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Comment by heleninboodler | Hacker News Reader

If INTPenis hears anything I hope it's that not having kids isn't the root of this problem. I have kids and it's wonderful, but I too feel all the same lethargy and lack of purpose interspersed with bouts of helping kids with their homework and relentlessly getting their grumpy asses to school at ungodly hours every day and generally trying hard not to fuck them up. If you're already in a shitty situation, having kids definitely does not fix it.

If you find it inexplicably hard to make it to your 9am standup, try making it your responsibility to get two other humans out of bed and ready for school at 6:35 every day and then make it to your 9am standup.

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This. Kids don't help with burnout. I drive my kids to school each morning at 7:20. This is preceded by 35 minutes of insanity asking them 100 times to get out of bed, eat their breakfast, get dressed, brush their teeth, etc. This morning on the drive in, I got in an argument with my kid over the stupidest thing that is probably my fault but the result was he got out of the car upset and I drove back home irritated, sat down to work and opened my emails and essentially raged at the requests the people were asking of me. Lately my wife has been on me for not practicing sports with my kids but I literally don't have breakfast or lunch most days because I cannot get up from my desk, the pings and requests just don't stop coming. By the time I get up its dark out. I am lucky to get to the gym once a week and if I do its on a Saturday at Noon. I work from home and I had to hire a nanny just to distract the kids and do homework with them otherwise they keep coming into my office and I have to context switch and I am useless for the next 45 minutes, then they would come in again.

On Friday I committed to delivering a feature set in an insane timeline. I open my email this morning and they are asking me for a bunch of other busy work that I just don't have time to deliver but its on me to figure it out.

Life should really not be like this.

I am seriously considering a test run of taking a couple hits of marijuana before work one day to see if there is any difference on my stress level and work delivery.

I sometimes watch the garbage truck and I am incredibly envious of the two guys on the truck.

I feel this.

I am having a really hard time coping with parenting. I am logical person but my toddler is not. I like reading books and just silence which allows me to think. That is completely gone in our house now. It is mostly crying, screaming, followed by more crying. There are some beautiful moments that I will cherish, but I really have a hard time. Other times, we are asking to brush teeth, get ready for bed, get in the car, get inside, or do something else which is met with MASSIVE resistance.

I don't know how people have 3-4 kids. I would probably go insane.

I think the answer is that they're not all equally challenging. My first kid is easy as pie. Still a lot of work, but generally does what's asked of her, has rarely thrown fits, is quiet, etc. The second kid is a constant battle.

That's the nice thing about having multiple kids. The second kid situation is only 4 times harder than the single kid situation.

A second kid is nice in theory. In practice it sounds like a nightmare.

In the long run assuming the age gap is only a year or two it's actually beneficial. First couple years are very hard but after that they are friends and entertain each other. Sure they fight but when they are getting along and helping each other out it's peace on earth.

Schedule can get challenging. Kids are all pretty much great by the time they hit 8 years old. It's a bear to get there though.

Plus they are paired up at boxing so they get most of their resentment out there :)

> Kids are all pretty much great by the time they hit 8 years old.

Having a rather tricky 10 year old, I think this magic number is a bit off.

*results may vary. Not a guarantee of actual performance

Multiple family medical issues mean if I were to have another kid, there'd be more than 5 years of age gap. Then it means different friend groups, different sports/activities teams, etc. Then add in that one parent works evening hours... Scheduling hell.

And at most ONE YEAR where they actually go to the same school. Ugh.

Yeah, that is a tough one; 5 years is trickier.

It takes a village to raise a kid so find your village.

Don't get too worked up about it. The crying and screaming rate goes down as they get older. Bedtime routines get easier as they get more independent. Of course other issues might come up, but I think it gets easier as they get older.

Hang in there! In a few more years you'll remember all the good times and the hardly remember that bad times.

(Speaking from experience as a father of two biological children of 15 and 11, and an adopted son of 3. And I'm 51. I never thought I'd have a 3yo at this age. He'll start driving when I'm 64. I don't have as much patience as I used to, so I have to watch my emotions. But it's worth it!)

you wouldn't go insane. you would adjust. it gets easier.

To me the problem here, is an unreasonable attitude by the employer. Many employees are parents. We cannot work at quite the same breakneck pace. Its abusive to the whole family to expect that. Employers need to understand and make allowances, and they themselves will benefit if they treat people reasonably. You could always go work for public sector though, perhaps the government, and/or ask to work 4 days a week. The salary hit is more than worth it, even if that requires some real frugality or change in lifestyle. Time spent with kids is precious. More chilled out parents make for more chilled and better behaved (though far from perfect ;) kids. I think the garbage truck guys have to get up early so that might not be compatible ;). Might be in a union though, so salary hit might be less than expected ;)

You are not wrong.

9 meetings so far today. All booked over my blocked work time.

This is the truth. The advice I give to expectant friends is this: get your shit together, mental health wise, before that tiny human shows up in your life. My partner and I found that the stress of having a child brings all that shit up.

All of the above is true...And yet I (39 years old, father of 2 boys- aged 4 & 6) used to have existential crises routinely and I really don't anymore. Despite often being huge pains in the ass my kids make me so...Content? Happy? I don't know.

Whatever it is I don't have existential crises anymore.

Kids provide a VERY easy answer to “why am I doing this inane shit” - because they would literally die if you don’t.

And people will naturally go through lots of pain if there’s hope their kids will have a better life than they did, and there’s almost always that hope, even in total societal collapse.

And a second side effect is kids force you to get to know the parents of other kids, even if only accidentally. Many people are quite starved for general human conversation, even if it is just about the immense number of diapers encountered per annum.

I thought this was common understanding but the comments here seems to indicate otherwise. It is surprising. People’s behavior changes after having kids, and in the main this generally means they become more ‘responsible’ modulo ‘bad parents’. There is powerful biological machinery to make this regenerating process work for both sexes and it operates at a more fundamental level than higher level (‘conceptual’) processes.

I think existential crises often come because people have too much time to think. That's certainly the case with me. Perhaps you just don't have enough time to overthink things now! Kids, if you let them, also keep you in the moment pretty well - there's not much time to chew over previous mistakes when you're in the middle of a play fight.

Agreed. Every time my kid naps, I find myself with an hour of "free time", but right around the time the existential questioning would begin, he's screaming for a diaper change.

For me it was trauma from long past. I didn't get existential so much beforehand, because I had learned that looking too hard wasn't awesome. The complete life-upending force that is a slug in a onesie forced me to look at a lot of things. Further, keeping my relationship / career / everything else afloat required me to then do something about what I saw.

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