At the same time I do think articles like this should be countered with the reality that many fathers aren't overwhelmed with waves of love or "surreal magnificence". With each of my children being born the primary emotions I could point to were dread and anxiety.
The sudden overwhelming obligation to provide care, comfort and security for such a vulnerable human for decades encompasses your being.
One of the reasons birthrates have plummeted in the West, and sentiments about having children have dropped, is that we have no "village", so to speak. Having children is not only an astronomical expense -- every single element of life is dramatically more expensive, made much worse with the housing crisis occurring in many Western nations -- a couple is often entirely on their own. There are no respites or breaks.
And as children get viewed as a selfish luxury, the social norms for what a parent needs to do to be proper climb ever higher.
I personally found the complexities of parenting and, even more importantly, family life, don't really start to emerge until after the first few years.
Talk to divorced parents of older children about the "Surreal Magnificence" of parenting and you'll likely get a hearty chuckle out of them.
* Divorced parents aren't representative experiences for most parents. (The oft-used statistics that >50% of marriages end in divorce miss that those with one divorce often end up with N divorces. Aka most PEOPLE, and most COUPLES, do NOT end up divorced)
* The job of a parent is to raise an adult. There are certainly those that become enamored with the idea of parenting a baby/toddler/child and are unprepared for the complicated job ahead. But there are also those that seem to think their job ends as soon as the child is legally an adult. Or those that are all too happy to throw away their decade plus of investment because their teenager going through absolutely normal hormonal chaos are suddenly disrespectful to them.
* In essence, I'm trying to say that divorce parents of older children are just as much full of shit as the new parents in terms of giving someone advice.
I have a two year old (well, she'll be two next week, close enough). Among my nearby friends are five couples who have have children that are one or two years older than mine. Their input has been extremely helpful in the last two years, because it's been mostly in the form of "these are the mistakes we first made and what we eventually figured out". It also helps that they are five very different couples so my partner and I can compare their experiences and figure out what applies to our situation and what doesn't.
Also, by comparison, I have friends with much older children too, and their input can essentially be reduced to "I'm sorry the first two years are a sleep-deprived haze of which my memories are limited to the photos and videos we took, so we have no advice for you."
It’s the opportunity cost of having children. When you’re poor, it’s not changing what you can do with your life. You were never able to go to dinner or on vacation. When you’re wealthy, you can afford to bring them with you, or better, pay somebody to watch them while you’re gone. The well-off middle class needs to weigh completely changing their lives.
https://x.com/theHauer/status/1222514313723875332/photo/1
From "Population Pyramids Yield Accurate Estimates of Total Fertility Rates", https://link.springer.com/epdf/10.1007/s13524-019-00842-x?sh...
When you're poor and child-less, you can still sleep in on weekends, watch Netflix/game all day/night or whatever other (cheap) hobby you have. It's even possible to do a decent amount of travelling on a very tight budget these days (low-cost airlines, couchsurfing...). All things considered, today is not a bad time to be a poor person in terms of being able to have fun.
I think even for middle class, the main cost is actually the time rather than the monetary cost.
But I do agree that opportunity cost is the right framing.
Basically it’s not really like the whole village raised your kid before, that’s more of a romanticized version. What happened was that your extended family helped because you lived with them for your entire life. So you have a kid, your sister in law watches them along with your mother while you work. Where do you work? Well that’s wherever your family works. If you are born into a farm, you are a farmer. If your family is blacksmiths, you’ll be a smith. Or a dung sifter, etc. If you can’t do it, maybe your farmer family sends you to apprentice with the local smith. But you rarely get a choice in what you do, where you live, etc.
Moreover, if you don’t like your family/they don’t like you: tough. You might hate your sister in law but who else will watch your kid while you sift dung?
What has changed is that we have the free market. Your can move out, have your own career and hire someone to care for your kids while you work. You no longer have access to “free” childcare but you have access to the job market instead. Want to leave the farm and move to the big city to become a jewelry maker? Go for it. But you won’t have much support to start a family. You are paying for free choice.
Witness the widespread shock that Joe Biden pardoned his son.
People say it’s the cost. But what’s way worse is the effort and time you need to spend for every child.
A normal couple, most often with both having to work, will be at their limits to provide for more than 1 child - constantly.
A couple can’t replace the village unless they have tons of money.
Just as one small example, daycares/schools will call for you to pickup your kid -- blowing up your day -- at the slightest indication of illness. With four kids going to school, this means two to six+ times a month your day is going to be completely blown up at any moment. I'm not complaining (though when I was a kid if you had a bit of a stomach ache you chilled in the nurse's office for a bit and 9 times out of 10 go back to class), but the average person cannot accommodate this without quickly finding themselves unemployed. This is just one of a million cases where two working parents and few or no supports leave you in a precarious situation.
Not my view, just suggesting who might believe the "children as selfish luxury" line.
It probably true but even the well of who can afford to buy the village aren't having kids.
I think it has more to do with
1. cultural acceptance and lack of strict cultural pressure to have kids. Its unimaginable in India to not have kids by choice. Its not a choice at all unless you want to be pariah.
2. Availability of affordable widespread recreation that will keep you occupied. Affordability of lots of on demand TV, dining out, live music, internet, hobbies, travel ect.
I’m very happy for people who have children and love them to bits, but many of just don’t want to.
That doesn’t make anyone who has kids or wants to have kids better or worse. Plenty of people have kids and should not have, and they end up neglecting their kids or abusing them.
Have kids if you want to. Don’t if you don’t. Just realize that if you wait too long to make a choice, those options become much more limited and lean much more toward not having them. And if you make the choice without thinking, you’re just gambling, but you’re gambling with someone’s life, not to mention your own.
If it sounds scary… good. That means you’re thinking about it. You just have to decide if you want to do this particularly scary thing, and if the potential reward outweighs the risk.
And, I think it’s important to be okay with that choice changing in either direction. My wife didn’t want kids, and that opinion has changed, through no pushing of my own.
(The proverbial you, not you specifically, since it sounds like you’ve decided)
Incentivize remote work so we can spread out into these cheaper and under served communities.
> And as children get viewed as a selfish luxury
e.g. https://www.google.com/search?q=children+a+luxury+item
With this comes the perspective that every downside parents enjoy is earned if not poetically satisfying. It is amazing how absolutely without sympathy -- instead holding smug satisfaction -- people are if a parent faces obstacles.
[1] Obviously there are exceptions and different situations exist in different cultures and socioeconomic settings.
There's also some deterioration as men age, but it's less obvious.
Some say the combined age should not be over 80. Shrug.
(Should be obvious fertility varies greatly between individuals.)
The high survivability of children now means that having large numbers of children dropped everywhere. You don't need to have "extras". The problem is when the number drops too much. It did in Iran due to literal government influence, and is quickly turning back to replacement level. Saudi Arabia is above replacement level.
That is very different than Canada (1.33) or South Korea (0.88), or Switzerland (1.39). The scale is dramatically different.
Yeah. This has been the worst part. Neither of our parents feel the need to help with their TIME, but they will sporadically send us money after making us feel bad about asking. Meanwhile they had all kinds of help from relatives, in time, sweat, and money. Part of the problem is that you don't get your full Social Security benefits until age 70, so for the one grandparent that is still working, they literally do not have the time to help. If they wanted to retire early, they would have to forgo what they perceive as critical $. Alternatively, they could sell their multi-million dollar home and downsize, but their egos could never handle that.
Anecdotally the more kids in a family the more neglected the child. I can't imagine having more than one child a decade and raising them well.
Indeed, it's precisely that I care so much that having children wasn't some carefree social media event for me. It was an enormous commitment. The biggest commitment a human can make, in my judgment, and I was all in.
And as another poster already said, one of the greatest gifts a child can have is siblings. This isn't always true and of course there are many counterpoints, but siblings are usually the closest friends and allies in a hostile world.
Four? So many? According to Churchill, four would be the bare minimum.
He says this at some point:
> That was the second thing Theo taught me. The first thing he taught me, at 430am in his first week, when he wouldn't stop crying, as a rage started bubbling up in me, was that no amount of urging, forcing, or frustration will get this tiny baby to do what I want him to do. All I can do is surrender and listen; find peace and meet him from a place of equanimity. Then maybe I'll have the presence of mind to change the wet diaper that was making him cry.
Ask yourself how many times per day do you take a moment to surrender and listen... If you do it (even without a kid) you will find beauty in every aspect of life. The thing about kids is that it can be so overwhelming that they give you no other choice. Of course you still have the choice of not doing it, and this can make you start building a lot of frustration against the kid, your partner, life itself...
Later I found out that post-partum depression is a real thing that fathers can go through. I went through all the stages of grief for my old life that I’d grown too attached to. Only when I’d gone through that could I actually open up to accept a newer, bigger life.
My son is 7 now. I love him dearly and am so grateful that I can be a father to him.
For me, it led to depression, therapy and medication. The first time in my life I'd experienced actual clinical depression. We do have a particularly challenging situation though. I'm always tired, ill, stressed, eat unhealthy, don't exercise enough. Being a parent is all consuming.
It has been getting easier as they get a bit older, and I love my children in all the ways a typical father does. I'd literally die for them. But a lot of the time I just do not enjoy it.
Why is it so torturous? For me, I'm a software engineer, and I became one because I'm obsessive. I like to think about a thing all day every day. The most I get now is maybe three 90 minute chunks a day, maybe a couple three hour chunks a week. If you're not like this you won't understand how it feels, but if you are, you'll know what I mean when I say learning to live without this kind of thing (I guess the term is need for cognition?) has made me into a completely different person.
It does get better though! We do daycare so when they're old enough I get a regular work schedule back. Definitely no nights or weekends though; those days are gone for the foreseeable future. But, like you, I'd do anything for them and I don't regret it. It's just hard to overstate how huge the change is--you legitimately are forced to become a different person (or, I guess, you can choose to not be a very good parent, idk)
I would strongly encourage all fathers to become as closely involved with day-to-day care of their babies as possible. Don't wait until they can walk and talk.
It's like, in this day and age where anything and everything is said by somebody, we can detect, however subconsciously, an artificial absence of expressing a position expected to exist. So, societal pressure (per the comment) in this case evidently.
Yes, agreed. I never share my feelings in real life for the same reason. And it is very lonely. I did therapy for six months which helped. I was in a very dark place at one point.
And that’s actually true for a lot of people. But not everyone. And there’s zero support for trying to figure it out and come to an informed decision before you dive in, and even less for concluding that actually you don’t think it’ll be that great for you and you’re not going to do it.
>Surveys conducted over the last few years on representative samples in the US and Germany suggest that the percentage of parents who regret having children is approximately 17–8%.
- Financial difficulties
- Being a single parent
- Having children with a disability
All seem to vastly influence the result.
How would that work?
Don't get me wrong I couldn't imagine life without them, don't regret them, and I care for their well being deeply, but it certainly was not (and still is not at 5 and 3 years old) this overpowering feeling of love.
In the meantime, if your means allow it, nannies and au pairs can be a huge help. I'd even advise you to hire a full-timer. (You might even want to consider moving to a country where this is cheaper and more easily possible.) There ought to be no shame in it.
I was deeply burned out at the 14 mark with my first child. I did lots of things since then and am much better even after more children.
To speak plainly, I wasn't terribly interested in my son until he turned 3 years old. Then he started talking, started developing a personality with interests of his own, and fatherhood then became much more interesting. But I was intentionally quite uninvolved in those very early years. I don't regret this, don't see how else it could have been, and indeed I feel that some degree of fatherly aloofness towards infants is natural.
Someone has to guide the small children towards being functional human beings and it's a lot of work. I found they have interesting personalities and ways of expressing themselves by 1 at the latest.
When my daughter was born I was crying with joy. And while her infancy was enormously challenging, especially as she was born right when COVID lockdowns began (which prevented ANY assistance), I was immediately and profoundly in love with her.
It was very important to me to be extremely engaged when she was an infant. I wanted to - and did - earn her trust as a caretaker and source of comfort. And now, as a 4 year old, the relationship I have with her is utterly priceless.
That may have been your experience, but I would push back hard against generalizing that notion.
For my first child, we bottle-fed formula, and I was very involved in her routine: night feedings, diaper changes, counting days since the last poop, all of it. I felt very invested in every tiny milestone. It was a lot of problem solving, and I was very invested in her progress.
For my second child, because my wife breast-fed that time, I felt a little bit more like an outsider. I jumped in to help where I could, but it took longer for me to feel the same kind of connection. I also got much less paternity leave the second time around, which is likely the bigger factor.
All that to say, I think there are a lot of environmental factors that can play into infant attachment. No one should feel guilty for not having attachment right away, but it should still be pursued.
It's pretty simple, by doing it.
The answer is certainly "no". But does it matter? I guess it does in this age - after decades of social conditioning that parenthood is not much but an individual's lifestyle choice.
All this leading to worsening of social cohesion at all levels, inability to think beyond one's lifetime, extreme self-absorption, decrease in hope, demographic collapse across the world.
Not for nothing humans developed social pressure for parenthood: why would most humans willingly choose to give up their selfs for others over decades (if not lifetime)? Even laws/sanctions don't work if you don't morally know what is the right path.
you don't have to sift through some indecipherable mountain of information to find a solution
you just have to provide some basic mammalian service like provide warmth or food in a first world country
it can be stressful but it's actually quite simple
Sifting through an indecipherable mountain of information is fun. I’ll do it in my spare time. My reaction to some ridiculous bug report is, hell yeah, let’s go.
The hardest stuff in my life has nothing to do with computers and it’s not even remotely close.
But also if you asked me, “what led to most of the goodness in your life?”, I’d answer:
Moments of desperation
If anyone reading this is thinking about having kids, be really careful who you have them with.
If I have kids now, there’s no chance I’d have regrets. It’s a very different timeline in my life, being in a non-abusive relationship after 8 years of being in one and lots of therapy.
And yes, men can be in abusive relationships with women too.
I became a father after 51 years of avoiding it and avoiding children.
It has changed my life and enriched it in ways I could not have imagined before.
I monitored myself and my internal state as closely as I am able from learning that my partner was pregant until a few months after the birth. I could not detect the slightest difference in my mind, but I have gone from strongly disliking children to being a loving dad who enjoys being around kids. I am really enjoying it.
It feels like a whole section of my biological programming has been unlocked and while I couldn't feel it happening, I am now a different person, and a happier one too.
It has been the most life-altering experience I've ever had, and I've nearly died, I've had skeletal surgery while awake, and more.
> My mother came in with a great tip: when in doubt, ask second time parents, not other first timers.
So true in so many levels.
My life in my 20s had too little meaning. Now, in my 40s, sometimes it feels like too much. I much prefer it to how it used to be, though.
Currently in week 5 of my own journey with my child, and the above is basically how you have to perceive things as you push through this early phase. Beautiful read, and looking forward to appreciating more as I’m less sleep deprived.
My experience resonates with the authors. But certainly the experience ranges dramatically for different people under different life circumstances.
Also: “We all came out like this. This is how it has always happened. Insane.“
… I was a C-section :P
Nobody said it was going to be easy. They’re just venting after all. I just smile and nod.
My sample might be a bit biased as most our friends are PhD educated and in Tech or Academia.
My own observations:
- I was not terribly interested in our kids between ages of 0 - 2. This does not mean I did not fully participate in their life, but this was a muscle I had to exercise. I went to therapy as I thought I was somehow broken because thats not how people should feel. What I learned is that feelings are much more common than it is widely accepted.
- Once they started to speak, ask questions, and being more emotionally regulated it became very different. At this point I spend more time with my kids than my wife and generally love spending time with them, its almost effortless. Explaining things, buildings legos, became one of my favourite activities.
- Having daily help (live in nanny, live in grandparents) is an enormous help both from kids and relationship perspective. Seems like a trivial thing but if you do not have live in help you are likely to never be alone again as a couple for more than 24h (i.e. you can't go on a short trip).
Observations about my friends:
- Trying for a baby and being unsuccessful for years or going through multiple miscarriages can make couples extremely sad. You can reduce this risk by trying early.
- If your mental health is not amazing before kids it is likely get worse. This is about functional people that have mild mental health problems. Two of our friends developed severe mental health problems that in one case ended in a divorce and in second case multiple years of unemployment (father who was not primary care giver). This were generally reasonable people that sought mental health help from both therapy and medicine perspective.
- The societal expectations that women should be super excited about motherhood is not always true. Within our friends group probably 50% women are less involved in raising their kids than fathers. Some (reluctantly) admitted that they don't really like how motherhood negatively affected their job prospects, bodies and mental health.
- If you do happen to get divorce with young kids it is likely going to be a life changing event. Situation has to be pretty bad to get divorce with young kids so most likely you will be better off but from the two cases we have seen this typically means severe financial burden and inability to sustain long term relationship afterwards. If you are a women and somehow loose custody there is also going to be pretty severe societal judgement against you even in very progressive locations.
It may sound as a little bit depressing view of parenthood but this is more reality check for those reading only the bright side. Overall, I am extremely happy we have kids and our relationship is stronger than it was before but thats not the case for everyone and it required work.
This. Although I'm not sure this merits my quote book. I would phrase it as "there's a big part of me that's someone else" maybe.
That's EXACTLY what I felt when my daugther was born
> And after a few minutes passed I started to...think
Gosh I miss the first-baby newborn phase! Thinking time is dramatically cut in little-kid phase; but hey, tricycles and legos and Playdough!
You’re in it now friend! Keep writing and hang in there, it’s a life-long occupation!
I think the biggest factor was the shift in self-preservation instinct. Before my son was born, I had "believed" that I'd be the kind of guy who -- barring alternatives -- would jump in front of a bullet, sacrificing my own life to save my child.
But I'd been on Earth for 29 years at that point and during that time, one of the things that's sort of wired into you is "avoid, at all costs, the path of projectiles fired from guns." Though I recognized that this sort of thing doesn't happen to the vast majority of people in my position, I'd wondered whether or not that instinct might kick in should that occasion ever occur.
Shortly after my son was born, after the haze of sleepless nights ended, I realized something -- really, everything -- had changed. Replaying that scenario in my head, I no longer worried at all about how I'd react. I knew that there would be no scenario, ever again, where my safety would take precedence over that of my son (and later, my daughter). It wasn't the complexity of knowing I would have an impossible time living with myself if I survived and my son had died; it was like my brain had rewired a new instinct.
And as any parent with children of sufficient age has probably experienced, it was tested time and again, though thankfully in much less serious ways. I remember teaching my daughter to ice skate at age 5 and upon watching her lose her balance, watching as my body lurched forward and dove under her, clumsily catching her and breaking her fall.
"Watching" is the way I describe it because I don't remember ever having a thought in advance of doing it nor any control over my body once it had made the inevitable choice. There was no planning, no strategy, no honest understanding that a guy who'd never slid into first base, dove to catch a football or been skilled in any way when it came to sports along with not being particularly good in a pair of hockey skates[0] had a greater chance of injuring myself in the fall than my daughter had of injuring herself in five layers of padded cloth falling a couple of feet to the ground. I remember the moment I'd "saved her" in triumph and the subsequent feeling of defeat during the hours spent in the ER diagnosing my fracture rib.
I often compare the kind of parent I thought I would be against the kind of parent I ultimately became. I had put off having kids mostly due to my sister-in-law's 4-year-old terror (who turned out just fine). I would be the strong, stern Dad who didn't let their child misbehave. I would temper this by being the loving, affectionate Dad that my own was. And while I became the latter, I quickly realized how much more effective it is to call out and encourage the good behavior. I learned to have "sit downs" and discuss the bad behavior but to be gracious with it. I understood how poorly I reacted to negativity as a child and how discouraging that was to my success when I saw my son respond like I did.
Somehow, through a divorce and ensuing turmoil in my own life, I managed to end up with two teenage children who love nothing more than to spend time with Dad. We have a less-than-perfect parenting time schedule that the laws in my state make impossible for me to change (despite my flexible schedule and my children's desires) but my kids would rather schedule friend time on Mom's clock and invite friends out with us on my time. My kids both call me every day after school and we talk, sometimes for hours. We play Fortnite five out of seven nights an evening -- a game I'd be unlikely to touch without them[1] but one I'm thankful that we "play on the same team" and use mostly for talking to one another over twelve miles.
I realized that up until about age 12, I could read their minds and understood them better than they knew themselves. Sometime in their teen years, I discovered that -- in some ways -- they are more brave, more honest and better children than I ever was at my best.
I remember thinking "I'm not going to push programming on them" because I really respected the fact that my Dad didn't push what he did on me -- he wasn't a programmer, but he supported my second love as if it were his own. And I remember how proud I was when my daughter signed up for programming class in 8th grade and yelled at me when I suggested she might enjoy "art" (her passion and offered at the same time) more "I'm NOT doing this for YOU, Dad!" That's my girl.
I think the biggest adjustment, though, is realizing that they are the entire reason I'm here. Every single thing I do comes with the question: "How does this affect them?" I might have looked at a man who behaved that way and thought "that's the kind of Dad I want to be" but I know there's nothing special about that with me -- it was a re-wiring. I fear my own death only in that I know how it would affect them were it to come suddenly in their young lives.
I, like most boys raised by stereo-typical "Family Ties" or "The Cosby Show" parents learned "men don't cry" and rarely had the temptation to do so until after they were born. Last month, "The Remarkable Life of Ibelin" was released and I made it a point to get through it alone before watching it with my kids. I sobbed -- and I mean ugly cried -- through the whole thing sitting alone in my bedroom. I didn't do much better the second time with my kids[2]. I'm blessed that I've never lost my composure over my own life and its struggles but I can imagine how devastating and permanent losing one of my children would be.
I thought I had a pretty good idea of what it would be like to have kids, I thought I had a lot figured out before I had them. There are few things I had more wrong in my life. Maybe it's possible for some to accurately imagine/prepare for the experience but I had absolutely no idea. I didn't have the arrogance to pray for the kind of teenagers I raised. My son and daughter both share so much of my brain, the way I process things and the like but they use it differently. When people say "your kids teach you as much as you teach them", that's what they mean. You watch your own struggles get adapted to differently, quite often better, than you did. My son processes things with deep empathy. My daughter errs toward logic and reasoned argument. More than a few occasions, I'm stuck thinking "dammit, they're right" and find myself demonstrating the act of apologizing. That's a humbling experience.
[0] This was a wet indoor rink and though I could handle myself OK on outdoor lake ice and was very proficient with inlines on cement or gravel.
[1] My gaming days are behind me, frankly.
[2] My Dad, who was -- in every way -- a stereotypical "He-Man" is exactly the same way.
Recently, we’ve been reading Disciplines of a Godly Man by R. Kent Hughes. Today we’re to discuss the chapter on Fatherhood. I was happy to see the author had learned a few of these lessons. Here’s a few for those interested.
Do’s include investing time in them, speaking tenderly, teaching them, setting an example, discipline where necessary, and especially praying for them. If they have Christ, and God intervenes for them, many situations day to day work out better than if left purely to human nature. My friends strongly attest to this with many examples.
Don’t included too much criticism (or too little praise), excessive strictness, irritability (esp “been at work all day!”), inconsistency, and favoritism. He gives examples of each hurting relationships between fathers and sons.
I thought those were a nice start. Character of Christ, putting the children first (love), and some specific tips. Lastly, we can be calm knowing God is in control of every step of our future. He just expects us to act on what we’ve learned a day at a time. He’ll only let happen what needs to happen for His plan for our lives and our kids’ lives. That’s comforting.
You show two, common views: God owes us something; no gratitude.
God is a sovereign being who can do what He wants with His creation like you do with your possessions. If we always choose evil, He owes us nothing but wrath. Yet, people expect God of all creation to come down, drop on His knees to kiss their feet, and do an entire list of things to please them and earn their respect. What arrogance!
In fact, His lovingkindness and mercies are on everything He’s made. He gives the gift of children to many people, gives medical treatment for cancers that human activities (eg chemicals/food/stress) are likely causing, and all the good things in our lives. Gor protects so many children that there’s almost ten billion people on Earth.
So, people show up on Hacker News grateful for all God has given them: children, our daily lives, and even good submissions here. Nope! Maybe you thank Him for protecting billions of lives or motivating tens of billions in charity. Nope! Instead, people act like He doesn’t exist, censor the Gospel in media, curse His name in movies, and accuse Him on HN with no credit for any positive things.
God must love us to keep letting us live, healing our kids, etc. While we were still sinners (God’s enemies), Christ died for us so we’d get a second chance. You should repent of the evil in your heart. Once you meet God, you may thank Him for all He does for you instead of curse Him. Especially for the gift of eternal life.
I’d say more but my son is saying “play with me” over and over. Take care ya’ll.