both my SO and my mom often utter surprise when I recall some episode from when I was a kid, like "wow, you remember that?" Almost makes me feel like some weirdo for recalling that early stuff.

As to the topic at hand, since I do recall a fair bit from I was 4 and up, I'd say the time I spent with my parents before I was 12 definitely shaped me. So while I don't recall details of may conversations or similar, their parenting and behavior left a lasting impression.

Can relate. My parents were more strict with my study and piano practices after 10 so most of the good memories came from time before that.

My best two pieces of memories: 1) Parents took me to a geology museum and I got awed by the huge dinosaur skeleton; 2) In some Saturday nights I'd sleep between parents and we all watched paleontology programs on TV

I'll probably do similar things with my son.

I'm just like you, I have so many memories as a kid playing with my parents (mostly my dad) and my sister. From the age of 3-4, I remember my dad coming home with a new PC (didn't know what a PC was back then), "helping" him set it up, trying out games (mostly MS Paint) with him, etc. I remember playing "teaching" my dad to play with pokemon cards. I remember a lot of evenings we spent together playing Doom II, Monkey Island, Tomb Raider, and a lot of other computer games (I remember my sister would press the "shoot" key, my dad the arrow keys to move around, and I was in charge of pressing numbers 1-9 to swap weapons in Doom).

Wait But Why already covered this, from the child's perspective: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html

"It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. I’m now enjoying the last 5% of that time. We’re in the tail end."

My dad’s death caused me to reevaluate the relative value of time during my child’s very early years. Prior to his death, I primarily saw them as developmentally critical but personally unfulfilling. After his death I reoriented much of my day to maximize time spent. I regret that it took this event to make me realize this but hey, personal epiphany has costs.

Also - many thanks to the OG Nest team; thanks to your hardware I have high quality video of my son and my father together. They were only able to meet outside due to peak COVID.

Can confirm.

If you put a penny in a jar every time you spend time with your kids until they get to school, then take a penny out every time after that, you will never empty that jar.

Do you mean high school, or college? Surely not elementary...

Very interesting responses from both ends. I'd like to add a non-western perspective, and of someone who likes being a parent. You are not the same person you were before kids. Every experience changes you, and who you are. That change is significantly more so with kids. Most of us (or parenting would have been a doomed enterprise) shift from a self-centered identity to one that's stretched out to envelop your kids. It's probably easier in a less individualistic culture. As a lot of people point out, there's a part of us that seeks fun and novelty, but there's only so much out new there and the returns diminish rapidly. Kids are novelty churning machines, both good and bad. You are not reliving the same day. They change (very fast) and you change. And ultimately, parenting helps me realize that we are here for a tiny, tiny flicker of time, we are not privileged in our uniqueness, and identity that's all about us is oversold. I do want to ask much older people if parenting helps them come to term with mortality and meaning towards the end of it all, but that's a tough one to bring up and ask.

So what if we do? I am strongly in favor of thorough and regular contemplation of ones life, but it leads to really weird things, if it's led by our lackluster comprehension of time and numbers. A number is not bad, just because it clashes with our intuition. Just because something feels bad when it is presented in a certain way, does not mean it is bad.

For example, learning that x tons of food are wasted in any given context provides me with 0 useable information in relation to my life. What would be the alternative? I have assume nobody is wasting food to waste food if they could do the same thing without wasting food. It's a byproduct of trying to optimize a processes. What are these processes, what are they being optimized for? What can be done to improve them and what would it cost?

If I feel something is a shockingly big or small number – and that's what these kinds of number games always seem to aim at, for whatever reason –, I am usually just being set up to be confused and unhappy about how reality outside of my own speck of experience works.

Every human has exactly 1 testicle, or why you can't just take an average and claim that for the group.

Sure, and that's appropriate.

It's also not quite correct, because it's not a static 'you' spending all that time. We grow and age with our children. The world isn't static either. It's quite beautiful really.

Having his just is not for everybody. I have one, and I hate it. I love him, but I hated being a father. He was planned, but then when he was born, he just didn't like me, was never affectionate towards me. 6 months after he was born I got a vasectomy but never told my *ex(wife, who wanted (and now has) two more.

The only times I ever enjoyed being a father was when he visited me in Europe and we walked for hours without talking or making eye contact. Otherwise, our relationship has been just a disappointment.

Frankly, he's an asshole exactly like I am. At age 9 he told me he would be happier if I only came on his birthdays, so I did that.

Now he's 16 and I haven't seen him since Covid. Life is so much better. I would spend weeks dreaming the 4 hours of trains/taxis and 14 hours of flights to see him.

He gets spoiled like crazy, I've already put together a trust to pay for his college and buy him a house after he graduates, and I send his mother $3,000 per month.

In the end, I wasn't meant to be a father, only a sperm donor and an ATM.

Before he was born, I wanted children because my parents were dying and wanted grandchildren. Had I waited a year, my sister's twins would have fulfilled that bill and I would have been off the hook.

Since he stopped returning my texts, and I stopped sending them, I have found the most peace and happiness I have ever known. My career is finally back to where it was before he was born, I've lost 150lbs, I travel 3 months of the year, I've got a girl in many ports. I am living my best life now.

Maybe in his '20s he'll call me before I die, but if he doesn't that's his choice and I respect it.

As a stepfather who came into my stepdaughter's life when she had just turned 10, I'm not sure how this makes me feel.....

For you the stats will be different. And that’s fine.

It’s not like it’s the best 75%.

If it makes you feel better, her memories will mostly be from the post-ten year old era. Think how much of your elementary life you can remember, and then your high school.

As CATS famously said, "You have no chance to survive make your time."

We're not going to get out of life alive, and how we spend the time we have is the only real decision we can make.

I enjoyed the comments section much more than the article itself (even though it's a great article)

There is something magical to me about seeing other people's experiences (especially positive ones)

P.S. I've noticed we're in a need for more streamlined info on being a parent in the world we live in so I created a weekly newsletter for remote-working parents - https://thursdaydigest.com/

Most of my subscribers are coming from comments just like this.

Try coparenting with 50/50 joint custody. You are trying your solemn best to be a true loving and caring parent, but all the work in the world won't replace the time that is lost.

When my boys were babies my mom said enjoy every minute because you’ll blink and it’ll be over. I see what she means now, my oldest (only about 13) spends a lot of time with his friends but with me too. My youngest (10) is still my shadow and we’re constantly engaged. However, the writing is on the wall that they are their own person. I got about 6 to 7 years left and am already trying to start dealing with that fact hah.

I feel lucky. My 19 year old is still hanging around, socializing with his parents. I know it won’t last forever, but we’ve stretched it. And it’s lovely.

The statistic might be accurate but what a terrible way to explain it. "75% of the time we spend with...." what? You already lost me.

Just say that by the time a child is 12, you have 6 more summers left. The impact is greater even if the premise isn't true. Which it isn't. It's a false premise. Now you have X years as an adult.

That will be good marketing for future human mass-nurseries: "Uber Kids(TM): Now with 75% less commitment"

The flip side to this is https://seeyourfolks.com/ , a calculator which will tell you based on how often you visit, how many more visits you'll be getting.

Every time I look it's a fresh reminder to cherish all our time together.

It might be in the article but I didn't see it. Where's the citation for this statistic?

Why does it need a citation? It's absolutely plausible just based on back-of-the-napkin math. I'd be surprised if it's off by more than 10% in the majority of cases.

> Why does it need a citation?

Because a lot of stuff you read online is made up, misleading, wrong, or even all three. Either on purpose or not. The most insidious stuff is what "seems plausible" but isn't, it's how you get stuff like common myths and misconceptions[0]. Shouting "source?" at every article is not pleasant and may sound annoying, but I think we should respect people who question things (or simply want to dig more) rather than pushing back asking for "why". The pursuit of (true) knowledge in and on itself is something that shouldn't be questioned, especially in this technological age.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_misconceptions

Well sure. But how could this number actually be wrong once you think about it?

The best part of my day is my son hugging me when I return from work. No other feeling like it.

I believe the highest bitrate form of direct communication for humans is the hug. More than language, more than some hypothetical brain-computer interface.

Reminds me of another excellent read https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html

Having children is a greatest joy, purest love, and biggest happiness a person can experience. Sleepless nights and chores is nothing compared to what you get in return.

But it is also a source of endless worrying and fear for their safety and well-being.

Groundhog day sequel needed.. For some parents, it's the same day.. every day.. some have to take care of Parents and kids and will get burnt out. It is a generational problem with all the relocation to different cities for work.

This is more or less true even if this number 12 might vary from culture to culture. But I just want to say, that reading this makes me feel "sad" :-(

Sorry but I don't plan to have kids by the age of 12.

"Spend all the evenings you can with the people who raised you 'Cause all the times they will change, it'll all come around" -Lorde

A nice reminder to call your folks more often and encourage different ways of communicating until you find the right way. (calls, letters, emails, etc)

I wish the author had provided a source for their claim.

I don’t.

Quite. It's too depressingly plausible a thought as it is, without digging up evidence that it might actually be true too.

exactly -- it's almost like the author just made the number up out of thin air or something...

It looks like a back-of-the-envelope calculation to me: twelve summers before the developmental changes she mentions divided by sixteen, when they start driving, get a summer job, start dating, etc. You could probably plot a curve of hours per summer, starting to decline at twelve and declining fast after sixteen...

I'm sure it's within a +/-25% error range.

This sounds very USA specific. I live in Spain and here it is common to live with parents, take care of parents, eat with parents (daily), etc...

I get the urge to quantify everything, but please: just relax, enjoy your children, and stop worrying about calculating life like this.

Darn, wish I learned of this advice 10 years ago.

It’s better than learning it tomorrow.

Yup it’s true - make sure you spend every second with them while they’re little ones. You’ll never regret it.

Being a parent is much more than being with them until they reach 18.

That is clearly only true for people who for some irrational and detached reason hand their children over to the strangers of the indoctrination camps we still call schools.

Earth to Mars: you're a freak and your beliefs are freakish

> I still strive to treat others with kindness and respect and have largely been successful at this.

Recall that you wrote this in a comment recently, and then reconsider what you wrote above, regardless of how you might feel about what the parent wrote.

calling schools, which are just filled with normal-fucking-people "indoctrination camps" is ridiculous and ignorant and is a framing that attempts to justify violence. "indoctrination CAMPS", like "concentration CAMPs", implying teachers are nazis.

If you want to espouse freakish beliefs i am going to ridicule you. Sorry freaks.

To quote the same comment: "Learn to identify these types of people, and do not share your light with them."

The level of self-deluded irrationality you exhibit makes my point. You are the one who seems to think on a base(nazi) level. Tell me, how many nazis is the weather today? Are the nazis everywhere? Please do tell.

In case you are not catching on; just because the word “camp” appears in “concentration camp” and you have been viscerally conditioned all your life to produce negative neurological signals upon association with the code/signal “concentration camp” like any other trained animal, does not make my use of “camp” any of what you associate it with.

So you can further understand; I used “camp” because it is a camp, an assembly and concentration of facilities, you know, the root of “campus”. It is a camp, campus (whichever you prefer) within which people are indoctrinated to the state/government/ruling class whims; hence, indoctrination camp(us).

Man, is there any education provided at all anymore? It’s starting to feel like talking to the children of the corn, who do not understand how anything works.

Your inane ramblings defeat themselves.

> is a camp, campus (whichever you prefer)

It is not common vernacular to use them interchangeably. You arguing this shows how weak your attempt to backpedal is.

Who is having kids before age 12?!

Well that's a downer.

U don't want them to live with you after 25 years old anyway.

well that's a f**in depressing thought

Well yes. There's a lot less need for dipper changes after 12.

Dipper changes? Like chewing tobacco? Shame on you, kids shouldn’t use tobacco products! Haha

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